Jehovah NissiSample

Moses and the Israelites had to learn that the battle could only be won when waged within the context of community. 

As Moses stretched out his staff in dependence on God’s deliverance of Israel, his arms became fatigued and began to drop to the ground. Moses’s sore, worn-out arms could not, on their own, bear the weight of intercession for the people of God. Yet as his arms began to drop and the battle ebbed and flowed, Aaron and Hur came alongside Moses to provide a rock for him to sit on as well as help support both of his hands. As Moses was supported and strengthened by Aaron and Hur, the outcome of the battle was decided: 

“So Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword” (Exodus 17:12-13).

God’s means of victory not only includes dependence upon God but also mutual interdependence upon our brothers and sisters in Christ. Every believer in Christ will come to a point of exhaustion in life and will need an Aaron and a Hur to bear him or her up in the midst of struggles. That is to say that every believer must be connected to and serve within a local body of believers. 

The apostle Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, similarly observed that full Christian maturity could only be reached as all members of the church served and supported one another within the body of Christ: 

“The whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love” (Ephesians 4:16).

Paul also argued in his letter to the Galatians that the bearing of one another’s burdens within the body of Christ fulfills Christ’s command to love your neighbor as yourself: 

“Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).

It is only as a Christian finds his or her place within the context of the church as a community of mutual love and support that he or she will find their hands steady just as Moses did.