I Look to the Hill

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.” 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. 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.”

In August 1814, after defeating an American force twice its size in Bladensburg, MD, the 5,000-member British force entered Washington, D.C. and set fire to several public buildings, including the Capitol. Then they set their sites on Baltimore, and planned to attack the city both by land and sea. The American army had an extensive network of defenses around Baltimore, anticipating a British attack. An American sharpshooter killed the British General when their forces attacked. But on the sea, on September 13, the British naval fleet began a 25-hour bombardment of Ft. McHenry. At the beginning of the battle, the American guns couldn’t reach the British ships. But as the ships began to advance, the Americans were able damage them significantly, forcing them to pull back out of range. Amazingly, some might say miraculously, the small American force held the fort through the night, and in the morning the British fleet withdrew. This was the turning point in the War of 1812.

Throughout the battle, because it took place during a rainstorm, Ft. McHenry flew its smaller storm flag. But at dawn, as the British began to retreat, they lowered the storm flag and raised the great garrison flag. This great flag was 30’x42’. It is the original Star Spangled Banner. It was made in Baltimore in the summer of 1813. It was raised over Ft. McHenry that morning, September 14, 1814, to signify American victory over the British in the Battle of Baltimore.

That same flag today is in the care of the National Museum of American History, and great care is being taken to preserve it. Why? Because that flag is a memorial. It is a banner, a standard, a symbol under which the people rallied together to defeat the enemy. This isn’t an idea or symbolism that’s limited to wars of the past.

Do you remember just a few years ago when we were again exposed to the seemingly bottomlessness of humanity’s capacity for evil? Terrorists attacked soft targets in Paris, France. What happened on social media after that? Countless people changed their profile picture on FB, overlaying the French flag on their profile pic. One World Trade in Manhattan changed the lighting at the top of the building to the colors of the French flag. Why did people do this? They did it because they wanted to express anger, sorrow, grief, and solidarity with the people of France. They wanted to rally around the French people. And we naturally turn to flags as visible rallying points.

When we look at our text, we see God raising a standard, a rallying point for his people. I readily admit to you that texts like this, I would prefer to skip over. I’m challenged by these warfare texts that speak of God annihilating people in warfare. It’s easier to talk about spiritual warfare than it is to deal with the actual physical warfare that we have, particularly in Israel’s journey to the Promised Land. But here’s why, as hard as it is to deal with, we don’t skip over difficult texts.

We’ve got to wrestle with God’s words in v. 14 of our passage. “Write this as a memorial in the book. And set it in the ears of Joshua. For I will surely wipe out the memory of Amelek from under heaven.” It’s harsh language, but here’s the deal.

Last week Pastor Russ preached on vv. 1-7 of this chapter where the people complained out of a heart of unbelief. “Is the Lord among us or not?” the asked. And in that passage, the Lord pictured for us as the Divine Sufferer. The staff of God in Moses’ hand came down in judgment upon him. Moses struck the rock and God took the judgment that the people deserved upon himself so that they would get mercy, and not the destruction they deserved. This week the Lord is pictured for us as the Divine Warrior, who executes judgment on his enemies. What do we do with this contrast; the Divine Sufferer showing mercy one minute, and the Divine Warrior executing judgment in the next minute? We’re going to answer that by working through the text with these three things, The War, The Warrior, and The Witness.

The War

In v. 8 Israel is still camped at Rephidim. They’re only a couple of months out of Egypt, and they’ve come through a period of grumbling and complaining against God. The story moves from the Lord testing them in ch. 16 (), whether they would walk in his law or not, to them testing the Lord in ch. 17. The first time they faced a water crisis in , they asked Moses, ‘What are we to drink?’ The second time they face a water crises, they demanded from Moses in , ‘Give us water to drink!’ Even though they’re testing the Lord by saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not,’ the Lord has responded to their growing discontent with mercy, and supplies an abundance of food and water for them in the wilderness.

Now, for the first time as a free people, they face war. We’re told in v. 8 that Amelek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. Remember, when they first left Egypt, back in ch. 13, we are told that God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although it was nearby. God’s reason for not leading them in that direction was that they would become regretful when they see war, and return to Egypt. They weren’t ready to fight. They were a ragtag group of newly freed slaves. Well, here we are just a few months after that, and does it seem to you like these people are ready for war? Ready or not, here it comes.

They didn’t go seeking it out, it found them. Why did the Amelekites come and declare war against Israel? We’re not given the reason here, but the original readers of this book would’ve known that there’s a long history of problems between Israel and the Amelekites. The people of Israel get their name from their forefather, Jacob. The Lord changed Jacob’s name to Israel. Jacob had a twin brother named Esau. We find out in that Esau had a grandson named Amelek. He’s the ancestor of these people in . tells us that the Amelekites were an early nation. They were a nomadic group, and we find out in that they lived partly by attacking other groups of people and plundering their wealth. says that they had numerous and swift camels that they used in their warfare. That same verse says that they were like locusts in abundance and their camels were without number. In fact, the Amelekites don’t only attack Israel here. They attack them again, about a year from this point, in . Even when Israel is settled in the Promised Land they have to deal with the Amelekites. King Saul leads Israel in battle against the Amelekites in , and he spares Agag, king of the Amelekites. All the way into their exile, Amelekites are trying to destroy Israel. In the book of Esther, Haman, who plots to annihilate the people of Israel, is an Amelekite.

We’re disconnected from this, but at whatever point Israel was in their OT history, this wouldn’t have been just some story about what happened way back when. The ongoing hostility between them and the Amelekites was rooted in this first battle. The generation that gets to enter the Promised Land is reminded of this in . Moses says to them, “Remember what Amelek did to you on the way as you came out Egypt, 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.” Moses tells them in , you shall not forget.

This is their first war, and it marks the beginning of seemingly never ending hostility with the Amelekites. Usually in warfare, when there’s an incredible victory, the story is about the resiliency of the troops. Even if they’re outnumbered, they’re determined not to give up. I talked about the Battle of Baltimore at Ft. McHenry. What the historians highlight is the determination of the troops who were holding the fort. They were outgunned, but they fought all night. They refused to give up, and forced the British fleet to retreat. But that’s not what’s happening here. This story isn’t about the determination of the people.

This is the first time in Exodus that we meet the young man, Joshua. Moses has to say to him, “Choose some men for us, and go out and fight with Amelek.” The likelihood is that Joshua had the challenge of finding men who could fight. It wasn’t like they had this nation of warriors. Joshua had to go find out who he could get to fight, and prepare them for battle in one day.

The Warrior

What we’re being led to understand in this war is who the real warrior is. It’s not Joshua. It’s not the people of Israel. It’s not even Moses. The warrior is God himself. Moses says, “Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.” We’re being clued into the fact that God is about to act. Little Orphan Annie sang a song about “tomorrow.” The Sun will come out tomorrow. I love you tomorrow, you’re only a day away. We can make a song about tomorrow from the book of Exodus. Every time the word “tomorrow” comes out of Moses’ mouth, God is about to demonstrate that he’s the man. In , Pharaoh begs Moses to ask the Lord to take the frogs away. Moses says, “Tomorrow…so that you will know that there is no one like the Lord our God.” Then, when the Lord is about to bring the plague of flies, Moses tells Pharaoh that the land of Goshen, where Israel lives, is going to be set apart. No flies will be in Goshen. The Lord said, “I’ll put a division between my people and your people. Tomorrow this sign shall happen.” When the plague comes on the livestock in ch. 9, it says in 9:5, “Tomorrow the Lord will do this thing in the land.” When the hail comes, it’s coming “tomorrow” (9:18). When the locusts come, they’re coming “tomorrow” (10:4). Then, in , Moses tells them, “Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord.” Tomorrow, tomorrow, something big is happening tomorrow. That theme runs through the first 19 chapters of this book.

“Tomorrow,” Moses says, I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.” Joshua did what Moses told him to do. Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed in the fight. Whenever he lowered his hand, the Amelekites prevailed in the fight.

Any of you in here ever ride on a school bus? I don’t know if this still happens on school buses today, or if this generation of children is better behaved than we were when I was young. But whenever we went on a field trip the bus would get kind of loud. Everybody’s talking, some folks are arguing, and the teacher reaches her limit. After telling us to be quiet about 15 times, you know what we’d have to do? We’d have to sit there holding our arms up in the air until she said we could put them down. I don’t know if a teacher could get away with that today, but have you ever tried to hold your arms up in the air and keep them there for a long time? How long do you think it will take before you get tired and your arms start to drop? What if you had a staff in your hand?

Why is Moses standing on top of the hill with his arms raised in the air? He’s not up there praying, or with his arms raised in worship and adoration of God. In 9:22 Moses stretches out his hand toward heaven to usher in the plague of hail. In 10:12 he stretches out his hand over the land of Egypt to usher in the plague of locusts. In 14:16 he’s told by the Lord to lift up his staff and stretch his hand over the Red Sea and divide it. The staff is the instrument of God’s power here. In the lifting of his hands is the power of God being put on display for his people. But every time up to this point, he hasn’t had to keep his hands raised all day long. Could you keep your arms raised for an hour without them feeling like they were as heavy as lead, and you had to drop them? How about keeping them up from sunrise to sunset?

Here is Joshua down in the valley leading the fight, and every time Moses can’t keep his arms up, the Israelites start to lose. Aaron and Hur see this. So they get a stone that Moses can sit on. Then one stands on his right side and the other on his left side, and they help keep Moses’ hands raised and steady until the sun goes down. The result, in v. 13, is that Joshua overwhelmed Amelek and his people with the sword.

Joshua is given credit for winning the fight, but he’s not the real MVP. This is a description of war, and there are no details given to us about the actual battle. How many men did he take? What strategy did they use to attack these people who rode on camels? We get no details from the battlefield. All the details are about what happened on the hill. That’s the point. The battle was won on the hill, not on the battlefield. The battle was won because their God is a warrior who fights for them. Right before this incident they had been grumbling and complaining, asking, “Is the Lord among us or isn’t he?” They didn’t trust Moses. They were ready to kill him. In spite of this God is still fighting for them. It’s not as though, now that they’re out of Egypt, they have to fight for themselves.

The battle is won on the hill. They have to look to the hill because that’s where their help comes from. Their help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. The Lord is their keeper. The Lord is their shade on their right hand. The Lord preserves their life. He keeps their going out and their coming in.

This is how it works when God redeems. This is what happens when he determines that he’s bringing people to himself. The Lord doesn’t do partial redemption. He doesn’t do partial deliverance. The only kind of deliverance that God does is the kind that’s full, and complete, and assured. This is part of what Jesus is getting at in when he says, “do not fear those who kill the body but cannot destroy the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell…Don’t think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Whether we like it or not, Jesus declares an inevitable separation between those who belong to him and those who do not.

What we see here in is about God’s commitment to his people. Why are the Amelekites Israel’s enemy? Because they’re God’s enemy. They are an object of his judgment because they are trying to stand in the way of his determination to save and establish a people for himself. Israel is only special because God had set them apart. Hardly a week goes by that we’re not reminded of how undeserving Israel is of God’s salvation. But, as one commentator writes, “This tiny people is the vehicle God has chosen through which he will redeem humanity and all of creation. Israel’s redemption is Phase One of that redemptive plan, and thus he guards that plan with jealousy.” He guards his plan of redemption as the Divine Warrior.

As much as these warfare texts might make us uncomfortable, as much as we may be bothered by the Lord saying that he’s going to blot out the memory of a people from under heaven,” we have to see it in the context of the special care he gives to his people. To what lengths will people go to protect their children? They’re not motivated by their children’s’ perfection. They’re motivated by love. How much more with God?

The Christian understanding of this text isn’t, “God will fight the Amalekites in your life.” The right understanding of this text isn’t, “you’ve got a problem with this person, so they’re your enemy and God will get them.” This is a picture of the final victory of God. This isn’t about my little battle with somebody who doesn’t like me. It is a picture of the reality that the Lord not only saves, he preserves. And there’s no power of hell or scheme of man that is able to pluck his people from his hand.

The Witness

There’s a witness to God’s power of preservation. The Lord says to Moses in v. 14, “Write this as a memorial in the book. Put it in the ears of Joshua. For I will utterly blot out the memory of Amelek from under heaven.” Moses builds an altar and he names it, “The Lord is My Banner,” Jehova Nissi. He said, “Because a hand was upon the throne of the Lord, the Lord will have war with Amelek from generation to generation!” V. 16 says that a hand was upon the throne of the Lord. Moses had to lift his hand because the Amelekites had lifted their hand against the Lord. They tried to assault God by standing in the way of his plan to redeem and preserve his people. Moses builds an altar as a testimony and a witness to the Lord’s power to defeat his enemies and preserve his people. This is an altar, but it’s not an altar for sacrifices. It’s an altar of remembrance. They’re not going to stay at Rephidim. They’re going to be traveling on. But the altar will still be there as a witness to everyone who passes by that at this place the Lord put his power on display. It’s built as a witness to what God has done. At this place, the people were able to look to the hill.

The Lord would still have us look to the hill. He would still have us refuse to put our hope and trust in our strength and our abilities. He would want us to put our trust in him and his power to sustain us through faith in Jesus Christ. He would still have us know that he’s the one who fights his enemy. In Jesus Christ we become a new people. We’re not a nation state like Israel, so Jesus’ church doesn’t take up weapons to go fight against people who don’t want to believe in Jesus. But the NT does understand that Christians are called to fight. Paul puts it this way in , “though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.” The battle is truly a spiritual one, and the daily fight of faith that Christians have to be engaged in has to be seen in the light of the fact that Jesus has already won the ultimate battle. He’s already defeated the enemy and stands victorious.

Just like wasn’t the last time the people of Israel had to deal with the Amelekites―they were dealing with them all the way into the book of Esther―at the same time God’s declaration in v. 14 that he was going to blot out their memory was never in doubt. In the same way, when Paul tells Christians in to put on the whole armor of God to fight, not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces of evil, we do it because we believe that Jesus Christ, our Divine Warrior, has already won the war.

We don’t need to build altars of memorial anymore. You don’t find the church building altars of memorial or sacrifice anymore. That’s because God has already provided all the memorial we need in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. The hill we look at is Calvary, where the power of God to defeat evil was put on display. The memorial we have is the bread and the cup of this Lord’s Table. Every time we come to this table, by faith we testify to what God has done in Jesus, the victory that he’s won. Every time we come, we participate in the victory of God. We find ourselves included in his triumph. This is good news because it’s not going to always seem like we’re winning every spiritual battle we face.

The gospel says that we have a Divine Warrior in Jesus Christ. The same one who showed us mercy now fights to preserve us…There’s nothing that stands against the goodness and justice of God that was not defeated at the cross of Calvary…When we come to this table by faith we are partaking of and participating in that victory…

Call to Worship – taken from

Leader: Shout for joy to God all the earth; sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise!

People: All the earth worships you and sings praises to you!

Leader: Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man.

People: Bless our God, O peoples; let the sound of his praise be heard!

Leader: Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul.

All: Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his love from me!

Renewal

Prayer

Offering & Doxology

Scripture Reading:

Song of Preparation

Commitment

Confession & Reflection

All: Our Father in heaven, you are exalted and worthy of praise. We thank you for Jesus, who set aside his rightful glory to bear our sin and reconcile us to you. Thank you for giving us mercy, not judgment. You are our banner, and we want to look ever to you. Forgive our unbelief. Give us willing hearts and lives that reflect your love to a world in need of your grace and peace. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, who dwells with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever. Amen.

Silent Confession

Words of Assurance & Encouragement –

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Invitation to the Lord’s Table

This is the table of the Lord Jesus—the place where we:

• Often insert the points from the sermon here—

o See the truth about Jesus and about ourselves

o Taste mercy for sinners

o Find nourishment for the work of love

This table, then is for:

• Those who acknowledge their sin and death

• Who look to Jesus’ death for forgiveness

• Who rest in Him for new life

• And who have made these things public through baptism into the Christian church

If this is not your faith, then you don’t have to be ashamed or embarrassed, we’d just ask you to either:

• Remain where you are seated

• Or come forward, keeping your hands down, and let us pray with you.

1. Do you acknowledge yourselves to be sinners in the sight of

God, justly deserving His displeasure, and without hope save

in His sovereign mercy?

2. Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God,

and Savior of sinners, and do you receive and rest upon Him

alone for salvation as He is offered in the Gospel?

3. Do you now resolve and promise, in humble reliance upon

the grace of the Holy Spirit, that you will endeavor to live as

becomes the followers of Christ?

4. Do you promise to support the Church in its worship and

work to the best of your ability?

5. Do you submit yourselves to the government and discipline

of the Church, and promise to study its purity and peace?

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