Moses grew up the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter and the darling of Egyptian court. As a young adult, he tried to correct the enslavement of his own people but through violence; he failed and had to leave the country.

It was years later that God called him, there in the sparse grasslands where he lived after fleeing Egypt and settling among the strong and simple shepherds who gave him safety, work, and—eventually—a wife and family. God called him from the burning bush (Exodus 3:1–6), a scene portrayed here by Guy Rowe. That call led him to return to Egypt and, eventually, to lead the Hebrew slaves out to freedom, including the dramatic rescue by God at the Red Sea.

On the Trail

The series of stories we have been following on Sundays since Easter shows us the Israelites in the days and months immediately after that rescue and entry into the Sinai peninsula. (Click here for a map of the crossing and the journeys that followed.)

Their urgent need was to replace the structured order of the slave existence, imposed upon them from without, with a social order of their own, chosen and accepted. They are on their way from being a group of slaves held together by force and brutality to being a people within God’s plan and under his guidance. The journey through the desert is a figure of this: They are crossing the threshold, passing through liminal space and time, knowing they are no longer slaves in Egypt but still without a clear understanding of who they are.

This is our own circumstance, especially when we know we must leave behind an old order and way of life but do not yet see clearly what it means to follow Christ and be a Christian; it is the situation of all of us who do not yet feel a full identity with the Cross, with the church’s Lord, and with the Christian community, but who continue traveling in that direction. We are crossing a wide threshold, moving more and more toward full incorporation into the new order and identity. We are in the “already-but-not-yet.”

In his poem, “The Bunch of Grapes,” George Herbert writes,

For as of old, the Jews at God’s command
     Travelled, and saw no town,
So now, each Christian hath his journeys spanned:
     Their story pens and sets us down.

Here is how God works.

At Marah (Ex 15:22–27), he supplies them with sweet water, transforming the bitterness of their slave existence into the sweetness of life on their own. He also begins to offer them laws and instructions from above for their guidance, showing them the need for divine revelation in order to live together in harmony and safety.

In the manna story (Ex 16), God satisfies their hunger (and thus keeps them alive) but also begins to disclose the Sabbath as a day of rest—rest from work, and rest for worship and learning about God. The Sabbath is to be a mark of God’s people, a sacred obligation upon them.

In the story of water from the rock (Exodus 17:1–7), God once more provides for their thirst, this time also reproving those who were agitating against Moses’ leadership. In doing so, God points to certain mature and responsible members of the community, here called “elders,” who see the miracle of water and stand between Moses and the hostile people.

We read these stories as of ourselves. They show us three things that you need to be a people—God’s people—three elements of a cohesive and functioning group of believers, three features of a community living and walking under God:

• a way of life and living, revealed by God
• the holy day of worship, learning, and rest
• mature and experienced people to assist God’s leader

Lift Up Your Hands

Today’s story is Exodus 17:8–16, in which a desert tribe attacks Israel in order to prevent their entry into land already occupied or even their passage through lands with valuable grazing and water rights. This tribe is Amalek, the first human opposition Israel faced in moving from Egypt to the Promised Land.

In this narrative, God delivers Israel from Amalek but only through Moses’ uplifted hands, supported on each side by Aaron and Hur. Wars are often fought with banners, and after this victory, Moses builds an altar to God, saying, “The Lord is my banner.”

I’m taking this scene to depict a fourth element of a people-in-the-making, namely,

• people who support the spiritual leader in prayer.

Moses’ raised hands suggest prayer, and the support of Aaron and Hur suggest their own encouragement and assistance in the work of intercession. Consider these parallels:

• I will bless you as long as I live;
  in your name, I will lift up my hands (Psalm 63:4).
• Let my prayer be counted as incense before you
  and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice! (Ps 141:2).
• I desire that, in every place, you should pray,
  lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling (1 Timothy 2:8).

Israel wins the victory over Amalek on two fronts: on the battlefield, where Joshua leads a group of picked troops, and on the mountain, where God’s leader and his supporters engage in prayer. It is no good to pray without deploying a force to do battle, and it does not work to fight without divine assistance given in answer to prayer.

The Lord Is My Banner

This victory over Amalek is for the present and stands as a promise of the final defeat of the “first among the nations,” whose “end is utter destruction” (Numbers 24:20). Moses writes down the divine oracle of continuing opposition to the enemy and builds an altar, naming it “The Lord Is My Banner.”

An altar is a place to present offerings to God. In the Bible, it is usually built of stone, and it often has a commemorative name.

A banner usually bears a symbol of the regiment’s identity and loyalty and, in warfare, functions as a rallying point for combat. Israel does not have an army and presumably no field banners, either, but the altar’s name declares what the story tells us:

Our God is the one we identify ourselves with;
our God is the one who gives us our mission and purpose;
our God is our rallying point for life and service;
our God is the one who answers prayer.

It is a special concern of mine to promote the “family altar” within our church family, and I’ll speak of this as part of Sunday’s sermon. (Click here to see a short paper on this subject.)