The Presence and the Fear of God

Exodus 19.10-25

I have a confession to make that will definitely prove I’m getting older: I hate emojis.

I hate emojis.

I love technology, but I hate some of things that come with it. Emojis and social media are perhaps the two things I hate the most about the technology that has come to the foreground in the last twenty years or so.

I hate emojis because I love words. You can already see it: reliance on emojis are making us incapable of using actual language. We’ll write 😁 instead of constructing our sentences to express that we’re happy. We’ll write 🙏 instead of just praying with someone. We’ll use 💩—if someone can tell me in what context this is necessary, I’d be thankful.

But I have a theory as to why emojis took off the way they did. Sometimes, visualization is helpful. I think it’s rarely helpful in a text message, but I get why it’s appealing: you can see something and intuitively understand—it’s a much more immediate means of communication than words. It’s why graphs and charts are helpful; it’s why facial expressions are helpful; it’s why illustrations are helpful. Sometimes we need to see something to capture the full measure of it: you can describe the Grand Canyon to someone, but it’s a totally different thing to actually be there and see it.

I bring this up because what we see in today’s text is essentially God giving the people of Israel one huge illustration. It’s enabling them to visualize something they would only otherwise understand in part.

Last week we saw the people arrive at the foot of Mount Sinai, and God told Moses what he was going to do. He was going to establish a covenant with the people of Israel—and in case you weren’t here last week, here are the terms of that covenant. He said in Exodus 19.5-6:

Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

So he gave a condition—obey my voice and keep my covenant—and he gave them a promise—if they respected that condition, they would be he treasured possession, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

But they still don’t completely understand how serious this covenant is; God’s going to give Moses a list of laws the Israelites would have to follow, and the Israelites will need to be entirely convinced that they need to follow these laws, because they are to be God’s representatives among the nations, which means they have to be like him.

This is a big deal; it entails a total transformation of who they are as a nation and as a people. T. Desmond Alexander writes: "The ratification of the covenant at Mount Sinai transforms the Israelites from being oppressed slaves of the king of Egypt to being exalted servants of the King of kings.”

In other words, they will need to be holy—they will be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

But what does that mean, exactly? When we think “holy”, we often think of moral righteousness. And that is certainly true: God’s people would be holy in that they would be set apart by God to reflect his character to the world.

But it would be an incomplete reflection, because God is holy in ways ordinary human beings can never be. And he’s going to show that—he’s going to show just how wide the gap is between our holiness and his own—at Mount Sinai.

Preparing for the Presence of God (v. 10-15)

We see this first in the way God prepares the people for what he’s about to do. They’re about to come close to God, which is no small thing.

V. 9:

When Moses told the words of the people to the Lord, 10 the Lord said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments 11 and be ready for the third day. For on the third day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.

So already this is something different than anything they’ve encountered before. God tells Moses that he is to “consecrate” the people. The word “consecrate” literally means to set apart as holy—Moses is to prepare the people to present themselves before a holy God.

He tells Moses to have the people “wash their garments” and be ready for the third day. In other words, that third day wouldn’t be like every other day.

Three couples got married this past week: Frank and Suzanne, Timothée and Laura, and Vincent and Sophie. I’m sure all of them have their favorite clothes they like to wear on a regular basis, certain ways they like to style their hair, certain ways they get ready in the morning. But they didn’t wear those clothes this week, and they didn’t get ready in the same way.

They got ready for their wedding.

Coming before God is serious, so the people were to prepare for that day in a different way than every other day. They were to wash their clothes, to come before God clean. They were to set themselves apart for this one thing: to go to the mountain fully aware that they were entering into the presence of holiness.

That’s not all—if this washing wasn’t enough to make them aware of the seriousness of the situation, what God said next would do it. V. 12:

12 And you shall set limits for the people all around, saying, ‘Take care not to go up into the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death. 13 No hand shall touch him, but he shall be stoned or shot; whether beast or man, he shall not live.’ When the trumpet sounds a long blast, they shall come up to the mountain.”

So in addition to the consecration and the cleansing they have to go through before the third day, Moses has to set limits around the mountain that the people can’t cross. If they go up too far, if they touch the mountain, the penalty is death.

That might seem a bit harsh, but it’s not. It’s what we saw last week: the holiness of God is unfit for sinful human beings. That’s why the person who comes too close to the mountain is to be stoned or shot (with an arrow, of course); they are not to be touched, because if they’ve been too close to the presence of the Holy God, they are now dangerous to come into contact with.

We can think of it almost like radiation. Think of the sun. The sun is a good thing—it’s a good creation of God. It gives us warmth, just the right conditions for a habitable planet, and it keeps our solar system in its orbit. Now let’s take an object in space, like a meteor or a satellite. Assuming it’s made of really strong stuff and doesn’t get burned up, if an object gets too close to the sun, it soaks up solar radiation and becomes radioactive. Not only can we not get close to the sun; we can’t get close to anything else that’s been close to the sun, because that would be dangerous for us too.

The sun is a good thing, but it is dangerous.

God’s holiness is an absolute good. It is what makes him God—he is totally set apart, totally above, totally perfect. His holiness is so good, in fact, that it is dangerous for anyone who isn’t as holy as God is.

So limits are set around the mountain, which the people absolutely must not pass.

Moses does what God commands in v. 14:

14 So Moses went down from the mountain to the people and consecrated the people; and they washed their garments. 15 And he said to the people, “Be ready for the third day; do not go near a woman.”

Obviously, he doesn’t mean don’t go physically near a woman; women were present in front of the mountain. What he means is, don’t have sex. Not because sex is bad or dirty (God created sex), but because he wants them totally set apart, in body and in mind, for this moment when he would come down. They are to be consecrated—dedicated to nothing else on that day.

Witnessing the Presence of God (v. 16-19)

So, as verse 2 of this chapter tells us, Israel is encamped in front of the mountain. And as Tim Chester noted, that’s a strange thing to say—mountains don’t have “fronts”.

But thrones do.

That really is what we see here: it’s like they’re entering into the throne room of the God of everything—and if they weren’t yet aware of why that was a big deal, they soon would be.

V. 16:

16 On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. 17 Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain.

So on the third day, it’s almost like the mountain starts to wake up. There’s thunder, there’s lightning, a huge cloud that envelops the mountain and a “very loud trumpet blast.” That’s not a guy in the camp playing the trumpet to celebrate; that’s heaven, announcing God’s arrival.

We see at the end of v. 16 that “all the people in the camp trembled.” They are terrified.

Now if you’ve read the Bible, you’ll remember that often God will send an angel to someone, and every time that happens, the person who sees the angel is terrified, and usually the angel will tell them, “Don’t be afraid.” It’s interesting that Moses doesn’t do that here—not yet anyway. He will say it later on, as we’ll see in a couple weeks, but he will say it in a specific way that’s actually in keeping with what happens here.

For now, he doesn’t discourage their fear, because their fear is right—that’s the appropriate response to the presence of God.

A couple of years ago, we were back in Florida visiting my family, and we were there in peak storm season. Almost every day during the hot summer months, a little after noon, there’s a massive storm, with thunder and lightning and torrential rain. So every day the kids got a show. We were watching from inside most of the time, so we were sheltered and completely safe, but even from the safety of shelter, the kids were a little freaked out at first, because the thunder and lightning were incredible.

That’s how we should feel in the presence of something this powerful. That fear is the right response.

So Moses doesn’t tell the people not to fear. Instead, he tells them to come out anyway. Come out of their tents, come out of the camp to meet God.

Can you imagine? You leave your camp and you come up to the foot of this mountain, which is wrapped in clouds and thunder and lightning, and from which these shattering trumpet blasts are coming.

And once they’re there, it gets even more intense.

A lot of us went to see Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer, which came out last year. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by telling you that J. Robert Oppenheimer headed up the team that created the first atomic bomb, which they tested in the desert in New Mexico. The scene in the film where they test the bomb is incredible, because it’s not what you’d expect. You don’t see a lot of wide shots of the whole explosion, because we’ve seen those pictures before. We know what that looks like. Nolan wanted to get in close. They photographed shots of a small nuclear reaction in extreme close-up, so you have these long shots of just fire, rolling in and over itself.

I can’t help but think of that when I read v. 18:

18 Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. 19 And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder.

So there is thunder. Lightning. A loud trumpet blast. Then fire, and smoke billowing up like out of a smokestack from the mountain. Trembling. Then the trumpet blast gets louder and louder, and Moses speaks (or he has to scream, I’d imagine, over the noise), and when God answers, he answers in thunder.

Can you imagine it?

It’s one sign after another. God called the people to come to him. He wants to be in a relationship with his people.

But God is dangerous. His presence is not to be taken lightly. Coming to God is not like going to visit your grandpa. It’s not even like going to visit someone you greatly admire.

It’s like going to visit a thunderstorm. It’s like going to visit an atomic blast. He wants us to come, and he will keep us safe—remember, he set limits around the mountain so that the people wouldn’t die—but even from a distance, his presence is awesome, and dangerous, and terrifying.

Mediating the Presence of God (v. 20-25)

Why is he terrifying? We saw it before. God’s presence is terrifying because God is holy, and we are not. Just like we can’t withstand an atomic blast, because we’re not made of lead, we can’t withstand the presence of a holy God, because we aren’t holy.

In order for the people to truly come into the presence of God, they would need a barrier; they would need a kind of filter. And that filter, that barrier, as it turns out, would be a person.

That’s what we see next, in v. 20:

20 The Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain. And the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.

God allowed only one man to come up to the top of the mountain. Moses could come up, and no one else, at least not for now. (Later on he’ll bring Aaron up with him, because Aaron will soon be named high priest.) For now, it’s just Moses.

So what does God tell Moses when he gets up to the mountain? He gives him more safeguards, more limits; he tells him to go back down again, and reiterate for the people one more time just how serious this is.

V. 21:

21 And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down and warn the people, lest they break through to the Lord to look and many of them perish. 22 Also let the priests who come near to the Lord consecrate themselves, lest the Lord break out against them.” 23 And Moses said to the Lord, “The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for you yourself warned us, saying, ‘Set limits around the mountain and consecrate it.’ ” 24 And the Lord said to him, “Go down, and come up bringing Aaron with you. But do not let the priests and the people break through to come up to the Lord, lest he break out against them.” 25 So Moses went down to the people and told them.

You see, once God’s glory is visibly present on the mountain, there isn’t just one limit the people mustn’t cross. God sets up three separate zones of increasing holiness, the further up the mountain they go. (And later on, the tabernacle would be configured in exactly the same way.) Only Moses can come all the way to the top for now. Aaron and the priests can go up to the slopes, but no further (v. 22). And the people have to stay on the ground, at the foot of the mountain.

The closer to God you get, the more serious the danger is.

Only Moses can actually come into God’s presence for now, because God wants Moses to act as a mediator between God and the people. He wants there to be a barrier for now.

But why would he want that? Again, this is God—he can do whatever he wants. Clearly he can make it possible for Moses to come into his presence without dying, at least in a limited way. Why can’t he just do that for all the people?

There are a few reasons.

The first, I think, is logical, and that is that people can get used to almost anything, even things that are incredible. That’s why tourists who go into the mountains on vacation stand around taking pictures, looking at the peaks in awe, while the people who live there walk around like it’s no big deal. It’s why parents, when their kids get sick, will rush to them to clean it up, rather than running away like a sane person. It’s why Tom Cruise jumps out of airplanes, when everyone else straps in.

We can get used to almost anything.

And when we get used to fire, we tend to want to play with it.

It’s what we’ll see in about twelve chapters—despite everything they’ve seen, the people will eventually get bored with the incredible presence of God, and want a new god to do something new for them. They’ll get used to God’s presence, and stop taking it seriously.

We cannot come to God on our own; we need a mediator, who will represent us well before God.

That’s what we see in Moses: he is a good mediator between the people and God. He will hear God’s instructions, and transmit them faithfully to the people; he’ll also listen to the people, and pass on their requests to God. He’s a good mediator.

But he’s still not a perfect mediator. Later on, Moses will fail in his mediatorial task, and as a result will be prohibited from entering the Promised Land of Canaan.

Moses shows us a mediator is necessary, and he shows us that no merely human mediator is enough.

Here’s why I think this chapter is so incredibly important for us today. We’ve heard so many times that God is love, that the Father sent Christ to die for our sins—that he lived our life and died our death to reconcile us to God. And of course that is true: it’s what we say every week, it’s what we celebrate every week when we take Communion together.

But often we end up adopting a kind of Westernized idea of what the love of God the Father looks like. We liken God’s paternal love to our own. And our love, quite often, is more influenced by commercials than the Bible.

On the screen, you see a dad playing with his new baby. They’re on the floor, wrestling a little, the dad is rubbing his face into the skin of the baby’s belly, tickling it and making it laugh. Then someone says off screen, “Who wants a scratchy face when they’re cuddling with their baby?” And they show the dad carefully applying shaving cream, then shaving his face nice and close. Then one last shot of the dad holding the baby after a great day playing: the baby’s asleep on his chest, and he leans down and kisses the baby, nuzzling his his smooth, freshly shaved cheeks into the baby’s forehead.

A lot of the time, that’s what we think of when we think of the love of a father. And it’s not bad—not at all. Dads, play with your babies. Wrestle with them, kiss them, cuddle with them. They need you, and that’s good.

But that’s not what the love of God looks like, because his love is holy. He’s not after our comfort; he’s not there to tickle us and make us laugh. He’s there for our joy—which is a very different thing—and he’s there for our holiness.

My fear, even and almost especially for myself, is what happens when we get used to God. Because what we see described in Exodus 19 is not at odds with what we see described in the gospels. God has not changed. He is still the same holy God he was on the mountain, surrounding it in fire, smoke billowing up from the mountain, showing himself in lightning and speaking in thunder.

We cannot come to God the way a baby comes to her dad. Our God is a consuming fire (Deut. 4.24), as we see on the mountain. We can see his love in that he invites us to enter into his presence, but we cannot come to him as if he’s a normal dad. He’s not.

To come to God, we need a mediator. We need the Mediator.

That’s the second reason why God wanted a barrier between himself and the people, all the way back at the time of Moses. Moses’s acting as mediator for the people pointed forward to the day when the perfect Mediator would come.

Jesus said that “no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14.6). We can’t, because we could never withstand the power of pure, unleashed holiness.

The only way we can come to God is through our Mediator, Jesus Christ. For all eternity, the only reason we will not be burned up by the holy presence of God is because we are protected by our Mediator. He has covered us in his holiness, and stands between us and the Father as our protection. Because he is both fully God and fully man, he bridges the infinite gap between our holiness and God’s holiness. He makes it possible for us to stand in God’s holy presence.

So we can come to God with joy, and thankfulness, and celebration. We can know that we are truly united to God, and we don’t have to be afraid of him.

But we also shouldn’t be afraid of fearing him, because that is the right response.

Cultivating the Fear of the Lord

You might be listening to this, and like me, feeling horribly convicted. Because you know you tend to come before God lightly, like you’d come to your dad. You know you don’t fear him as you should.

So how do we cultivate this fear?

Firstly—and this is far from the main thing, but I’m throwing it out there—read books that help. There’s a great one that was recently released by Michael Reeves called Rejoice and Tremble (“Réjouissez-vous et tremblez,” https://maisonbible.fr/fr/79283-rejouissez-vous-et-tremblez-pourquoi-la-crainte-du-seigneur-est-une-benediction-pour-le-peuple-de-dieu-9782925131335.html). It’s an excellent book, and the entire work is centered around this question.

But ultimately, the things you could read outside of the Bible are accessory—helpful, but not the foundation. So live in his Word. Read the Bible cover to cover, on a regular basis (if you can, once a year), because it’s impossible for someone who has been saved by grace, born again through the work of the Holy Spirit, to be exposed to the Bible that much and walk away with a small view of God.

Because the Bible does not present a small view of God. Not once. Even when Jesus does things we find easier to swallow—like healing the sick out of compassion for them—we’re still talking about the God of all creation who commands errant molecules with his word. Even Jesus is the one who appears in the book of Revelation shining like the sun, eyes like fire, a voice like a waterfall, with a sword coming out of his mouth.

Read the Bible. Read the whole Bible, as often as you can. Let it shape your view of God.

Secondly, pray often. Read Psalm 103, and see how often David says that God’s love and compassion is for those who fear him, and ask God to love you like that—to develop in you a view of him that moves you to awe and drives you to your knees, bowing your head before him. No one ever fears God enough, no one fears him as much as he deserves. So our prayers should reflect that. We repent that we do not fear you, Lord, and we beg you to show us mercy, to give us a right view of you, and to help us approach you with joy and trembling.

Lastly—and this might be simple but it’s not easy to do—take God seriously.

We notice this a lot in kids. We’re reading the Bible, or we’re praying together as a family, and one of the kids is goofing around, interrupting, hitting his brother or sister. As parents, we want to be understanding with our children, but we also want to impress upon them that these moments are serious. This is us, as a family, speaking to the all-powerful God of the universe, who is there in the room with us at that moment. It’s not a small thing. It’s not a light thing.

Now, I’m terrible at this. It’s like I was saying earlier: you spend enough time around something, and you get used to it. So we should jump on every opportunity we have to make an ordinary moment holy—because the reality is that there is not a single moment of a single day in which God is not present with us. Right there, in the room, there he is. How would we act differently if we could see him physically present there?

My prayer is that the Holy Spirit would help us meditate on this incredible passage, and feel that fear. That he would help us to always be in awe of the fact that we get to come protected into God’s holy presence. And that we would respond to this fear with obedience—because that is the point, as we’ll see in the next chapter. We fear the Lord, that we might listen to him, and obey him.

The Covenant, the Condition and the Witness

Exodus 19.1-9

The notion of covenant is absolutely crucial to understanding the story of the Bible. The funny thing is, people find this notion difficult sometimes, but it’s an idea we actually understand quite well, and encounter almost every day.

There are many different types of covenant, but we’re going to focus on two different types today.

The first is what’s called a promissory covenant, or what I’ll call an unconditional covenant (which I find clearer). Take, for example, take a marriage. Loanne and I celebrated our twenty-first wedding anniversary last week—last Sunday, actually. On April 28, 2003, we stood face-to-face on a beach in Florida, and as we held hands and looked into each other’s eyes, we both made promises to one another. There were absolutely no conditions to these promises—we didn’t say, “I will love you, cherish you, honor you, and remain faithful to you…until I get tired of you, in which case I’m out.” No—we said, “For as long as we both shall live.” That’s it. No conditions. I’ll be your husband, for the rest of my life  or the rest of yours.

This is the kind of covenant God gave to Abraham. He told him that he would make him the father of many nations, that through his descendants all the nations of the earth would be blessed, and that he would give the land of Canaan to his descendants as their land. He didn’t say to Abraham, “If you do X, then I’ll do Y.” He just said, “This is what I’m going to do.”

That’s one kind of covenant: an unconditional covenant.

The second kind is of course a conditional covenant. This is the kind of covenant you have with your employer. When you started working for your employer, you signed a contract with them, stating that you would fulfill the tasks for which they mandated you, and if you do that, the employer in return will pay you a salary. I do this, you do this in return. If one of us doesn’t do it, well then, the covenant’s off. If you don’t show up to work for weeks on end, the contract is void and you lose your job. If your employer doesn’t pay you, same thing—you may need to take them to court to make it official, but that’s what happens.

So we have a conditional covenant and an unconditional covenant.

The Covenant

In today’s text, God spells out the covenant he is going to establish with his people. He’s delivered them out of slavery in Egypt, he’s provided for them and protected them in the desert, and today they arrive at Mount Sinai, the mountain on which God will give them instructions on how they should live. He’s going to tell Moses (who will then communicate it to the people) what kind of agreement, what kind of covenant, God is going to establish with them, and it’s a conditional covenant, like the work contract we talked about a minute ago.

But, as these things often go, it’s actually more complex, and more beautiful, than that.

V. 1:

On the third new moon after the people of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. 2 They set out from Rephidim and came into the wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped in the wilderness. There Israel encamped before the mountain, 3 while Moses went up to God. The Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: 4 ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”

So let’s just look at the covenant itself real quickly. First we see a condition God gives to Israel—v. 5: if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant… That’s the condition: obey God’s voice, keep his covenant.

What exactly are they supposed to obey? The laws that God will soon give to Moses.

Next, we see a commitment from God—a promise of what he will do if Israel fulfills their commitment. V. 5 again: Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’

So God promises to give them two things if they respect the covenant. The first is love—you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine.

In other words, you already belong to me. Everything does. The entire world belongs to me. But if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, I will attach to you a particular sort of love: God’s affections will be directed to Israel in a different way.

The second thing God promises to give them is a mission. He says in v. 6: you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Remember what we saw a couple of weeks ago: God’s goal for his people is that they be representatives to the world, who show the foreign nations around them the nature of God’s character and will. They will be holy as he is holy, and the world will see what his holiness looks like.

So we have a condition for Israel—obey my voice, keep my covenant—and a promise from God: you will be my treasured possession on earth, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

Now of course this is still early; they don’t yet have the law, so they’re not entirely sure what they’re getting in to. Even so, the people respond with a commitment of their own, that they will do what God has told them to do. V. 7:

7 So Moses came and called the elders of the people and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him. 8 All the people answered together and said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.”

The Condition

That’s basically what this covenant looks like. But there’s a problem. Not a problem for God or for his plan, but rather for the people.

A few minutes ago, I mentioned God’s covenant with Abraham—how it was an unconditional covenant. Now, God is going to speak to Abraham’s descendants, the people of Israel, about the covenant he’s going to make with them. It would be easy to assume that since God had made this unconditional covenant with Abraham, he’d do the same thing with his descendants. But that’s not what he does.

He puts a condition on the covenant. They will be his treasured possession, if they obey his voice and keep his covenant.

On the one hand, this condition is necessary. It’s necessary because of the mission God gives them, to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. God’s people are meant to be, in a sense, the guarantors of God’s reputation on earth. That meant that whenever a foreign nation would observe the people of Israel, it was God they would be seeing.

One thing we see throughout the Bible is that God’s ultimate goal in everything he does is his glory: it is to show the world what he is really like. (That’s what the word “glory” means in the Bible: it is everything God is, made visible for all to see.) God’s desire that the world see his glory is not arrogant or selfish: it is a gift he gives to his creation, because seeing his glory, contemplating it, observing it, living in it, is the only thing that will satisfy us throughout eternity.

So this mission God gives to Israel, to carry his reputation to the nations, is huge. It is a massive gift—again, nothing will make God’s people happier than being like God—but it’s daunting as well. If they are going to represent him in the world, they have to be like him.

The problem is, they won’t be able to do it. God’s about to give them a lot of laws that will go into great detail about things as mundane as the type of fabrics they had to use in certain circumstances, how to deal with mold in their tents. The point of all this super-strict mundanity is that God’s character is exacting—he is perfect…and if he is perfect, and his people are to represent him on earth, his people should be perfect as well. (Jesus reiterated that same point a long time later, when he told his disciples, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”, Matthew 5.48.)

It’s almost funny, what we see in v. 8, when Moses tells the people what God said and they respond, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.”

I want to say, Yeah, right—just wait a while and see how it goes.

The Witness

So here’s the question I can’t get away from: why did God do it this way? The mission God gives to his people makes the condition necessary—they have to be like him if they’re going to represent him—but in that case, what’s the point of any of this? God knew perfectly well they weren’t up to the task. So what good is the covenant if the people would always be unable to fulfill it?

I think the key to answering that question is found in two verses that might be easy to overlook.

The first is at the beginning of God’s discourse. God is speaking to Moses and he tells him what he should say to the people. But before he gives the terms of the covenant, this is what he says (v. 4):

You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.

He calls attention to what he did—how he brought them out of Egypt, and everything he did in order to get them out—and he says, “You yourselves have seen what I did.” You saw this. You remember. It’s not like someone else told you about it; you saw it for yourself.

The second verse is at the end of today’s passage, in v. 9.

9 And the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you forever.”

(When God wants the people to “believe Moses forever”, he means he will do these things so that the people will believe that the words Moses communicates to them in the law are indeed God’s words, not his own. The cloud on the mountain, and the voice they hear from the mountain, will validate the law Moses will transmit to them.)

So you see, it’s something similar. Here, God doesn’t call attention to something he has done, but to something he will do. He’s going to come to Moses in a thick cloud that the people can see, and they will hear when God is speaking to Moses. Just as they witnessed God’s power in delivering them from Egypt, they will also witness God’s power when God gives the law through Moses, and because of this, they will believe that the words he brings down from the mountain are really and truly the words of God, his law, his will.

What’s the point of this double mention of God’s power that Israel can see and hear?

These two verses serve almost as bookends to the covenant: they hold this passage together. God wants the people to remember his power in the past, to witness his power in the present, and to expect his power in the future, precisely because the task facing the Israelites is too great for them to handle. They can’t do it—but God doesn’t want them to believe in what they can do; he wants them to believe in what he can do.

This has always been the case, even with Abraham. All the way back in Genesis 15, Abraham was declared righteous because he believed that God could do the impossible.

This is one area of biblical theology that always boggled my mind; we need to think about it. God’s covenant with Israel, that comes with conditions, doesn’t cancel out his covenant with Abraham. It’s not like God made this promise to Abraham, then saw how Abraham’s descendants turned out, and said, “Actually… I’d probably better take out some insurance on this covenant, because they are not what I was expecting.” God doesn’t need an escape plan.

God’s conditional covenant with Israel doesn’t cancel out his unconditional covenant with Abraham. Rather, it reveals an aspect of God’s covenant with Abraham that perhaps wasn’t apparent until that point. And that is that this unconditional covenant with Abraham shouldn’t be possible. Not because God isn’t powerful, but rather because God is holy, and Abraham wasn’t. That’s the problem.

A covenant is a real, binding union between two parties. It really and truly unites them to one another. And the perfectly holy God making a binding, unifying covenant with an unholy person… Such a thing shouldn’t be possible.

God’s covenant with Israel underlines that reality, because very soon, as Israel starts trying to keep the covenant, they will show again and again that they can’t do it. They are sinful people, and he is a holy God: they’re not up to his level. Neither was Abraham.

And yet—what does God constantly say? I am the God who brought you out of Egypt. I am the God who brought you out of Egypt. You know what I can do. I can do this too.

The question is, how?

Israel would receive the first part of the answer in the law, because they would receive the rites and the sacrifices that would purify them, that would cleanse them of their sin. Their sin would be figuratively placed on an animal, and that animal would receive the penalty for that sin; the animal would be killed instead of the person.

Already, this was massive, because the condition of the covenant is that Israel obey God’s commands and keep his covenant—and in these rites and sacrifices, he makes provisions for Israel to remain united to him in the covenant even when they don’t obey him. Already, God proves himself more gracious than he needs to be.

This is why I hate the dichotomy people make sometimes—saying that the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath, and the God of the New Testament is a God of love; or, the old covenant (the Mosaic covenant) is a covenant of works, and the new covenant in Christ is a covenant of grace. It’s not true: the law God gives to the people at this point in time is a law of grace. God makes provisions for those times when Israel would not meet the conditions of the covenant, so that even in that case, the covenant might not be broken. This is unbelievable, undeserved grace.

So it’s easy to see how the people of Israel might look at these sacrifices God allows them to make, and to think that is the whole answer to the problem. God is holy, they aren’t, so they can make sacrifices to purify themselves when they sin, and the covenant is upheld. It’s easy to see how they might stop looking for something better still to come.

But needing to make sacrifices to be purified from sin is like putting a patch on a flat tire: it will hold for a while, but pretty soon you’ll need another one, and eventually you’ll need to replace the tire altogether. It’s the same thing here: God tells the people what to do when they sin—he gives them sacrifices to make in order to be forgiven. But they’re imperfect human beings; they’re going to sin again. Which means they’ll need to make another sacrifice.

And again, and again, and again, for the rest of their lives. It’s a solution, but it’s a temporary solution.

And pretty soon, God would begin reminding the people of that reality. He would send his prophets to tell the people of something better coming, that the sacrifices, rather than being the definitive solution to the problem, were more like training tools, to get the people ready for the permanent solution—a solution that was so unexpected that no one saw it coming.

Israel could never keep their side of the covenant. And no one could have predicted that God’s solution to this problem would be to keep Israel’s side of the covenant for them.

You saw what I did, he said, how I brought you out of Egypt; you heard what I said, you saw my presence on the mountain when I gave the law through Moses. This covenant was God’s doing; it was his plan, it was at his initiative, and he made the provision for it to be possible. So when it came time for the covenant to be perfectly fulfilled, that too would be God’s doing. You can’t keep my covenant, and I know that—I’ll keep it for you.

The Covenant Fulfilled

So let’s try to synthesize real quick.

We see three separate elements in this passage, three separate layers to the covenant.

We see God’s commitment to his people (v. 5b-6): “you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

We see God’s condition for meeting that commitment (v. 5a): if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant… (And later, as we saw earlier, he will provide the means for the people to remain united to him even when they don’t meet that condition, the sacrifices they’ll need to make.)

And we see God’s call to witness his power to bring the covenant to pass (v. 4, 9) “you yourselves have SEEN what I did to the Egyptians… I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may HEAR when I speak with you, and may also BELIEVE you—believe that the words you communicate to them are my words—forever.”

Every one of these elements is yet another brick laid in the road that would lead to Jesus Christ.

Actually, it’s bigger than that: every one of these elements is what we see when we look at Jesus Christ.

Jesus meets the condition of the covenant for God’s people. He obeys God’s voice and keeps his covenant, like the people could never do. He lives a perfectly sinless life in the place of God’s people.

And Jesus is the sacrifice for not meeting the condition. As God provided the sacrifices for his people to be temporarily cleansed of their sin, he provided the perfect, once-for-all sacrifice in Christ, who suffered the punishment we deserve for our sin, so that we might not be punished.

Next, Jesus is the means by which God keeps his commitment to his people. Through his sacrifice for us, and his perfect life given to us, he fulfilled the covenant for us—the “if you obey my voice” condition of the covenant is perfectly met, because Christ did it. And because Christ fulfilled the covenant for his people, God has made us his treasured possession, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

Peter says in 1 Peter 2.9 (speaking to Christians):

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

God has made good on his commitment to his people in the covenant, because Christ fulfilled the condition of the covenant.

And lastly, Jesus is what his people witness in order that they might believe. After his resurrection, he appeared to his disciples. He didn’t appear in a vision; he appeared physically. He said, “Touch my hands. Touch my side. See that it’s really me.” They witnessed him physically, and they transmitted their witness to us, in order that we might believe. And we have witnessed his presence in our own lives, from the moment he saved us, and every day since.

Conclusion: The Old and the New

Now I know there are some people here this morning who have come in limping. You’ve come in feeling weighed down with all the ways you’ve failed—the ways you’ve failed your friends or your family, the ways you’ve failed yourself, the ways you’ve failed God. You’ve come in barely able to concentrate on anything I’ve been saying this morning, much less think about what difference all of these things make in practice.

One thing people who feel like they’ve failed have in common is that they have this picture in their minds of what things would be like if they hadn’t failed. Maybe it’s vague, maybe it’s very clear, but one thing’s for sure: everything would be rosy if you had just managed to get it right.

So what ends up happening? You try to get it right. You work hard, under immense pressure, trying to do the right thing that will maybe repair some of the damage you’ve done, the right thing that will ease the pain you’ve caused someone else, the right thing that will bring you out of failure into success, the right thing that will finally get rid of that imaginary tattoo on your forehead you see every time you look in the mirror, the one that says, “You’re not good enough.”

And one hundred percent of the time, that thinking spills over into your relationship with God. You read the Bible and see his commandments and think, “Okay, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do this,” because otherwise, one day God is surely going to wise up and realize you’re defective, and drop you.

But God doesn’t drop his people. From the beginning, he made the way for the Covenant to be kept.

The New Covenant isn’t a destruction of the Old; it’s a completion of the Old. Under the Old Covenant, God already provided the means to stay united to him when the people didn’t meet the condition to keep the covenant. The main difference between the Old Covenant and the New is that the New Covenant starts off already kept, because Christ kept God’s commands for us. The conditions of the covenant are met before it ever gets to us. Because of Christ’s finished work, we are, from the beginning, God’s treasured possession, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, and nothing can take that away from us. Not our mistakes, not our inadequacies, not our failures.

And that is what brings about our obedience. Because of who we are now—his beloved people—we believe, and we obey. Not the other way around. We believe, and we obey, because God is faithful. We don’t obey so that he will be faithful—we obey because he is. We don’t obey to get everything he’s promised us in Christ; we obey because we already have it.

Now of course, a lot of the time we forget this; we will often need to obey simply because it’s what God has commanded. We need discipline to persevere in obedience, because we forget the gospel really easily.

But in those moments when we don’t forget, in those moments when we are mindful of what Christ has done for us, and obey for that reason—in those moments, obedience isn’t like work; it’s like singing. It’s recognizing something that is true, and being so overwhelmed by it that it bubbles over into action. It’s doing what you want to do, because what you want is to act like the One who is good.

So he is calling us all this morning: see, and believe in, Christ’s finished work; remember we are a chosen people, that we may proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light; and obey because Christ has already listened to God’s voice, and kept his covenant.

God, my daily bread and my anxieties

Matthew 6.7-13, 6.25-34

Introduction

We are currently in a series of sermons on the book of Exodus, and today's message is not really a break from that series, but rather a focus on a particular topic that came up during these messages on the Exodus.

In this series on the Exodus, we have seen how God freed the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, and a few weeks ago we saw, in Exodus 16 and 17, how God revealed his providence in the people of Israel - how God revealed that He provides for the needs of His people.

In fact, the people had been freed from slavery in Egypt but afterwards they would have to cross a desert, and in this desert certain fairly basic needs manifested themselves. Like having something to eat and having something to drink.

When they encountered these needs, the people's first reaction was to murmur, to complain.

God therefore showed them that he was actively and constantly engaged in providing for their necessities. He provided them with a source of food in the desert, Manna, a rather amazing kind of seed that was nicknamed the “bread of heaven.”

But it is not only a food that God gave them, but above all a lesson, a way to know their God better.

In Exodus 16 we read:

The Lord said to Moses, “I will rain bread for you from heaven. The people will go out and collect the necessary quantity each day. So I will test him and see whether he will follow my law or not. On the sixth day they will prepare what they have brought, that is, twice the portion collected each day.”

(Ex 16:4-5)

Through these episodes, where they had to depend on a miracle - or several miracles - from God, God taught them that he is the one who provides. And, consistent with Jason's message a few weeks ago, he showed that his provision is:

1. Necessary: ​​the people needed their provision;

2. Limited: the people had what they needed daily, not all at once;

3. Abundant: God provides even beyond their requests;

4. And assured : its supply lasts as long as the need lasts.

Today's text comes much later. Jesus is teaching a large number of gathered disciples, and he is also going to teach about God's provision.

Just as the people of Israel should learn about God's provision, and then shape their behavior according to it, the disciples of Jesus should learn about God's provision, and shape their behavior and thoughts according to it. .

It is a text where the application is quite explicit: Jesus says three times "do not worry", or "do not be anxious". This is the application, I tell you in advance - and you have probably already understood it.

Don't worry. We will especially see the arguments that Jesus gives for this commandment. We will look at three points together:

• My anxieties about God's provision

• The alternative to following this commandment

• God's Provision and his Kingdom

God's provision and my anxieties

Why don't zebras have ulcers?

This may seem like an absurd question, but it's the title of a book by Professor Robert Sapolsky, professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University. In this book - which I haven't read, but I read the summary - Professor Sapolsky answers why zebras don't have ulcers: because zebras don't have anxiety.

Be careful: they don't have anxiety, but they do have stress. The life of a zebra is not easy: there are lions that represent a real danger. But the zebra doesn't think about the lion all the time when he's not there. The future possibility of danger is something that does not cause insomnia in zebras... So we can say that they are not anxious. And that's why zebras don't have ulcers - or at least very rarely.

On the contrary, anxiety seems to be a universal human experience, and more present each time. We have an incredible capacity to imagine everything that can happen to us and everything that we can lack. And even if this danger is not present there, now, we still stress because we are aware of the possibility of danger. And that’s anxiety. Some people have more difficulty with it, others less, but I think it's safe to say that it's a universal experience.

And that’s precisely what Jesus tells us not to do: be anxious. “Don’t worry” – this could be translated as “don’t be anxious”.

At first glance, one might imagine that Jesus encourages us in this text to be like zebras. “Don’t think about it.” Be like birds, or flowers, who do not think about danger... Happiness in ignorance... Is this what Jesus recommends?

No, Jesus does not encourage us to imitate birds or wild flowers. He does not encourage us to ignore our needs, to be idle, or not to think. On the contrary, he says: look, study!

He invites us to study how God takes care of these unconscious, perhaps even ephemeral, beings. It’s a “who can do more, can do less” argument.

If God provides for birds, for flowers, which, compared to human beings, have less value, then he will take care of his children who are more important.

If God provides for birds and flowers who do not have a particularly organized job of getting their food, then God will provide for his children, who are capable of working in an organized way.

This is not an invitation to imitate birds and flowers, but to reflect on God's ability to care for his creation and, in particular, for us.

God can do it And God will do it - because we are more valuable to Him than birds, and surprisingly, we are more important than daisies.

The question we often want to ask after hearing this is… “and what can we say about people (or even Christians) who suffer from hunger, poverty, persecution?”

Jesus is not talking about this subject here. And I remind you that Jesus is not someone naive about human suffering. He spoke at a time when hunger, poverty and persecution were much closer and more concrete realities than for us.

Later in the New Testament we still see a "who can do more can do less" argument about this. When Paul speaks in his letter to the Romans that God uses even suffering to provide for our needs, he says:

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him for us all, how could he not also grant us everything with him?

(Rm 8:32)

This God who gave us his Son to give us eternal life, why would he deny us a simpler need? He bought us at a price, only to lose us because of some need? No, the Bible tells us that even after physical death, God provides life for his children.

It is a difficult reality that God provides for us also through lack and suffering, but it is a reality that we will have to struggle with at certain times in our Christian life. And God promises us that in those times he will give us the strength we need to cope.

What is certain is that we cannot avoid these moments of trial through our concerns, through our anxieties.“Who among you, by his worries, can add a moment to the length of his life?” (v. 27)

We cannot escape death through our anxieties. We cannot escape future trials through our anxieties.

Instead of ruminating about our future needs and trials, Jesus encourages us to look to God, the creator, Our Father, and surrender our present needs to Him in prayer.

I invite you to think: Do you feel like there is an area of ​​your life that is really important, even necessary, about which you have the habit of thinking "how am I going to do this"?

• “What am I going to do about this health problem that is starting to appear and is likely to get complicated?”

• “What am I going to do for the rest of my career, now that my CV has more holes than a block of Emmental cheese?”

• “How am I going to deal with this debt which will handicap my family’s finances for several years?”

• “How am I going to not be alone, seeing as I’m single and getting older every year?”

I'm not saying these aren't legitimate concerns. But when we think in this way, with a "how am I going to do it", we try to find in ourselves the capacity to manage an entire hypothetical future of our problem, instead of finding in God the capacity to manage the current, present size, of the problem.

Pagans and their anxieties

Okay, Jesus tells us that our anxieties, in short, aren't very helpful, so he encourages us to turn our eyes to God, who cares for all creation, and turn our needs over to Him in prayer.

But what is the alternative? The alternative to this, Jesus tells us, is to be like a pagan. Like someone who serves an idol, another god.

Already by the context of this speech of Jesus on anxiety: it is connected to verse 24, which says that:“No one can serve two masters (...) You cannot serve God and Mammon”. Mammon is the god of money - the personification of the power of money.

If we do not have faith that our Heavenly Father will care for our future needs, then we must find another power that promises to care for our future. A god.

We do this when we think that an area of ​​our life does not belong to God. Regarding my material needs, I go to the god of money, who has his own laws, his own rules. Regarding my emotional needs, I go to the god of attraction, who has his own laws, his own rules. And so on.

The problem is that those gods don't love us. They're not going to provide for us because we're their children, or something like that. No. They can bargain with us. They will offer us exchanges.

For example: you orient your life so as to have the job that pays the most, you dedicate a maximum of time to this job, you invest your money well and you optimize your taxes as much as possible; do this and, if you succeed, perhaps, you will have your future guaranteed.

I'm not saying that these things are bad in themselves, but if they are the ones that direct your life, that systematically shape your choices, then it has become the idol that you have chosen to take care of your needs.

And what is typical with an idol: you depend on it, but it also depends on you, on your actions. And so it doesn't help much to reduce anxieties, it concentrates them in a particular area. If it is the money god who will take care of everything, your anxieties will be concentrated in the financial area.

Jesus shows a dependent relationship with the Father that functions in a completely different way. It is not a commercial relationship. It is not a relationship of symmetrical dependence, because God does not depend on you and God's faithfulness does not depend on ours.

Even in prayer, Jesus tells us to avoid this commercial logic where more prayers or longer prayers would yield more results. The answer does not depend on our ability to pray well, or to pray exactly the right things because, as he says, “your Father knows what you need” (v. 8).

So Jesus invites us not to be like pagans, to trust God fully instead of trying to secure our future needs through our strengths, through our worries or through our idols - it amounts to the same thing.

And freed from these concerns, we can aspire to more...

God's Provision and His Kingdom

(...) Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing? (v. 25)- Jesus asks.

Don't you have other things to occupy your mind? You have no other needs?

This is a theme that appears often in Scripture: God, in his provision for a need that we know well, shows that he also provides for a need that we did not know, or that we knew wrong.

When Moses, at the end of his stay in the desert, reflected on this episode where the people were hungry and God gave Manna, he said the following:

He humbled you, made you hungry and fed you with manna, which you did not know and which your ancestors did not know either, in order to teach you that man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD.

(Dt 8:3)

In the same way, Jesus invites us to trust God with our material needs, to remove worries, to make room in our schedule today and, first of all, to seek the Kingdom of God.

You may know this verse, it is well known: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

It is often misunderstood, and in different ways. Well, there are some who attribute a little too much to the "all these things" of this verse, when it refers to our primary needs - the necessities, not great wealth.

Another error, perhaps more subtle, is to think that it is an exchange: we serve the Kingdom of God and its justice, and as a reward, we have our needs met (which is what we really wanted).

There are several problems with this interpretation...

The first is that the Kingdom of God and its justice is always, or at least often, presented as a desire, an aspiration. “Thy kingdom come” (v. 10), in Jesus’ prayer, and Jesus speaks of those who “hunger and thirst for Righteousness” (Mt 5:6).

Secondly, Jesus tells us that our material needs will be given to us "in addition" - it is not in return. That's a bonus.

It’s a need that we have, and of which we are not always aware. And Jesus tells us that if we give priority to this need, the others will come with it.

So, what exactly is this “Kingdom of God and His righteousness,” and how can we seek it? Throughout the Sermon on the Mount Jesus describes the culture of the Kingdom of God. He gives commandments that are a picture of his character. As he is the Son, he reveals God as Father, and attached to him we can know God as Father too.

To seek the Kingdom of God is to proclaim this Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed to us. It is to proclaim the work of Jesus, his victory over sin and death on the cross. And to decide to live for him, as citizens of this Kingdom.

As human beings, this is our true path to fulfillment. As Christians, this is what our new nature calls us to do.

So, this verse means that we have to leave everything, stop working at our respective jobs, be all full time for the church, and God will manage to find us something to eat?

No. This means that we must work on what is given to us each day as citizens of the Kingdom who seek the will of the Father first.

And we must especially watch out for adversarial thoughts – an external or internal thought, concern, or speech that says the opposite of what Jesus is telling us here. Thoughts that say that if I seek the Kingdom of God today, then I will be missing something essential in the future.

Let's say,

• If I talk about Jesus today, then the people around me will look down on me and I won't have the social support I need.

• If I am generous with my money today, as Jesus encourages me to do, I will not be rewarded for it when I need it in the future.

• If today I decide to follow what God teaches me about relationships, then I will lack experience in the future.

• If I'm honest with my tax return today - quick reminder - then I'm going to fail financially in the future.

In these adversarial thoughts, the Father's provision is doubted, or forgotten, so anxieties come, and the future paralyzes what I could do today.

In the face of these opposing thoughts, we must remember what Jesus said: that we do not need to choose between the Kingdom of God and our true needs, that we have the freedom to choose the Kingdom of God today in the confidence that God our Father takes care of our future.

He knows what we need. And our main need is to live his Kingdom with him, daily, every day.

So… in summary:

• Don't worry ;

• Do not be like pagans;

• Seek His Kingdom today, and the rest will come.

A Pagan Priest and the People of God

Exodus 18

For the last month we had a young man named Zane visiting us from the U.S. Zane actually lived in Paris for six years and came to Connexion for a lot of that time; he moved back to the U.S. a few years ago. We knew him well back then, so we had him over last week to spend the afternoon with him. He was telling me about conversations he had had with people in the church, questions he would ask.

One of those questions was, how has Connexion changed in the time he’s been away? And one of the answers he got was surprising to me: someone said, “Connexion is becoming a ‘missionary church.’”

I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, and I’m still not. We’ve always had a lot of missionaries in our church who are in Paris for various reasons. We have our Dimanche de la form’ throughout the year, and we have a new theme for those training sessions every semester. The theme this semester has been missions. We have two short-term missions trips organized for this semester as well—so maybe all that is where that answer came from.

At any rate, here’s my precision to this idea that “Connexion is becoming a missionary church.” If by that, you mean that we are becoming a church that is entirely focused on sending people out to other countries to be missionaries, then you’re wrong—that is part of what we’d love to do, what we have always wanted to do, but not all of it.

However, if by “missionary church”, you mean a church that is devoted to the mission Christ gave to the church, to go and make disciples of all nations, including our own, then you’re right: we are a missionary church, and we always have been. It’s difficult to find the right balance in explaining what it means to be a church on mission, so our speaking about the nations this semester has been a much-needed “rebalancing” for us.

All of this may seem unrelated to the passage we’ve just read, Exodus 18, but it’s not; in fact it is very pertinent.

Exodus 18 acts like a hinge; it is a transition passage. The first half responds to everything that came before, and the second half helps prepare for everything that will come after.

If you remember, last week we saw the first time that Israel, as the free and independent people of God, is attacked by a foreign nation. And we saw God’s judgment against that nation, almost as a warning: if you raise your hand against God, he raises his hand against you.

And then, right after, we have an arrival that feels a long time coming: the arrival of Moses’s family.

If you weren’t here for the beginning of our series, we need some context.

In Exodus 2, we see Moses flee Egypt after killing an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew. (This was before God ever called to him, before he became the figure he is in chapter 18.) He goes to a country called Midian and comes across these young women watering their father’s flock. They’re set upon by some shepherds but Moses intervenes and keeps them safe, waters their flock.

The women’s father Jethro, the priest of Midian, invites Moses in for a meal to thank him, and Moses ends up staying with him, and eventually marrying one of his daughters, Zipporah, and they have a son, Gershom. (At some point later they have another son, Eliezer, as we see in v. 4, both sons named after significant moments in Moses’s life.)

Then God calls Moses from the burning bush to go free his people.

At some point between his departure from Midian and now, Moses sent his family back to Midian to stay with his father-in-law. We’re not sure why, it could have been for any number of reasons—the most likely, in my opinion, is that he sent them back to Midian simply to keep them safe.

But now that Israel is free, and they’re out of Egypt, Jethro brings Moses’s wife and sons back to him.

Chapter 18 is almost entirely focused on Jethro, whom we’ve barely seen in this story. And what we see is fairly extraordinary, and—like I said—it serves as a hinge around which the entire book of Exodus turns.

A Pagan's Response (v. 1-12)

So remember what we talked about last week: this is the first time that Israel has been on their own as a free nation. They were a big family when they arrived in Egypt, and since they had become a people, they had been enslaved in Egypt. This was the first time they were a people on their own, outside of that context of slavery.

And right away we see how a pagan nation responds to them. Amalek attacks Israel, raising their hands against the throne of God himself (as we see in 17.16).

This is one way the nations will respond to God. (And when I say “the nations”, I mean any people or people group who don’t belong to God’s people—at this time, the people of Israel.) That’s the way some nations will respond to God’s presence and God’s people: through conflict.

Another way the nations will respond to God was mentioned back in chapter 15, in the song the people sang after God brought them through the Red Sea:

14  The peoples have heard; they tremble; pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia. 15  Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed; trembling seizes the leaders of Moab; all the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away. 16  Terror and dread fall upon them; because of the greatness of your arm, they are still as a stone…

God’s works in this book are impressive, to say the least. So one way the nations will respond to God’s presence and his people is fear, dread, trembling.

But in today’s text, we see a different way for the nations to respond to God’s presence and his people.

Jethro brings Moses’s wife and sons back to him, and the two men spend some time together. (Fortunately, it seems that Moses and Jethro have enjoyed a good relationship since they first met in Midian.) They hang out in his tent, or perhaps walk around the massive camp, and Moses tells Jethro everything that happened in Egypt and since then, everything God did.

Jethro sees God’s presence when he sees God’s people. He sees how God has dealt with his people. But he doesn’t go on the offensive, and he isn’t afraid. He rejoices.

V. 9:

9 And Jethro rejoiced for all the good that the Lord had done to Israel, in that he had delivered them out of the hand of the Egyptians.

10 Jethro said, “Blessed be the Lord, who has delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of Pharaoh and has delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. 11 Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods, because in this affair they dealt arrogantly with the people.” 12 And Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and sacrifices to God; and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses’ father-in-law before God.

This isn’t just acknowledgement of a fact, like when you go into someone’s new apartment for the first time and say, “Wow, it’s very spacious.” What Jethro does is much bigger than that. He worships: “Blessed be the Lord,” he says. And then he makes a confession:  “Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods.”

He doesn’t become an Israelite—and no one’s asked him to—but he makes a statement about who God is, and he acts on that statement in reverence of God: he makes a sacrifice to God and eats with Moses and Aaron and the elders of Israel in God’s presence.

This is huge. This is a profession of faith. Jethro is not a member of God’s people. He is a pagan priest. And yet, after hearing what God has done, he rejoices and proclaims that the Lord is greater than all gods, then he comes together with God’s people to eat a meal in God’s presence.

We cannot rush over this too quickly. Tim Chester called this moment—particularly v. 12—the climax of the exodus, and he’s right.

One of the explicit intentions of God in all the Bible is that God’s people show the nations who God is.

Let’s take an example; we’ll see this in a couple of weeks, but I don’t know how much time we’ll have to spend on it. In Exodus 20, God gives Moses the Ten Commandments. One of those commandments, in v. 7, says this:

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Now there has been a lot of talk about what exactly it means to take God’s name in vain. Some people say it’s about using God’s name as a swear word: we weren’t allowed to say “Oh my God” or “Jesus Christ!” when I was a kid. Some people connect it more to praying or declaring things: saying things like, “Yes, we proclaim that you will no longer have migraines, in the name of Jesus!”, and expecting those things to happen.

Of course, we shouldn’t do these things either; we don’t let our kids say “Jesus Christ!” when they’re frustrated, and we can’t use Jesus’s name as a kind of skeleton key to open whatever door we want opened.

But that’s not what this commandment is talking about. It’s not about swearing, or using his name for selfish purposes, or even about using God’s name lightly, as the Segond 21 says. It’s not primarily about how we speak.

Carmen Joy Imes wrote a wonderful book called Bearing God’s Name; the entire book is devoted to this question. She makes incredibly persuasive arguments from the biblical text—she convinced me—but I don’t have time to go through them all now. The main takeaway is that the word for “take” in Exodus 20.7 literally means to “carry” or to “bear.” The people of God were called to take God’s name—his proper name, not “God” in the general sense but “Yahweh”, the name with which he revealed himself to Moses—and carry it to the nations.

To put it another, more modern way, Exodus 20.7 is more about evangelism than just the way we speak—evangelism through our lives. By the way the people of God live, they were called to show the nations what God is like, what is behind his name—the holy character that God’s name represents. This commandment is a warning against claiming God’s name as a people, and yet living in a way that is not in keeping with that name.

In Exodus 18, the people still haven’t received God’s law; there’s still a lot they need to change. But through Moses’s testimony and what Jethro sees, Jethro sees and recognizes who God is. In v. 12, he makes a sacrifice to God, a burnt offering; and he sits down with Moses and Aaron and the other elders of Israel to eat a meal. In this meal, we see the nations—in Jethro the pagan priest—responding to God’s revelation with faith, with a profession that God is who he claims to be.

This meal, which brings together Israelite and pagan to worship the one true God, is a foreshadowing of what was to come. It is repeated every time the church comes together. It is a picture of the great invitation that Jesus Christ would bring through his life, death and resurrection, throwing the doors wide open to all tribes and tongues and peoples.

We do the same thing every week. Our meal is the bread and the cup, which represent the body of Christ and the blood of Christ. The finished work of Christ unites us in faith to one another—many nations, worshiping and honoring one God.

A Pagan's Help (v. 13-27)

Given the heights of v. 1-12, and everything they represent, the second half of chapter 18 may seem a bit mundane in comparison. But in fact this section is really interesting, for a number of similar reasons.

V. 13-16 describe the situation. Moses sits to “judge” the people from morning until evening.

What does it mean to “judge” the people in this sense? It’s not just a matter of criminal affairs (though that was surely part of it). This camp is huge—counting the women and children, likely around two million people. You put that many people together, there’s going to be friction. There are going to be disagreements. And someone will need to make decisions about what to do.

Moses is the guy who’s doing this now. Why is he the guy? Because: who else is there? Maybe Aaron, but Aaron was never explicitly designated for that function. Moses is the one who’s holding the staff of God, after all; he’s the one whom God chose to lead his people. So inevitably, he ends up being the one getting caught up in the details.

This happens all the time, doesn’t it? We start one thing, and get preoccupied in the urgency of that thing, and before we know it we’re taking on a million other things like it—and we don’t even realize that it’s way too much, we’ve bit off far more than we can chew. That’s the situation Moses is in. It’s not hubris on his part—Numbers 12 tells us that Moses was an extremely humble man—it’s just… Who else is there? It’s the classic dilemma of focusing on what’s urgent rather than on what’s important.

Moses can’t see it, but interestingly, chapter 18 is told almost entirely from the perspective of Jethro. Jethro, the outsider, who hasn’t been with Israel all this time, comes in, and right away, he can see the problem. This is one reason I love reading the Bible with people who didn’t grow up in church; they’ve got enough distance from it to recognize things we can’t see because we’ve had our noses pressed up against it for so long.

So Jethro sort of casually asks Moses, “What are you doing?”

And Moses explains, like to a child: “Well, they’ve got problems, and they come to me so I can ask God what they should do, and I tell them.”

Jethro’s response is perfect: “That’s nuts.” V. 17:

What you are doing is not good. 18 You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to do it alone.

So Jethro gives Moses some really basic advice. He tells him that Moses should be the one to come before God and ask for instruction, and that Moses should tell them how God wants them to live. (That’s coming very soon, when God gives Moses the law.) And then, Moses should delegate. V. 21:

21 Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. 22 And let them judge the people at all times. Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide themselves. So it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you. 23 If you do this, God will direct you, you will be able to endure, and all this people also will go to their place in peace.”

There’s a lot of good, common wisdom in what Jethro says—it’s something I had on my mind for years at the beginning of the church, when I was wearing multiple hats; I often thought of this passage and felt like Jethro was being my own personal tutor. It’s why I’m so thankful for the team God has given us here—I don’t have to wear every hat, because I’ve got godly, dependable men and women with me who can do the things I can’t do.

And I’m thinking a lot about it now these days too, but from the other side. I’m watching a group of men and women giving so much time and effort to the building project, and I’m seeing how dedicated they are…and I’m worried that they’re going to run themselves into the ground. So I’m thinking about the best ways to help them work well without burning themselves out.

But there’s a lot more going on here than just practical wisdom on how to delegate.

First of all, Jethro’s advice reiterates what we saw last week. Israel’s victory against Amalek was dependent on Moses’s ability to keep his hands holding up the staff of God. But he could not do it on his own.

That’s what we see again here: even if Moses is the man God has chosen to lead Israel, he is not the Savior. He’s just a man, and he can’t do this alone.

Secondly, Jethro’s advice wisely places the emphasis, not on skills, but on character. Moses should find able men (so competence is necessary), but what should characterize them above all else is that they fear God, are trustworthy, and hate a bribe. Moses should make sure that the people he puts in charge won’t be susceptible to pressure, won’t try to sway the hands of justice because it would be more rewarding for them personally.

It’s reminiscent of Paul’s list of qualifications for being an elder of the church in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. An elder should be competent (“able to preach”), but above all, he should display godly character.

So why is this part of the chapter significant? It’s not because Jethro gives Moses good advice, but because Jethro’s advice gets the people ready to receive the law.

In chapter 19, they’ll arrive at Mount Sinai, where God will give his law to the people. The law of God will radically reorganize everything about this people, from their loftiest spiritual goals to their most mundane practices. There will be a lot of practical application, a lot of situations in which they won’t quite know how to put the law into practice.

They’ll need help. They’ll need judges. They’ll need leaders.

By God’s grace, through this event, the structure necessary to begin obeying the law is already in place, before they ever get to Mount Sinai.

And isn’t it incredible that the man perhaps most responsible for preparing the people to become the people of God, to truly “bear his name”…was a pagan? It wasn’t Moses; it wasn’t even an Israelite. It was a pagan priest who recognized a need and who had enough wisdom to see how to meet that need.

It’s another echo of what would come later. The church could have so easily been structured differently—how easy would it have been for them to say, “All pastors and leaders in the church must be of Jewish origin, even if the members of the church are not Jewish”? Jesus was Jewish; all of the apostles were Jewish; a mentality of ethnic superiority could easily have extended out beyond that group of men.

But it wasn’t. Those who were set up as elders in the churches were both Jewish and Gentile. It didn’t matter where they were from, but rather what they were like, their character.

This passage is so important for understanding what’s happened so far in the story, and what’s coming next. In the first half, we see a man representing the nations responding in faith to what God has done for Israel—the proper response to the wonders God displayed in chapters 1-17. And in the second half, we see this same man, from a foreign nation, integrally involved in preparing the people of Israel to live as God’s people, in chapters 19-40.

Conclusion

Now, surely this passage isn’t here only to orient us in the story; it’s not only a transition. No: this text establishes two great principles that still apply today.

Firstly: the grace of God to his people, and the people’s response to that grace, is meant to invite all peoples to faith in God.

The message of the gospel is of singular importance; there is no evangelism if the good news of Christ is not proclaimed by God’s people in such a way that those who hear it are able to understand.

But the proclamation of the message alone is not enough. God’s hand at work should be clear from what people see when they look at us, not just what they hear when we speak to them. That’s why it’s not enough for a pastor to be a good preacher, and faithfully speak the truth of the gospel; he must live in accordance with what he preaches. Otherwise, his preaching is dangerous, even if what he says is true.

This is what Jethro saw, even if it was before the law, so the image the people were meant to display wasn’t totally complete. Moses told Jethro what God had done; Jethro saw this new people gathered in the desert to worship the one true God—and he was convinced. He celebrated God’s works among his people and joined them for a meal in God’s presence.

And afterwards, he went back home. Our home group was wondering if that meant Jethro didn’t really have faith in God, because he didn’t stay with them. The text doesn’t give us that kind of information—but I don’t think so. Jethro’s return to Midian seems more like a missionary trip. We don’t know what kind of priest he was before, but given what he says in v. 10-12, I think it’s safe to assume what kind of priest he was after: a priest who returned to Midian to tell others of the one true God, the God of Israel. It’s an assumption, but I’m happy with it.

The grace of God to his people, and the people’s response to that grace, is meant to invite all peoples to faith in God. This is one reason I love our church. We have so many nations represented in our church—over forty, last time we checked. We are a larger-scale picture of what we see in Exodus 18. And this is why we’ve been speaking so much about missions lately: the mission Christ gave the church is incomplete as long as it is only focused inward. We won’t all go to foreign countries to preach the gospel; but the nations are the goal. God’s plans are not limited to one place or one time; they are universal, and they are eternal.

That’s the first thing. Here’s the second: we see that Moses had been shoe-horned into this role of judge over the people, and God used Jethro to show him, and everyone else, that Moses wasn’t up to the task. No one—not Moses or anyone—could be a judge of God’s people on their own. God is the Judge of his people; God gives and manages the law.

Moses’s inability to be the perfect Judge for God’s people reminds us that someone else would have to fill that role: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of the nations, is the perfect Judge Moses couldn’t be. He instructs us in God’s law and his character through his Spirit, and one day he will return to judge the living and the dead.

So our call, whoever we are, wherever we’re from, is to submit to him. To read his Word, and understand how he calls us to live. To listen to his voice, and obey what he tells us to do. And to trust that before he judges us, he himself was judged for us. He took our sin upon himself and received the judgment we deserve, the punishment we deserve for our sins, so that when he returns to render the final judgment, he can look at us and definitively declare that we are perfect—not because we are perfect, but because he was perfect for us.

Our perfect Judge reigns over us, guides us, and is returning for us. Let us bear his name well, and live in faith in him, and call the nations to that same faith.

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.