was not about a man raising his arms in the air or not. It was always about whether or not God was preaching the gospel through Israel for the rest of human history after him to receive. To put his arms down would have been to surrender to the unbelieving error that God must not actually be among them.
I remember a time when a woman who was not very old came down with a sudden sickness and was immediately on the brink of death. It was quite sudden and certainly a shock to the congregation. Everyone was praying for healing, despite the fact that hospice had been called in and the family had gathered to say their farewells. Remarkably, and in an unforeseen manner, this woman began to come out of the sickness and nearly as rapidly returned to a healthy form of functioning.
A friend was leading the call to worship the Sunday after this woman’s recovery and she chastised the congregation. “How dare we?” she said. “How dare any of us suggest that this woman’s tenacity is the cause for her recovery. How dare we use quippy sayings about us knowing she had it in her. We have prayed to God as our only hope, as the One who holds the power of life and death in his hands. If this woman has recovered, God alone should get the glory.”
It was a prophetic rebuke. How easy it is for us to be unbelieving in reference to God’s sovereignty over and involvement in the world. One could enter any number of jokes here about praying petitioners saying, “Forget it God, a helicopter is here now.”
This concept of believers being people who live in dependency on God weaves through the entire Bible. We find it in the letter that Paul wrote to the church in Galatia. The primary issue with these folks is that they had started flirting with a return to the customs and traditions of Judaism. That, on its own, isn’t the worst thing about their condition. The recovery of things like circumcision and food laws was most problematic because they stripped Christ from his rightful position as the fulfillment of these things, and they were rejecting the sufficiency of Christ in relation to both justification and sanctification. This Galatian error is best summed up in the following manner:
Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? (Gal 3:3)
The fact that Paul has to address the error in how these folks lived—after being justified—shows that the poison of a works-based righteousness has crept beyond the borders of justification and has made its way into the fabric of sanctification as well. They had forgotten the simple truth that a mature Christian was not someone who could spar with theologians in the original languages. Not at all. A mature Christian is someone who has walked with the Lord for a long time and never put their arms down. To suggest that a continuance in the faith looks different than dependency on the Spirit is foolishness, according the Spirit of God:
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. (Heb 11:24–26)
Moses is preaching a sermon to all the believers that would come after him. He is showing the church, more than anyone else, what godly leadership looks like. Firstly, it is dependent on membership in the body. Aaron was Moses’ brother. Josephus, the Jewish historian, informs us that Hur was Miriam’s husband, making him Moses’ brother-in-law.7 He is Caleb’s son, making the kinds of lineages represented in this battle strongly contrasted. We hear about Hur a couple of times. We hear about Aaron more so. They were both men that God had given Moses to help him in leading the people of God.
Moses began to grow weary, and Aaron and Hur were the ones to place him on the rock, and to hold up his arms. They helped him show the people of God what dependency on God looked like. They came alongside him, literally, and helped him to do his job. This is kingdom leadership. It is leadership that cannot be accomplished without help. Kingdom leadership is encompassed on all sides by dependency: Moses is seated on the Rock, hands raised to heaven, arms held up by his friends. Now we begin to see what makes Moses such a great believer, his posture is that of a child.
Here is the lesson of perseverance as well. Moses did not persevere. He was persevered. All endurance requires an external perseverant. For the believer, this is ultimately promised to be God himself.
Being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. (Col 1:11–12)
These hands that are being held in the air are the very hands that held the tablets of the Law. They are the hands that carried the Word of God to the people of God, and now God is fashioning them to show the people of God how to abide in him. Just as Jesus declared that the Word of God was a thing never to pass away, so the Rock stands as this fixed marker, unwavered by the years and the calamities. Should this all go on for millions of years from now, there will be men and women of God whom he raises up, who place themselves on the very same Word and will not be shaken. They will stand in the line of Moses, whom God established as an example for New Covenant believers throughout the world, of what it looks like to be shipwrecked upon the shores of the living God.
I Need Thee, Every Hour
(Annie S. Hawks, 1872)
I need thee every hour,
in joy or pain;
come quickly and abide,
or life is vain.
I need thee, O I need thee,
every hour I need thee.
O bless me now, my Savior;
I come to thee.
7. Josephus, Antiquities Book III, 69.
Chapter 6
If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it you profane it. (Exod 20:25)
There is a story that Melody Green tells in her book, No Compromise, about her late husband, Keith Green. They were passing a field one day and Keith made mention of how it was such a beautiful spot. Melody held her breath and waited for what would come next. Historically, he would remark that a field like that should be used to build a Bible college, or an orphanage, but this one time he made no follow-up comment. She says in the book that it was such a profound event, and one that showed that a true maturity was taking place. Keith was able to give credit to God’s creativity and goodness, without needing to perfect it with his own finishing touches.8 Beauty is sufficient in itself without a necessary utilitarian application other than pleasure. We approach something akin to this when we look at this passage in Exodus concerning the earthen altar.
An altar was a place whereupon God was worshiped. In the Old Covenant, the act of giving the best part of one’s wealth, which was outwardly signified more in one’s agricultural assets than anything else, was one of the primary ways in which God was worshiped. The concept that God has required that he be worshiped in certain ways, and not in others, is an intertestamental concept. There are a number of ways in which God frames prerequisites for proper worship, such as the passage in question. It is safe to say that, in the New Covenant, this regulative principle is reduced to one sharp inward requirement: worship must be done in spirit and in truth.
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. (John 4:24)
There are other passages
