Together: Holding Arms

Hi family. How are you? I'm so excited to be here with you. I'm so looking forward to this sermon time, I'm glad to be here. Glad you made it for those of you joining online, thank you for being with us this morning. We are going to tie this series down and I'm glad cause I'm ready to move on. I always am. By the end of a series, I'm always ready to move to the next one. We're going to move into a series called Mindset after this. And what we're going to be doing is taking a look at the mindset of the people who wrote the Bible so that we can-- it'll help us understand like what it was like when they wrote it, what were they kind of trying to drive out and how we should interpret that and how that affects us and all that kind of stuff. So we're gonna spend some time just looking at a mindset of the people who wrote the Bible and it should be really, really good for us.

But, today we're going to tie down the sermon series called Together. And I want to take a look at something that is really weird in the Bible. There just seems like there's a lot of those things to look at. Like ‘that's weird ‘in the Bible. And I'm gonna look at this name of God. The Lord is my banner. And what does that mean? And how do we understand it and what are the implications of it for us? Okay. So that's where we're headed today. You guys ready to go to work? I'm excited. I'm excited.

We're going to begin with this story and Exodus chapter 17. And it's great because we have two different accounts of this story that both give us some details to help us understand what's going on. Okay. So I'm going to do this--the smoke in the air is killing me today. Lord Jesus, help our firefighters. I can't imagine being that close to it. Cause I'm this far away, I'm going to put a cough drop in so that I can yell at you. I'm gonna wanna yell. I'm just going to tell you, I'm going to yell in love. Alright, here we go, Exodus 17. Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. 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 a staff of God in my hand.’ So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur, (who was a guy) -- and I think that's funny. That's like getting a dog and naming it Cat. Hur’s wife was named His and they were his and hers in the right sense because she was first. Can I get a witness from my sisters? Yeah. So Moses and Aaron and Hur (who was a guy) went up to the top of the hill. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses's hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur (who was a guy) 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. And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘write this -- now, by the way, this is an imperative in the Hebrew. And it's the only time that God makes this statement. And anytime there's a one off statement in the Bible, you ought to pay attention to it, especially an imperative. …’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.’ So, God is really upset at Amalek. And that raises a question. Why, why is he so upset at Amalek and what's going on there? And then how is that connected to the Lord is my banner? And there's a lot of questions there as well. So, we want to explore all that. But before we move on, here's the interesting thing. Total side note -- doesn't have anything to do with the sermon, but this is actually really interesting. So, what happens is God says when you move into the land, take charge of it, you've got to annihilate. You got to eliminate the Amalekites. The first person, given that charge, that task is Saul. Saul goes to war with the Amalekite King. And when God sends him in, he says, Hey, conquer him. Don't take any plunder, burn it all. It's mine. This is a score I'm settling with them. This isn't about you. But what happens is Saul goes in and defeats him, but he brings back gold and silver and cows and goats and sheep and all kinds of stuff. Samuel comes up to him and says, hey, what is this bleating in my ears? And Saul says, well, we were going to take these in sacrifices at the temple in Jerusalem. And Samuel looks at him and says, to obey is better than sacrifice. Like, what are you, what in the world are you doing? By the way Saul gets killed by a guy, young man, you know what his nationality was Amalekite. Now Saul is from the tribe of Benjamin, from the family of Kish. The next person, given the charge to eliminate the Amalekites -- Esther, who was from the tribe of Benjamin, from the family of Kish. And she says, when they uncover Hayman's plot to try to end the Jews, she says to the people going after him, listen, you can kill him, but whatever you do take no plunder. Why? Because that's how text informs texts. Does that make sense? Like it doesn't anything to do with our sermon, but it's interesting. So, I'm going to utterly blot out the memory of Amalekites from under heaven. And Moses built an altar and called the name of it the Lord is my banner. Okay? Now anytime that the Israelites encounter God, which they honest, they apparently believed that this was a God encounter. They will either set up a pile of rocks, dig a well, or give God a new name or some combination of those three. And so what they do is they have this God encounter and they name the space, the Lord is my banner saying, a hand upon the throne of the Lord, the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation. It's a weird name --the Lord is my banner.It's a weird name to give God. And I think we need to kind of maybe get at what they're driving it so we can understand it.

But, before we get there, Deuteronomy chapter 25 gives us a second kind of accounting of this story. And it helps us to see what's going on as far as why God is so upset with the Amalekites. Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary and cut off your tail. So what that means is, the Amalekites attack the Israelite column from behind, from the rear -- those who were lagging behind you. And he did not fear God, those who are lagging behind you, he cut off the Israelites that are lagging about well, who's lagging behind. It's the weak, the stragglers, the sick, the elderly, the ones who can't keep up and Israel, God's people, rather than trying to help them along and figure out how to help them keep up, they're leaving them behind. That's what they're doing. They're like, hey, you guys can't keep up. You know, survival of the fittest, whatever. Therefore, when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget. Okay, let's talk about this. What's going on here. So Israel is coming out of Egypt and they are marching in their column, whatever, however wide, however long, whatever it is, people speculate on how many people are actually there. It's another conversation for another day. But behind in the, in the back of the line, there are people that are falling behind people who can't keep up. People who aren't physically strong enough, for whatever reason, they're not keeping up. And so the Amalekites come in and attack Israel from the back, forcing the Israelite nation to rally around the weak, the sick and the elderly, and put them in the center of the community and protect them, which is exactly what God's people were supposed to be doing all along. But they weren't doing it. They were like, nah, meh… you don't produce enough. You're not strong enough anymore for us to value you. Which, by the way, we get it, they'd been slaves for 480 years. We get it like that. As a slave, you only know what you can produce. You're only valued by what you can make. And when you can't make anything, you're not worth investing in anymore. Which like, yeah, I can get that that's terrible for them. But it's our culture too. Like in who do we revere? Who do we, who do we lift up? Who do we celebrate? Who do we venerate in our culture? Not people who can't produce. We will idolize somebody to score 30 points in a basketball game. And yet there's a single mom with two kids, struggling working three jobs, trying to survive. You put that in God's perspective, which one does he value more? And, but what we don't, but we don't value the same things. And here's a problem. God's people are supposed to be the representation of him to the world.Remember in Exodus 19. God says, listen, you're my treasured possession, if you follow my commandments, I'm going to make you a Royal priesthood. You're gonna be priest for me to the whole world. Oh. And by the way, Peter invites you. And I ended that same relationship with God in 1 Peter 2 -- you're a Holy nation, a royal priesthood. Why does that matter? That matters because the priest, fundamentally, they have four main jobs, but the fundamental, most primary job of the priest is to be a physical representation of what God’s like to the world and God's priests don't look anything like him.

And so God creates this scenario -- Moses goes up on a hill and he has to hold his arms up. Well, Moses is over 80 years old at this point. So his arms get tired. And then Aaron and Hur (who was a guy) hold his arms up. And then they had this name, the Lord is my banner. What's going on there. I want to, I want to pull this apart. So let me show you a picture. This is the temple at Luxor in Egypt. And this is their frame of reference, right? This is they're just coming out of Egypt when this story happened. So they'd been slaves here for 480 years, this temple -- and I don't know if you can even see, but way down the middle, there's this little black thing with a white dot at the top. That's a human. And to give you a perspective on how big this space is, it's massive. Now on that front wall, you can see those rectangular niches that are cut into the wall. You see that, here's what those are. Those are there to hold these giant poles that go way up above the top of the wall. And they have at the top of them, a banner, think a pennant like a triangle flag. That's exactly what they have at the top. And the temple is always built, no matter where the temple is, and no matter how big it is, the temple is always built so that when the wind blows, it carries the banner to point in. So the, the point of the banner will always funnel down to where it points in. Okay, let me show you another example. This is the temple at Luxor in Egypt, and you can see the same idea. These niches that are cut out, where the poles go in and the banners would be up over the top of that front wall. One more. This is the temple, at Philet, which is not a big temple, right? It's not a big, big temple, but you can see those niches there with the poles. And then the banners would be up over the top of those. And they're designed on purpose for the banners to be pointing in. Here's why, because as you approach the temple, the banner is not about you focusing on the banner…he banner is about always pointing to where the god is beyond them. The banner is an instrument that points to the god that you're about to interact with. Does that make sense? That's what they're used for. Okay. Next picture. This is a sculpture of Moses with Aaron who apparently was bald. I'm not far off, not far off and Hur who was a guy and they're holding Moses's arms up. The next one is a painting. Let's look at this last photo. This one I love. Cause I think this one really captures my vision of what what's happening in this space that, that Aaron and herb holding Moses's arms up. Right. And why is this the banner? Why is this the thing that, cause it's not about them seeing just the fact that they're holding his arms up. It's that they're seeing that when they do this, when they act this way, they win. When they act this way, God gives them victory. And what are they doing down in the Valley? They're rallying around the weak, in the sick and the stragglers. Those who can't keep up and they're putting them at the center of the community and saying, you will not kill our people. That's exactly what's happening. And so that's the picture of the banner. The idea of this isn't that they're looking at Moses and Aaron and Hur (who was a guy). It's that they're looking at it and how that points to the heart of God. Because they're priests and their job isn't to be right, their job to put their God on display. And in order to do that, you're going to have the heart of God to do it.

And it's so fascinating to me, you know, we live in this crazy time in history and I'm so tired of saying that-- like are y'all sick of like this crazy time in history? Are you sick of that? Like, let's crave some normal can, can I get a witness? Like, I just want normal. I just want a little normal. I want to be able to hug somebody and not have to worry about if it's okay or not. You know? d want to be able to see somebody and smile and have them smile back. All those things like that. I really miss those, those things. We're living in this crazy time where we have all these questions about how we're supposed to interact in the world. Right? And the problem is what we've seen historically is that a lot of times the disciples of Jesus don't understand Jesus’ perspective on anything. And because of that, they don't know how to respond appropriately. Cause what we hang our hats on is truth and doctrine and theology and all that stuff. And those things are all important. But God isn't interested in you reflecting your truth. He's interested in you reflecting his heart. Now that's not doesn't mean truth doesn't matter. Truth matters. But God wants you to reflect his heart to the world.

There's an interesting passage in Matthew 26. And it's fascinating. Like this is one of those examples where Jesus is in this moment and his disciples are there with him and they don't understand, they don't have Jesus's perspective at all. So it was right at the end, right before Jesus has the last supper and then he's arrested and subsequently crucified and then raises from the dead. Here's what it says, ‘When Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon, the leper,’ -- okay, let's stop there. What in the world is he doing in the house of a leper? Like, Jesus is a traveling rabbi. Not only is he a traveling rabbi, but he's a rabbi with Shmekah, which if you want to know what that means come with me to Israel, a shameless plug right there. That means he's a rabbi that has a special authority. He has his own yoke. Like he's not carrying the yoke of another rabbi. He's shouldering his own authority. And that's the thing that, if you read the gospels, that's the thing that keeps blowing people away. Like the whole sermon on the mount, he teaches these revolutionary things and then it gets all the way to the end. And when they're leaving, it says the people marveled at him because he taught as one who had authority. He has that kind of like, these are the rock stars and the movie stars of their day. And Jesus is putting himself intentionally in a position where he will not be able to teach anybody because he's unclean. Like, Jesus, what are you thinking? People need to know what you have to say. You're the son of God. It's important that you say, then what Jesus says without saying it is, but the heart of one leper is more important than any of the words that I speak. Like God cares about him.

Let's keep reading…’a woman, came up to him with an alabaster flask, of very expensive ointment.’ A couple of thoughts about that --First of all, the flask is, the ointment is going to be really aromatic and they use these typically for embalming, the embalming process. It's typically what this, and it makes sense at Bethany, which means Bet’hani means house of the sick or house of the dead. It's a leper colony. And they're at the house. Like something like this would be available. But she brings it in in. And the thing about the alabaster flasks is that when they're, when they're loaded with the oil, they're sealed. And so in order to get at it, you have to break it. This is a one off one use. She doesn't get to refill this and replace it. It's going to be gone. And this death smell this death spice, this thing connected to death, very metaphorically for sure is all about her preparing Jesus for his death for him, without a doubt. But it says, ‘and she poured it on his head as he reclined at the table.’ So, their tables are 18 inches high. They reclined on their left side and they eat with their right hand, head facing the table and they eat with their right hand. They don't eat with their left hand because her left hand is used for other things that are unclean. So, they eat with their right hand at the table and this is how it works. And so she comes in, it's not a secret. Everybody's laying down, everybody's reclining at the table. She walks in. It's not a surprise to Jesus. Everybody sees this happening. ‘She poured it on his head and he reclined at the table. And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant -- such an interesting word, indignant. Like they are really mad. Like how dare you? Which I find so fascinating. Like they're not pondering. They're not contemplative. They're not pensive. They're not moderately agitated. They're not wondering as they're wandering, they're indignant. They're mad. Like what the -- here's Jesus's perspective, by the way, ‘why this waste? For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.’ But Jesus, aware of this said to them, ‘why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. And I watch them get so worked up. So worked up and all along. Jesus is like, no, no, no, no. This was beautiful. Like what she did was beautiful.

We've got to have the heart of Jesus. If we're ever going to put God on display well to the culture, we've got to have the heart of Jesus, first and foremost. We have to know what he thinks about things. We have to know how he feels about things and people and situations and all these other things and anything, including our own opinions that gets in the way of that, has to be let go. Because it will ultimately stop us from being what God has asked us to be -- his priests. I know, over the last few months, like Christians have really wrestled with how do we respond to all of this COVID and whatever, whatever. Steve Brien, who is our missions guy, great guy, sent me an article recently. That was tracking how Christians have engaged the world in pandemics throughout history. Fascinating, great article. And what I love about it is we can see how Christians have wrestled with kind of the world that we're living in right now. Like there's nothing new under the sun. And while we can go, well, it's way more complex. I don't know. I don't know if it's more complex, but what we can see is this is how they wrestled with it. And so I want to read a section out of that article. This is not the whole article, but I want to read a section out of that article and just see what we can learn from it. This is the first major epidemic faced by the early church was the Antwan plague, AD 166 to 189 -- by the way, that's 23 years. You imagine living like this for 23 years, like I didn't even want to do it 23 days. Brought to Rome by troops, returning from campaigning against the Persians. The disease, most likely smallpox, killed seven to 10% of the population of the empire as a whole with mortality in cities, probably 13 to 15%, according to Deo Casio, it killed 2000 people per day in Rome during a particular bleak period in 189. People understood that the disease was contagious. So in fear of their lives, they would throw the sick out of their homes to die in the streets. Galen, the most prominent physician of the age, fled Rome when the plague arrived to stay at his country estate -- can I just stop there and say, I'm so thankful for our doctors and nurses that are running into this and not away from it. Like I'm so thankful for them. What a gift that they're not running out to the country estate, which is a way to deal with it as long as you have a country, a state to run to, but then who pays the price for that? Does that make sense? Like it makes the there's, there's a haves and have nots mentality in that. Let's keep reading -- he knew that he could do nothing to heal its victims or to protect himself from contracting the disease. Christians, on the other hand, ran into the plague. They recognize that all persons were made in the image of God, that Jesus died to redeem us body and soul. And thus that the sick deserved care. As a result, Christians began tending to sick at risk and often at the cost of their lives. Let me tell you what I love about that because there's this like, you know, God will protect me and he won't make me sick. Well, maybe that's true. That may be true. He also might have you contract the disease and you die, but it's not about whether or not you get sick. It's about representing the heart of God in the world. This isn't COVID, it's about how we live! Get sick or don't get sick -- glorify God either way. And I don't want, I'm not wishing sickness on anybody. I hope we all stay healthy and the virus goes away. But even if it doesn't, our sacred task is to glorify God period, period. It's Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, right? Our God has the ability to deliver us from the fire first. But even if he doesn’t, we won't bow down to your god. Our God has the ability to keep us from getting sick. But even if he doesn't, we're going to glorify our own God! Let's keep reading -- So, Galen, who viewed Christians as naive and irrational, admitted that in some respects, they were equals a philosophers in that they had a contempt of death and its sequel that was evident every day. It is not clear whether he was referring to their willingness -- and even eagerness -- to face martyrdom or to their actions and treating the sick. It may have been both: at about this time a Roman Senator named Apollonius was put on trial for being a Christian and associated his upcoming death as a martyr with dying of disease, reportedly commenting, “it is often possible for dysentery and fever to kill; so I will consider that I'm being destroyed by one of these. Since even basic nursing care can make a significant difference in survival rates in epidemics, Christian actions, during the plagues saved lives. Their undoubted courage and self-sacrifice in coming to the aid of their neighbors contributed to the rapid growth of Christianity. For example, when Irenaeus arrived in Lyons from Asia minor, there were few Christians in the city. When the plague broke out, Christians tended and prayed for the sick, and by the time the plague ended, there were 200,000 believers in Lyons.

Listen, that's what we want -- revival to break out. We do. Like, we want to be a part of revival. We do. We want to be a part of that moment where God moves and does great things. Let me tell you, historically, what has never, ever one time in the history of the church ever started a revival -- truth. And again, I'm not bashing truth. We need truth. We need to understand truth, but truth doesn't change the world. Love does. Love sparks all kinds of revival, all kinds of the movement of God. Truth is important. I need it because love doesn't get to be just blind acceptance either. Like it's not, it's not like we want to, we want to make love. Just like, Hey, I love you. I'm just really just talking to love each other. And you know, it'd be wonderful. No, like when it's not loving, if you have a, if you have somebody that you love that you know is starting to use drugs, it's not loving to go, Oh, it's all right. I’m just going to love you through it. No, what you do is grab them by the collar and say, knock it off. I love you too much to let you destroy yourself. Love isn't blind tolerance. That's not what it is, but real love, godly love, changes the world. I want to be a part of that church. Stop being so critical. We're not helping people when we stand in the position of critic. So I don't love them if I don't tell them the truth. Listen, I grew up in a home where criticism tried to mask itself as love. And now I'm in therapy. I guess its not helpful. I can tell you from personal experience, it's not helpful. Criticism and love are not the same thing.

So I have some implications for us. Some things for us to think about this week. Number one, we often long to be Moses. Everybody loves be in the shot color. Well, let me back up and say this. Everybody loves the idea of being a shot color. And then you are the shock collar. And you're like, man, this is hard. This is really, really hard. This is really, really hard. We long to be Moses, but God sometimes calls us to be Aaron and Hur (who was a guy). How are you serving others around you? Listen, if we're being the Kingdom, if we're really being the priests that God is asking us to be, you ought to have some intentional places, not just accidental. Like, well, I just got this opportunity and I took it. No! We're going, we need to create opportunities to serve other people.

Number two, God's people rally around those who can't fight for themselves. Who are you helping up? And again, that's not an accident. That's not a well then, an abstract way through the process of trickle down economics. Like not that way. You should have some intentional spaces where you're trying to invest in people to make them better. You know what that's called? Discipleship. Guess what we're called to do. Go make disciples.

Number three, Jesus is revealed to the world when his followers love others. Well, what does it look like to love the world? Well, and that's a conversation worth having in our life groups this week because it's hard, it's complex. But what I can tell you for sure is this. You won't answer that question well in a vacuum. Like, we need other people to give us perspective on how to round that out. Because if I left to myself to figure out how to love other people, well, then I'm left. I have my own limitations, my own brokenness, my own issues. We need a community of people to help that happen.

Number four, the world will often see our actions as naive and irrational. What helps you continue to love? Well, like, it's easy to love people who love you. What helps us love people well who consider our faith naive and irrational?

And I love segueing into communion on that thought. We take communion every week as a church. And so if you're new with us, we have an open table. What that means is anybody who wants to celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus with us is invited to partake, but we want you to hold the elements until the end and we'll take them all together. I was thinking about this this morning, I went to Israel and I was not leading the tour. I was on a tour with somebody else and I was sitting in the back of the bus and we were driving the 60 passenger charter bus down through the desert and on this narrow highway and all of a sudden the bus slams on his brakes and the guy who was leading the tour jumps up and he's like, guys, get off the bus. I was like, something's on fire. So we get off the bus and he goes, look, and we look out on the hillside. We're all standing there on the side of the road. Like we're, you know, appearing for morning muster. We look and there is a young shepherd boy, probably 13, 14, 15, somewhere in there. He's got a flock of sheep and goats and we're watching this and observing. And once this young kid sees us, he starts to put on a show for us. Like he's so proud of his sheep and his goats and he would throw rocks at the sheep -- not to hit them, but to direct them. And they do this all day. David is so good with a slingshot because even David is a shepherd boy. He's so good, because, because he's used to doing this, they throw them to direct the sheep and the sheep move like a school of fish. It's amazing. Like, now the goats, they are a problem and they run off and the shepherd has to go run after him and bring him back and he's doing it. It's fun. And what's interesting is the group kind of, the leader was like moving the group away from where we were standing. And I was caught up while we were doing this. I was just totally checked out of reality. You ever have that moment where God kind of has a plan to show you something. And so I was just totally disengaged from the people. I wasn't, which is not uncommon, but, I didn't know what they were doing. And I'm looking up on the hill and this little shepherd boy has run after one of the goats. And he goes, and he grabs the goat and he sits down beside it and he starts petting it and singing to it and laughing. And that goat is fighting him. And you know, and he's just laughing and having such a good time and being so kind to the goat. And all of a sudden, the guy who was our group leader comes over and puts his hand on my shoulder, kind of jars me into reality. And he goes, isn't it interesting to watch that shepherd boy love a goat that will never love him back. And I was like that. I'm good at loving people who are nice to me, but our shepherd, our rabbi, our savior, our Jesus, the one that we're supposed to put on display to the world loves well, those people who will never love him back. And that's who we have to be.

I just invite you to consider that for a minute. As we prepare our hearts for communion. On the night Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it. And he said, this is my body, which has given for you. So whenever you eat this bread, do it in remembrance of me. Then after the dinner, he took a cup and he said, this cup, this is the blood of the covenant, which is shed for you. So whenever you drink this cup doing remembrance of me, let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you for your love. Thank you for loving us, even when we don't love you back, well. God, thank you for this tremendous privilege of putting you on display to the world. God, I pray that you would help us to understand that shouldering the load of those who can't carry it themselves is just part of who you are. Because of that, it's part of who we should be. God, I pray for grace as we fumble along, trying to understand how to live that out well in this amazingly complex time in history that we live in. We love you Lord, in Jesus name, amen.

Man, I just love worshiping with you guys. And my hope for us is that we can at least be convicted enough to really ask the questions of how are we putting our God on display well in the world that we're living in today. Cause it's a complicated question to answer. I mean, you have the courage to step into God's design for your life. Thanks for coming and have a great week.