On this journey through life, we are all chased by some enemy. Our enemies infuriate us or scare us. We wish they would just go away. But we need our enemies, for they are used by God to mold our souls.

Prayer - O God, may our lives be given over to a purpose worthy of having enemies. May we be found faithful in the struggle and even more faithful in prayer until You are victorious. In the Name of Christ, Amen.

We are continuing our series of sermons focused on the Hebrews’ journey out of slavery and through the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. Today we join them in a place called Rephidim. Like most new places in our lives, it was an opportunity to learn about the faithfulness of God.

You will recall that God led the Hebrews on this desert journey for the same reason that He leads each of us on the hard road -- to teach us how to be free. Just because you have run away from something that was enslaving your spirit, that doesn’t make you free. To be free you have to learn how to stop being afraid. And the only way you learn to stop being afraid is faith that can only be developed on the hard road.

So far, we have witnessed God’s faithfulness when the people thought they were lost, and moving in the wrong direction. Then we saw it when they were out of water, and again when they were out of food. Today we see God’s faithfulness when they, and we, are forced into battle with the enemy.

As soon as the people arrived at Rephidim, a place near the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, they were attacked by a nomadic warrior named Amalek. When I read the many texts about Amalek and his goons in the Old Testament, I seem to think of them as an ancient motorcycle gang ready to pounce on defenseless desert nomads. Except that the Israelites weren't defenseless.

When the attack began, Moses told Joshua to choose some men and go up into battle to defend the people. Then Moses went to the top of a nearby hill and held up the staff of God in his hands. When Moses held the “staff of God” up in the air, Joshua and his men prevailed in the battle against Amalek. When Moses’ hands grew tired, and the staff dropped to the ground, Amalek and his men would prevail in the battle. In other words, the success of the Israelites seems to have precious little to do with the skill of Joshua and his men. It all is being decided by Moses and the staff he held over his head.

So you have to ask yourself, “What is the point of Joshua then? Why doesn’t God just blow fire down on Amalek and eliminate his armies if it is Moses that is really doing all the work here?” The point of the battle wasn't to get rid of the enemy. The point was to teach the people not to be afraid of their enemies.

There always will be enemies, always something that will cause us to fear. At the end of chapter 17, we are told that “Amalakek will persevere from one generation to the next.” He just keeps showing up, with different names and faces, in almost every chapter of the story of Israel. And he keeps showing up in the drama God is writing in your life too. The things we fear rarely just go away.

Who is your Amalek? Who is the enemy that will tempt you to doubt that you will ever make it to the Promised Land? Is it the old voices from the past that say, “You are not good enough, or smart enough, or pretty enough. You are not loveable.” ? Is it the relentless, old enemy that you just keep fighting, someone you can’t seem to forgive? Maybe Amalek is the addiction you have struggled with for so long, or the guilt that has plagued you over what you have done, or left undone. Maybe it is a boss, an ex-spouse, someone who fired you, the teacher or coach who has it against you, or the person at church that just sees things so differently than you do. Amalek is that which makes us afraid.

You can pray and pray for Amalek to go away, but the way I read the story, it rarely happens. Now in some cases, God brings a great deliverance. But whether the struggle is pornography, or sexual addiction, or alcohol or the addiction to intimacy, those things don’t just up and leave you most of the time. You may defeat one enemy, or triumph in a particular battle, but there will be more enemies to come. Always. “Amalek perseveres from one generation to the next.” There is no getting rid of your enemies. However, God does have a sacred purpose for them.

Sometimes we are tempted to ask why God allows evil to terrorize us. But the enemy is not a divine judgment upon us. God is always found in the redemption of evil and the way He redeems and defeats evil is by using even the enemy for our good. I think that may be one of the reasons Jesus told us to love our enemies. He meant by doing so not only that love eventually triumphs over evil, but also that we can love the holy purposes God has for our enemies. What are those purposes?

For one thing, doing battle with the enemy makes you strong. Most people find in the thick of battle that God has made them stronger than they thought they were. They back away from what God may be doing thinking that they are just runaway slaves who don’t have what it takes to battle an enemy like Amalek. But when the battle comes, they find an inner strength that is more than they had realized. Amalek spent his life beating up defenseless people in the desert, while the Hebrews had spent their lives with straw and mud making bricks for Pharaoh. Who were they to take on an enemy like the Amalekites? Well they were a people with faith and a dream. And no one is stronger than people with dreams. But dreams have to be fought for. God can be present with you, but you have to be willing to fight the battles to see them happen. The Puritans used to say, “In vain shall Moses be upon the hill if Joshua be not in the valley.” Even the holy dreams of God have to be fought for, because as you fight for your dreams you come to possess them. That is the purpose of the fight sometimes – to make you strong until you really believe in what you believe.

Second, doing battle with the enemy makes you free. There is nothing more enslaving than always avoiding conflict or trying to please people. Until you can live with the fact that you will have enemies – there will be people who oppose you or who are disappointed in you – you will always be their slave. Meeting the expectations of others is a relentless taskmaster. At some point, you have to launch out on faith and live the life God has given you to live, and not the life others want you to have.

We sometimes forget that Jesus had plenty of enemies. That is because He was free as a person who knew who He was, and who His enemy was. He only allowed His Father in heaven to define His mission, and not others . . . which often meant that He was a disappointment to those who had other dreams for Him. If Jesus would have taken a harder line on sinners, He wouldn't have had the Pharisees as His enemy. But Jesus’ mission was to forgive sinners. Knowing that, He was constantly in battle with those who wanted to condemn and dehumanize them. You can only be free when you know what your mission is, and who your enemy is.

The third, and greatest benefit of doing battle with Amalek is that it forces you to pray. In this story we are called to identify with Joshua in battle and with Moses whose hands are reaching up to the sky with the staff of God. Before this staff was given the name “staff of God,” it was just Moses’ stick. This stick was the shepherd’s staff that Moses was holding when God called him to liberate the people in Egypt. When Moses asked for a sign that God would be with him, he was told to throw his staff on the ground. When he did the staff turned into a snake. Then God told him to pick up the snake by the tail. I don’t get near snakes very often, but I know that you are not supposed to grab them by the tail. It would take a lot of faith to do that, which is exactly the point.

As Moses learned to hold up his ordinary staff in faith, God used it to do the most extraordinary things. It turned the Nile into blood, which led to Pharaoh’s decision to let the people go. And when Pharaoh pursued the Hebrews, Moses held the staff again when it divided the Red Sea so the people could walk away from slavery. Just a few verses earlier, Moses struck a rock with that staff, and a river of fresh water poured forth for the thirsty complaining people. Now, Moses holds that staff again over the battlefield, and it was being used for its greatest purpose, as a means of God’s power and prayer.

God’s power accessed in prayer is how you hold your battle in faith. In prayer, heaven and earth meet, and then you discover that you are not called to make victory happen in the battles of life. Victory is God’s business. Your only calling is not to be afraid of the enemies. But you find that kind of courage in prayer, where you climb the mountain and hold your hands up in prayer. With your hands raised high, you come to see that there is nothing to fear from the battle going on beneath you.

Moses eventually grew tired of holding up his hands, so they dropped to the ground. As an illustration of what happens when we do battle without God’s power, Amalek would always prevail when Moses’ hands were down. It is interesting that Moses grew tired in prayer before Joshua tired in battle. That is because prayer is harder work than fighting. If you pray fervently, you will grow tired fast. It is exhausting to hold heaven and earth together.

That is why Aaron and Hur came beside Moses to hold up his hands to the sky until the victory was won. None of us have been called to fight the battle, or to pray the battle, alone. If you are going to take up something that is wrong in the world or in your life, you will soon that you need a community to support you.

That is why being together in worship and fellowship is so critical for your survival on the battlefield. It is why we should pray for and with each other. Your prayers are like the staff of Moses through which God channels His power and blessing. So “pray without ceasing” – it’s the only way you can finally defeat the Enemy.

Everybody needs an Aaron or Hur, and everybody needs to be an Aaron or Hur. The battle against the enemy is great, and we need to see the battle from God’s perspective. You can’t avoid going into the valley to do battle with Joshua, but neither can you avoid climbing the mountain with Moses where you can see the battle for what it really is. Most importantly, you will see God for who He really is, a great banner over us of love and deliverance.

When in prayer you climb above the fray, you soon see that the enemy you are fighting is not the one on the field but the one in your own soul. That is why he keeps showing up again and again. Until you defeat that enemy, you will never be free to enter the Promised Land.


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