Thurs.’s Devo -God is My Banner

Read: Exodus 17:8-19:15; Matthew 22:34-23:12; PSalm 27:7-14; Proverbs 6:27-35 The people of Amalek came out to attack the Israelites. Amelek means “perversion”. God told Moses to pick some men to go and fight them and to stand on top of the hill holding the staff of God in his hand. Whenever Moses raised his staff they would gain the advantage but if he dropped his arms from exhaustion, they would start losing. God wanted them to know that they were only going to win if he helped them. Finally, Aaron and Hur held his hands till sun set up so they could win. God told him to write it down: God would erase the memory of the Amelekites from the earth. We will read later that God told Saul to do this very thing. God gave them another name for him: Yaweh-Nissi which means “God is my Banner”. Moses hands were the balusters that held up God’s invisible banner when they fought. Praise is our weapon against the enemy and when we raise our hands we are raising God’s banner. Moses then sent for his family to come and meet him. His two sons and his wife came. His first son was named Gerhom which means “I have been a stranger in a foreign land.” Moses had been raised by Egyptians and Midianites. He had lived as a stranger in a foreign land. His second son was named Eliezer which means “the God of my ancestors was my helper”. He recognized that it was the God of Abraham that had helped him and not the Egyptian gods he had been raised to worship. Jethro also came to meet him and to hear first hand how the Lord had rescued them out of Egypt. Jethro had been Moses’ mentor to teach him God’s ways. He was a priest in Midian and knew the Lord. He observed how Moses spend his whole day being the judge of all the people’s cases and told Moses he was going to wear himself out. He advised him to find men who hated bribes and teach them God’s ways. They could handle the small cases and he could just handle the hard ones. They came to Mt. Sinai exactly two months after they had left Egypt. God told Moses to tell the people to prepare to meet with Him. They were to wash their clothes and abstain from having sex until after He came because he was coming on the third day. In Matthew, the Pharisees took Jesus aside and tried to trap him again. They asked him what was the most important commandment in the law of Moses. Jesus told them to love the lord your God will all you heart, soul and mind and the second was equally important…to love your neighbor as you love yourself. All the other commandments would be met if they just met these two. Then Jesus asked them whose son they thought the Messiah was. They told him the son of David. So Jesus asked them why David called the Messiah his Lord in one of his Psalms (Psalm 110:1). They had no answer. Then Jesus nailed the Pharisees. He told the people to listen to what they say about scripture but not how they walk. They were nothing but hypocrites that did their worship for show when they hearts were far from God. Only the Messiah is the Good Teacher because he does what he teaches. Lord, you are our banner. May we raise you high and exalt your name in our lives.