Why Do We Need One Another?

Let's turn in our Bibles now to the book of Exodus. It's found in the Old Testament way back in the beginning of the Bible. If you don't have a Bible with you, turn to page 72 of the Bibles that you will find underneath a nearby chair. And the passage I'm going to read is from Exodus chapter 17, Exodus 17 verses 8 through 16. In recent weeks, we've been working through a series of messages that I've entitled. Why do we do the things we do? We've been looking at a number of different practices in the Christian church and some of the practices that are unique to our church. In an effort to define the culture that we're seeking God to build here at UPC. A couple of weeks ago, a few weeks ago, we looked at why we celebrate communion, which we are going to do again today. We also have looked at why we worship the way we do, why we obey God's laws. And last week, we talked about why is it a good idea to join a church? Today, the subject is why do we need one another? One of the things that we talk about here at UPC a lot is community. We talk about the need to be in a life group, for example, or the need to belong to a Bible study. One of our three key goals, knowing God, growing together, serving others, the one in the middle, growing together is something we talk a lot about here at UPC, the need for relationships. The question is why do we do that? Why do we emphasize loving relationships within the church body? In other words, why do we need one another? That's the subject. Let's look together at Exodus chapter 17, beginning in verse 8. Listen carefully. This is God's word. The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Refidim. Moses said to Joshua, choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands. So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron, and her went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning. But whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses' hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and her held his hands up. And on one side, one on the other, so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword. Then the Lord said to Moses, write this on a scroll as something to be remembered, and make sure that Joshua hears it, because I will completely blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. So Moses built an altar and called it, the Lord is my banner. He said, for hands were lifted up to the throne of the Lord. The Lord will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation. The word of the Lord. Her name was Jean Nidech. Jean weighed 214 pounds and wore a size 44 dress. She desperately wanted to lose weight. She lived in Queens, New York. So Jean went down to a free diet clinic that was sponsored by the New York City Department of Health and got on an eating plan. She tried all sorts of fat diets before, but this time, she said, it's going to be different. The problem was Jean Nidech loved eating cookies. She was obsessed with them. They were her addiction. But she got on this diet that she got from the New York people, and after several months of effort and denial and exercise, Jean had lost 20 pounds, not bad, but not good enough. She still couldn't keep away from cookies. So Jean tried something radical. She picked up her phone and called six of her friends who were also overweight. She said, come over to my living room on such and such a night, and that's exactly what they did. When they arrived, Jean told her friends her secret. She admitted that she couldn't stop eating cookies. And then she asked her six friends to join in on her diet and give her the support and the accountability that she needed to lose weight. One by one, what happened was, these friends of Jean went around the circle, confessing their own weaknesses and their own failings. And at the end of the evening, these seven people covenanted together to help one another lose weight. The date was September 1961. Not only did Jean Nidech lose 72 pounds, but her revolutionary idea of losing weight with a group of friends captured the attention of other people. Soon Jean was squeezing 40 people into her little Queen's apartment. Two years later, Shadla had a public meeting in a rented loft and 400 people showed up. Later on, Jean incorporated more and more groups like hers sprung up around the country. And today, you guessed it, almost 50 years later, over a million people in 30 different countries attend 250,000 different meetings of weight watchers. All because one woman had the audacity to ask a few friends for help. The story before us that I read a moment ago was about somebody else who needed help. His name was Moses. Now, you know Moses, he was a great man. He was an inspiring leader. He had confronted the mighty Pharaoh, right? The King of Egypt. He had delivered the Israelites out of bondage. He had parted the Red Sea. He was a great man, but in this story, you find out that Moses couldn't do it by himself. He needed the help of friends, and so do you. So this morning, I want to talk to you from this story and tell you three things. First, the battle is intense. Secondly, God is with you in that battle, but thirdly, to fight the battle, you need people too. And if you'll listen to this, we'll find out together why we need one another. Let's start with the first point. The battle is intense. I hope you followed the story. As the story opens, what's happening is that these people, the people of Israel, are making their way up out of Egypt through the desert of Sinai on their way to the Promised Land. But along the way, they have their first run-in with enemies. Look at verse 8. It says in verse 8 that the Amalakites came and attacked the Israelites at Refidim. Amalakites. Now, who in the world were the Amalakites? Well, they were descendants of Issa. You'd have to look around in the Old Testament a little bit to figure all this out. So let me help you out. They were descendants of Issa. Now Issa was the brother of Jacob. And so his descendants had this long-standing grudge against the Israelites who came from Jacob, and you'd have to go back to Genesis 27 to find out why. The grudge had to do with the fact that Jacob stole Issa's birthright. And ever since then, ever since Genesis 27, the descendants of Issa had this grudge against the Israelites. And now, when you come to Exodus 17, these Amalakites were un nomadic people, living in the south part of what we today call the Holy Land or Palestine. They were one of the most stubborn, one of the most persistent, one of the most harassing enemies of Israel. If you were to read through Exodus and Numbers and Deuteronomy and First Samuel, some of these Old Testament books, you'll see that the Amalakites came against the Israelites time and time again to try to destroy them. And they weren't completely defeated until the time of David, which was several hundred years after this. And so you can appreciate how the Amalakites figured into the history of Israel back in the Old Testament. These people were merciless. They were merciless in the way that they did war. Look at these verses from the book of Deuteronomy. It says, this is Moses speaking, now it's much, much later, right? Deuteronomy is later than Exodus. And he's looking back on this exact same episode. And Moses says, remember what the Amalakites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and cut off all who were lagging behind. They had no fear of God. It's sort of indicative of how merciless these people were. And so in verse 9, Moses calls up his young protege Joshua, by the way, that's the first time you meet Joshua in the Old Testament. He calls Joshua up and says, Joshua, choose some men and go fight the Amalakites. Now I want you to keep in mind something. Don't idealize these people, these Israelites, because they had no organized army. They just left Egypt a few months before this. They had been slaves, not soldiers. They were hungry at this point. They were thirsty. They were restless. They were tired. Parents, you have trouble getting your children from one end of the mall to the other, right? We're talking here about the desert of Palestine, walking, walking, walking for days on end. They wanted, these people wanted to turn around and go back to Egypt. They wanted to give up. They were that dispirited. They hadn't bargained on Amalakites. You've been there, right? You've been there. You may be there this morning. You've felt under attack, too. You know what this is like. You've felt like giving up. You've had your hopes up, right, only to be disappointed. I know you have. You've taken the errors of the enemy. Things didn't work out like they were supposed to for you. Your friend betrayed you. Your parents abused you. Some of you. Your boyfriend dropped you. Your wife rejected you. Or you got laid off some of you did. This is no time to be looking for a job, right? It came out of nowhere. It happened at the worst possible time. So what does it feel like for you? Feels like God is kicking you when you're down. How are you going to pay your bills? How are you going to send your kid to college? Those are some of the worries that are right here in this room this morning. How are you ever going to get out of debt? Or for some of you, the thought is, why did it have to be cancer? And why is it me who can't find somebody to marry? And why was it we who had a miscarriage? Am I always going to be single? Some of you are thinking? Others of you are thinking, am I always going to be married? Will I ever get victory over this sin? This depression, this addiction, this habit, see the amalachites aren't really all that far away. We've all got these amalachites in our lives. We've all got these challenges that we're facing that are too much for us. The world, the flesh, the devil, these enemies, they're all challenging us and knocking at the door of our heart all the time. And so the battle is intense. That's the first thing I hope you see in this passage. Let's go on to see what it also teaches us in the second place. Not only is the battle intense, but the good news is, God is with you in the battle. I hope you know this. God is with you in the battle. Look at verse 9, it says in verse 9 that Moses said to Joshua, choose some of our men and go out to fight the amalachites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands. The staff of God. Now what is the staff of God? Some kind of magic stick? Was it a lightsaber perhaps? No, it wasn't that. Moses's staff was a symbol of the presence of God for the Israelites. This was the same staff by the way that Moses had used to raise up in the air and to part the Red Sea. This was the same staff going back even further that God had turned into a snake. Do you remember that back in Exodus chapter 4? Moses had used it also to turn the Nile River into blood. It was the staff that he used to bring the plague of frogs and gnats up all over Egypt. This was that staff, even earlier in this very chapter. Moses used this same staff to strike the rock and produce water for the people to drink. So what was the staff but a visible representation of the presence of God with his people? That's what it was. Then in verse 10, we're told that Moses took this staff to the top of the hill, overlooking the valley below, and he raised it over his head and kept it there so that all the Israelites soldiers down below could look up and see what was the representation of the presence of God in their midst. And verse 15 says that the staff was to serve kind of like a banner. Did you notice that word banner in verse 15, kind of like a banner to remind the people below that the Lord was fighting their battle and that the Lord was going to wipe out the amalachites on their behalf. It was really a way for God to say, hey, look at me. Look at me. I am with you in the battle. I am not going to desert you. So trust in me. Now let that sink in for a moment because isn't it true that when things happen to us that we don't like, a lot of times we just forget all about God. We stop praying. We stop trusting God. We take our eyes off the Lord. And so it's important to see that God wanted a visible sign of His presence among the people so that they would not forget He was there. But how easily we do that when we're suffering. We say, I got to get out of this situation. So we plot, don't we? We plot and we worry. We get upset. And like I said, we stop praying and we stop trusting in God. And that is the absolute worst thing that we could do when we're struggling. Because look carefully at verse 11. In verse 11 are these amazing words. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning. But whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalakites were winning. Now what's the point of that? The point of it is that Moses uplifted hands, represent prayer. His uplifted hands represent connection to God. And notice that the battle was won or lost, not by how competent the soldiers were. But by how connected they were to God in prayer. Now that's a profound lesson. No, don't ever forget it. The battle was won or lost, not by how competent the soldiers were, not by how strong they were, not how by how skilled and how strategic they were, but how well connected they were with God through prayer. So the question this morning that you need to ask yourself is, what are my Amalakites? Or maybe it's who are my Amalakites? What are you facing this morning? What is the battle that you're in today? Maybe it's losing weight like Jean Nidech. That's a good battle. Or maybe it's saving your marriage or dealing with unemployment or loneliness or rejection by a friend or maybe it's sexual temptation or having parents who don't understand you. Whatever it is, victory over your Amalakites depends more on how well you stay connected to God than it depends on how competent or clever or strong or talented you are. Power comes where, not from independence, but from dependence upon God. Strength comes not from strength, but from weakness. Paul knew this, didn't he? The Apostle Paul had something called a thorn in his flesh. That was his Amalakite. We don't know what the thorn in the flesh was, but whatever it was, we do know from 2 Corinthians chapter 12 that he begged God to get it away from him. He asked God repeatedly, Lord, take this thing away from me. Take these Amalakites away from me, defeat them, Lord, just get them out of my life. And God said no. And we read in 2 Corinthians 12, that God said to Paul, my grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness. We Paul knew what we're learning here in Exodus chapter 17, that victory comes from depending on God, not on yourself. Victory comes from being weak, not strong. That's totally counterintuitive, isn't it? But the way to be weak and depend on God is through prayer. So what have we learned so far? First, the battle is intense. Second, God is with you in the battle. So depend not on yourself, but upon him. But I want to focus now on the third thing that we learned from this little story. That to fight this battle, you need more than prayer. Now I'm not speaking heresy, but I'll say it again, to fight your battle, you need more than prayer. You know, I mean, I meet a lot of people who say I'm praying about this. I'm praying about that. But then I ask them, do you have somebody in your life who's helping you with it? And they feel very detached from other people. So you need more than just prayer. You need people too to fight your battle. Look at verses 12 and 13. When Moses' hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and her held his hands up, one on one side, one on the other, so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword. I love this story. See what we're learning is that though God was fighting for the Israelites, Moses needed Aaron and her also to help him hold up the staff. See Moses was just like Jean Nidech that I talked about earlier, who needed friends. You also need friends. Moses had to have friends alongside him because prayer wasn't enough. Moses had to depend upon his brother, Aaron, and his brother-in-law, or the battle would be lost. How many of you like, like I do, the show 24? Got any 24 fans out here? Quite a number. A lot of Christians have a Jack Bauer complex. Don't you know this? Jack Bauer, he's in all these problems, right? And somebody comes up to Jack Bauer and says, Jack Bauer, get the FBI involved. No, no, no, we don't need the FBI. Get the police involved. No, we don't need the police. Get these people involved. No, we don't need them either. He's always trying to do it himself. Well, fortunately, he's got Tony at least right now. I think Tony's going to turn on him, but anyway, a lot of people have this Jack Bauer complex. And we think we've got to solve all of our problems ourselves. Friends, that is not God's will for us. God brings errands and hers into our lives to hold up our hands so that we can defeat our amalachides. We need one another. Why? Why do we need one another? Four reasons. The first reason that you and I need one another is that we are by nature relational beings. God has created us to be in many ways like him and God is a relational being. God is a what? Trinity. He exists and has always existed in relationship with the three persons of the Trinity, father, son, and Holy Spirit. And we are like him. We are relational. We need one another. Second reason. Why do we need one another? Because there are some things that we simply cannot do by ourselves. You and I are incomplete in and of ourselves. I don't have all the gifts and abilities I need to make it in life and neither do you. I've got blind spots, I've got personality flaws, I've got biases, and I need other people around me who can complete me, who can compliment me. I've got gaps. Remember the first Rocky movie? Paulie comes up to Rocky and he says, Rocky, what do you see in her speaking of Adrian? And what does Rocky say? I've got gaps. She fills my gaps. And that's the way it is in the body of Christ. We complete one another. We fill each other's gaps. The third reason we need one another, we get tired and weary. We're just like Moses. We get tired of the battle. In verse 12, we read that Moses' hands grew tired and that word in the Hebrew language tired means heavy. His hands grew heavy. He was going to drop the duty. He was going to not be able to complete the task by himself. See a friend can hold your arms up for you. A band of brothers or sisters can keep you going. A small group can help keep you depending on God. You know, even Jesus needed that. Remember Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane? It was just hours before he was going to be arrested and tried and condemned as a criminal and hung on a cross. And what did Jesus choose to do? He chose Peter, James and John, to be with him in the Garden of Gethsemane. When they fell asleep on him, he says my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Can't you stay here and keep watch with me? Even Jesus needed companionship. You know, I know a guy, I know a guy who when he faces sexual temptation and feels like he's going to cave into it, picks up the phone and calls a friend of his to tell him I'm struggling right now. Will you pray for me? You know what that is? It's a sign of strength, not weakness. It's a sign of somebody who knows he needs help. He needs a friend to hold his hands up. The fourth and final reason why we need one another is that God has ordained that people like you and me, be his body here on earth. God calls us the body of Christ. We are supposed to be the hands and feet of Jesus because Jesus is not here. He's in heaven. You and I are the hands and feet of Christ. I love what Dietrich Bonhoeffer says. He wrote a book called Life Together. Let me show you this rather long quotation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a man who knew the importance of having friends because of his own trials and tribulations. Let me read this for you. He says, God has willed that we should seek and find his living word in the witness of a brother. Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged. For by himself, he cannot help himself. He needs his brother, man, as a bearer and proclamer of the divine word of salvation. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother. His own heart is uncertain. His brothers is sure. See that captures what we're learning this morning that we need other people in our lives in order to help us when we're tired and weary, when we're incomplete and when we're weary of the battle. So ask your question, do you have some people in your life who help you through it? Is there somebody in your life who knows your secrets and loves you anyway? And those of you who are married, I'm not just talking about your spouse. Do you have at least a couple of people who are holding up your hands? Here's what I want you to do this morning as we come to a close. I want you to join the order of Aaron and her. I want you to recognize the importance of having friends around you who help you through and being a friend to somebody else. So four things. The first thing I want you to do to carry away with you today is I want you to repent. You and I need to repent of our independence. We all have this native independence streak that says I'm going to be a jackbauer. I'm going to be a lone ranger. I'm going to make it. I'm going to bowl my way through it. I don't want to let anybody know of my weakness. I don't want somebody else to know where I'm failing. Repent of that. It's against God's will. It's sin. And then the second thing I want you to do, after you've said, Lord, forgive my independent spirit, here's a project for you to tackle this week. It's for all of us. I don't care how old you are. I want you to ask somebody for help this week. Can you do this? Ask someone for help this week. Here are a few examples. Ask somebody to pray for you. There's something that you're dealing with, some amalachites, if you will. Ask somebody to specifically pray for you this week. That would be an example. Another example is to tell somebody that you're struggling. Send them an email. Say, let's get together. Share something with you that I need to get off my chest. Another example. Ask someone for advice. Some of you are facing decisions, and you're not asked a soul for counsel. A good way to be weak and to depend on Aaron and her is to ask somebody, tell me what you think I should do. Then another example is to ask somebody to help you do a job around the house. Maybe you've got a painting project. Maybe you've got something to do. Your mom and dad has asked you to do something you don't want to do by yourself. Ask a friend. I'm sure they'd love to let you do that. Ask somebody to help you with a job. So that's the second point. The third thing I want you to do is to help somebody this week by encouraging them. Would you think of one person this week in our church, or not in our church? It doesn't matter. Someone in your circle of influence that you know needs an Aaron or a her. And then go be that person to them. It could be a card in the mail. It could be a phone call. It could be, let me take you out to lunch. Let me meet you. Let's talk. I want to encourage you. Maybe it's go visit them at home, whatever in the hospital, whatever it might be. Be an encourager to somebody this week. Do it every day. That's why I put it every day this week. And then finally, I want to speak to those of you who feel like you're not connected here at UPC at all. There are a few of you among us. You don't feel like you've got anybody that you could do these things with. So I'm going to challenge you particularly to take a step toward other people. Take a step toward other people. And here's how I'm going to ask you to do that. Do me a favor and pull out your bulletin for a moment. And specifically, look at this piece of paper called announcements. This is your ticket toward other people. And there are all kinds of things that I've highlighted that will help you take a step to other people. For instance, look at the top there. I'm looking at the announcements. You see right there, announcements. Up at the top it says adult Sunday school classes. That's a way to connect. Just step into that other building right after this is over. And go meet with an adult class. Just sit there. You'll meet some people. And then look about halfway down the annual camping trip. Like Chris and Anna said earlier, we're taking registration for that. It's coming up in March. A great way to meet other people and connect. Maybe you hate camping. Do it anyway. Look at the very bottom. And they mentioned this too. If you're a college student, there's a free lunch for you after church today. That's a good way to connect. Open up in the inside. Watch at Moes next Sunday for the young adults. If you're a young adult, there's a great way to connect. If you're in middle school, if we have a middle school this morning, tonight they're having a super bowl party. I mean, you just go all the way down this thing. The men, we're going to see the magic play, the pistons. The last, what is that, a Friday, February the 27th. Go out to the table, sign up and go. If you're a woman and you're not connected on the third page, we've got women's Bible studies that are listed there. So you get the point. Take a step of faith toward other people. That's a great way to get connected and to start experiencing the strength of friendship. Well, let me bring this thing to a close. Back at verse 12, when we were looking earlier at verse 12, it says that Aaron and her held his hands up. Right? We should look at that word held. It's a really important Hebrew word. And the reason is that that word held is applied to God many times in the Old Testament. For example, in Isaiah 41, Isaiah 41, 10 says this, so do not fear. For I am with you. Do not be dismayed. For I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you by my righteous right hand. The same word for hold as used here in verse 12. What do we learn by that? Do you know why you can be an Aaron or a her to someone else? It's because God is an Aaron and a her to you. It says that he upholds you by his righteous right hand. From the cross, Jesus stretched out his arms and was the ultimate Aaron and her to you and me because Jesus Christ stretched his arms out and forgives you of your sins and brings you into relationship with the Father because he was the ultimate Aaron and her. You can hold someone else's hands up. We come to the table today. Let's ask God for grace to be the body of Christ to each other, to be the Aaron and the her to people who are tired and who need our encouragement. Let's pray. Father, we come to the table this morning and as we do, we come to remember Christ. We come to remember that one ultimate act of sacrifice that Jesus did two thousand years ago at Calvary and Lord Jesus, we come to thank you that you are now calling us through your spirit to leave today and to be an Aaron and a her to others. Thank you, Jesus, that you lifted up our hands. You lifted up our souls. You saved us from our sin and misery and so we ask now today, Lord first, that you would forgive us for the times in which we have not loved others. Jesus, Lord, for our selfishness, forgive us for our timidity and sharing our weakness. Lord, we ask that you will forgive us and strengthen us that today, beginning again today, we will go forth to need other people, to be weak, to be dependent, not only upon you, but upon others. And we ask that you will bless now this time as we celebrate your supper together in Jesus' name, Amen.