The Brotherhood
This morning we are celebrating Joey. He recently graduated and is embarking on the beginning of adulthood. So to begin the morning, I would like to invite Joe to come forward and join me. I would also like to have the Royal Rangers come and sit on the front row. You will see why in just a moment.
(Present Joe with the sword and ask him to hold it out in front of himself). Whatever you do, don’t let the sword fall. If it gets difficult, let me know.
In medieval times when a young man came of age, he had a few options. He could join the church to become a priest, he could farm the land or learn a trade, or he could serve the king as a knight.
To become a knight, a young man would typically start as a "page" in a noble household at a young age, learning basic skills like horsemanship and weapons handling, then progress to becoming a "squire" where they would serve a knight, assisting in battle and learning advanced combat techniques, before finally being "dubbed" a knight through a ceremony where a senior knight would touch their shoulder with a sword, signifying their official knighthood.
In essence Joey, you have been in training for over 12 years, at school where your mind was challenged and broadened; at home where your body was nurtured and strengthened; at church where your heart and soul were saved and sanctified. It is at this moment, when we symbolically dubbing you finished with your training and ready for life in battle for the Lord. You have reached an age where the government and much of society considers you an adult and ready to be on your own. You can vote, and you can join the military. The vastness of your future lies ahead of you. It’s an adventure that awaits.
The tendency that we have when we reach adulthood is to exert our independence. We want to “do it on our own.” We quickly move away from home and immerse ourselves with work and making a life for ourselves. We forget that we need each other.
When Joe struggles with the sword and asks for help) : I would like the Royal Rangers to come up, two on each side. Place your fingers under the blade to help Joe hold up the sword. Is that better?
God did not ask us to fight alone. Sometimes the battle is so fierce, we need the assistance of our friends and family to help us. There is never anything wrong with asking for help. The people who love and care for you will be glad to lend a hand.
Are they holding the sword? No
They’re just giving you someone to lean on when times get hard.
Present Joe with the dagger as a remembrance to ask for assistance when needed. Present Royal Rengers with a dagger as a remembrance to always walk with comrades and lend a hand if needed.
They can take their seats.
I’ve titled this sermon The Brotherhood, something we all need to remember. We need each other, both to lean on and to be a support for others.
In days of old, knights were expected to uphold the code of chivalry, which included values like bravery, loyalty, courtesy, and protection of the weak. These are still values held high in the armed forces. As young Christian men, you should exhibit the same attributes. As a body of believers, we should all walk in these attributes: bravery, loyalty, courtesy, and protecting the weak.
Though the church of Jesus Christ will have opposition from without, the first obstacle we face is our own hardness of heart. The biggest threat to the church in any generation is not the government, some other religion, or enemies of the faith, but us. It’s our own waywardness, wandering, and hardheartedness—our love affair with sin.
And while we think that we’re only affecting ourselves in our sin and weakness, the enemy is gathering. Opponents are amassing outside the camp. The lion watches the herd of antelope carefully choosing the young and weak, the injured, or the older as the one to attack for its meal. The same principle applies with our enemy. He always attacks when we’re weak because we are easy prey.
Read Exodus 17: 8-13
We Need to Fight
The Amalekites were preying on a people that were weak and not battle-tested. Who were the Amalekites? Amelak was Esau’s grandson, so these are distant relatives of the Israelites. As far as we can tell, they lived by attacking other people and plundering their wealth. There’s a story in Judges 3 where Eglon, the king of Moab, joins forces with the Ammonites and the Amalekites to attack the Israelites. They had no fear of God before their eyes.
“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, those who were lagging behind you, and he did not fear God. Deuteronomy 25:17-18
That gives you a little more insight into their method. Maybe they were nervous that these Israelites were going to take their land; or maybe they heard that they had water from a rock and quail just flew into the camp at dinner time; or maybe they were just a vicious sort of people looking to plunder the weak.
But they saw this whole nation. They’ve been slaves. They’re looking for food and drink. They’re wandering around. They don’t have a place of their own. They are tired, haggard, and weary.
They made some sort of movement, militarily, to cut off part of the trailing Israelite camp. They went to those who were lagging behind. No doubt, they came to the part of Israel where the elderly, the infirm, the pregnant or nursing women, and children were lagging behind. The Amalekites said, “That’s where we are going to strike—the low hanging fruit.” They had no fear of God before their eyes.
People are much the same in modern times. They go after and attack those who are down, those who are weak and hurting. Don’t make a mistake of underestimating our enemy, satan, either. He runs in the same fashion. When life is the hardest, it can get even harder.
There are times when God will say, “I’m going to do it all. Just march around the city and play your musical instrument, and the walls will come down.” He takes the fight for us and does all the work. But there are also lots of times in the Old Testament, when God says, “I’m going to do this, but I’m going to do it through you. You have to get up and fight.”
“I’m going to fight for you. The victory will be mine, but Joshua, you need to get some soldiers ready. You have a day to do it. You need to get out there and fight.” I wonder if some of us are at the place where we think “I didn’t sign up for this.” It’s what the Lord signed you up for. You need to fight.
2. We Need Each Other
That brings us to today’s passage. Verses 11-13 are a wonderful picture, familiar to many of us. Moses is on the mountain. When he lifts up his hands, Israel wins. When he lowers his hands, the Amalekites win. At the beginning, it’s an easy task, but soon Moses realizes, “This is hard.”
Have you ever tried to hold your hands up? You get tired. When I was in middle school, I volunteered in our children’s church.We had a puppet team who not only presented at our church but also traveled around to neighboring churches to minister. I joined this team as a puppeteer.
Do you know how hard that is? Man, you’ve really got to work out to do puppets. You’ve really got to practice. You’ve got to lower the bottom part of its mouth only. Focus on keeping the face of the puppet looking around at the audience and moving the mouth only when there were words. There was a lot to it—and if the skit or song was long, it was tiring.
So I sympathize here. Have you ever had to hold wall board up on the ceiling while someone screwed it in? There’s any number of things that require this sort of action; however, it isn’t usually a life or death situation. Moses realized that this was really important. This wasn’t puppets, but God’s people either winning or losing. So he needed help.
Aaron and Hur are up there. Aaron is his older brother. I think Aaron was a good older brother. He understands the authority. He understands who Moses is. The Lord has called him here to be the leader. “Moses, you need a rock. You need to sit down.”
And Moses has Hur. We don’t know a lot about this person. There is one curious reference that Josephus (the first-century Jewish historian) makes. He says that Hur married Miriam. We have no way of confirming that, but it would make sense that we have Moses’ brother and his brother-in-law up here on the mountain.
They were there to help. That’s what we do. In Luke 22:32, Jesus told Peter, “Go and strengthen the brothers.”
In Acts 18:23, Paul traveled back and strengthened all the disciples. In Romans 1:11, he said, “For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you—”. In 1 Thessalonians 3:2, he said, “We sent Timothy to strengthen and encourage you in the faith.” This is what we do as Christians. We strengthen each other and hold up each others’ arms.
Then you add to it what some are facing. Marriages fall apart. People betray you and leave you. People hurt you. You have a fear of the unknown. You’re looking for a job or a spouse. Children are struggling. You have doubts—or cancer. “I don’t know how long I can keep my arms up. I need an Aaron and a Hur.”
Some of you feel this very strongly. You’re too weary to parent, to stick with your spouse, to keep working at the same relationship, to make it through another week, or to keep pushing. And then it gets very dangerous: you’re too weary to hope and pray. The lion is watching and waiting to attack.
We need each other. We need people to say, “I’ll pray for you when you run out of prayers. I’ll keep praying for that when your prayers have turned into anxiety.” “I won’t walk away from you when you’re down.” “I will do anything I can to help you.”....even if it’s a mess of our own making.
God is calling some of you this week to be Aaron and Hur. God wants others to admit that they are Moses at this moment. Sometimes it’s harder to admit that you are Moses—not the one who sends the plagues and leads the people. We love that Moses. But what about this Moses? Can you admit, “I can’t keep my hands up by myself anymore. I can’t do it”?
We know how to fix things and do things. What about when you can’t? Are you willing to send out an email, a text, or a phone call to the Aarons and the Hurs in your life, and say, “I can’t keep my hands up anymore by myself. Could you get a rock and hold up my arms?” Tell somebody about your weakness. Let someone enter into what you are struggling with.
Then there is the other side. All of us are going to be Moses on the mountain at some point, and all of us are going to be called to be Aaron and Hur at some point. We don’t know if Moses said, “Hey, bro! Get me a rock!” or if Aaron just said, “Moses doesn’t look so good right now.” If you see somebody struggling to stand up, go do something about it!
3. We Need the Lord
We need to fight, but thankfully we don’t do it alone. We need each other and, even better, we need the Lord if we are to prevail.
You and I are going to have more battles, more enemies, and hard days. Hopefully, you’ll have some really good days, and God will give you some manna from heaven when you need it. But you are going to have rough patches. Every one of these wilderness stops, in some sense, is the same lesson: God says, “You can trust me. You don’t know where you are going to eat? You can trust me. You’re thirsty? You can trust me. You have enemies? You can trust me.”
How do we demonstrate that we truly believe that the Lord is necessary for the victory and that he is able to give it to us? We do the same thing Moses did: We lift our hands to heaven. “I don’t have Moses’ staff.” You know the one that turned into a snake and parted the Red Sea and brought water from a rock.
No, but you’ve got better than a staff. You have Jesus Christ at the right hand of God, interceding for you. You don’t need a stick. You’ve got a Savior. Lift your hands to heaven and pray.
Whether Moses was praying or not, it’s absolutely a story about prayer. That’s how we lay hold of the throne room of heaven and get access to this divine power. When you don’t pray, you say, “I can do it and God can’t.” But when you pray, you testify, “I’m not able, but he is.”
The cross is our standard, raised high! We rally to its side. We regroup at it. We gather around it. In the midst of the battle, we look to the cross. When assaulted with temptations, we run to the cross. There we find courage for the fight and the rest that we need when we just can’t lift up our arms any longer. Even the Son of Man grew faint and tired and could no longer hold up his arms—and on the third day, God gave him the victory.
Conclusion
Today we celebrate a great accomplishment! It is the end of an era for Joey. He’s entering the grand adventure of adulthood. Remember today’s lesson. You don’t have to do it all on your own. You don’t have to struggle by yourself just because you’re a grown man.
We need one another. Life is a constant fight, it just is. Even if you had millions of dollars, it’s still a struggle just in different ways. Don’t be too proud to ask for help. And always lend a hand to others when they need it.
