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I think I had assumed in the past that this was teaching us about the vital importance of prayer. After all, the battle was won when Moses raised his hands to the Lord. And so, the application is surely “keep praying”. I don’t know if I heard this in a sermon, but it’s certainly a message that will preach. It inspires us to set long times aside to pray, to attend long prayer meetings, to be a praying church. 

But it doesn’t take long for that message to move from being a challenge to a discouragement. My prayer life is so often so far from the all day prayer session Moses seemed to have on that hill. If the Lord’s work is dependent on my prayers, I’d be tempted to just give up. It’s a bit like if someone tells me I could run a marathon. I might be persuaded to go out for my first run to train, but it wouldn’t be long before I’d conclude I’m so far from the goal that it would be probably best if I gave up.  

When I looked more carefully at what is going on in Exodus 17 I noticed that the message is far more encouraging. It is a unique battle - the Israelites do not win wars in the future by making their prophets, priests or kings stand on a hill. 

It is clearly being used by the Lord as a teaching moment - that is why the Israelites have to set up a memorial that the end of it so they don’t forget what they have learnt. And the lesson is “the Lord is our banner”. The Lord fights their battles for them. 

So what is the connection with what Moses does? When you look carefully at the passage you see that he has to raise his hands because of what he has in his hand. He is holding up the staff of God - a simple shepherd’s instrument used to guide sheep and protect from predators. The lord took this staff and used it as symbol of his judgement against his enemies. By it, frogs came out of the Nile and the Red Sea parted. Now, Moses has to lift it up, and as it is lifted the Amalekites are defeated. 

Why does Moses have to do this so visibly? So that the Israelites see and remember that the Lord is fighting for them. The Amalekites were the first enemy they faced after their rescue from Egypt. They wont be their last. In fact, after then battle the Lord promises they will have to fight them again. But they haven’t been abandoned by the Lord. They can fight and win because the Lord fights for them. 

This is a far more strengthening message than “pray hard because it depends on you and your prayers”. We pray and trust and fight against sin and obey because the Lord has defeated his enemies and will continue to fight for us. When we feel weak and defeated and tired this is precisely when we need to remember this. The staff points to who God is - and the great victory achieved against our great enemies on sin, the death and the devil at the cross. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if David is thinking of this incident when he prays in Psalm 23: