You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?
Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.
Welcome to More Than Ink. You know when someone says, I've got some great advice for you, will you accept it? Depends on who they are, what their character is. It does depend on who they are. What if it was your father-in-law? Oh, I would have listened because of our relationship.
Yeah, exactly. Well, today Moses gets some great advice from his father-in-law today on More Than Ink. Well, good morning and welcome to our dining room table. I'm Dorothy. And I'm Jim, and we are at our dining room table.
We are, and we're sitting here with our coffee and with the Word of God open and ready to have the conversation with you, like we've been doing every week for quite some time now. As we explore our way through the Bible. Well, and we've been in the story of Exodus, so last week we met in depth Moses' father-in-law, Jethro. Jethro.
And his wife and two sons. And this week we're going to hear more from Jethro. He turns out to be a very wise man.
Yeah, yeah. And in fact, when we first were introduced to who he was, way back in chapter 2 of Exodus, his name wasn't Jethro, it was Ruel, right? Ruel. So Ruel, which I looked up, that means friend of God.
Right. Yeah, so this guy's got some chops in many respects. He's a man of deep integrity, you know, and a love for God. And he also, last time we were with him, he gets an earful for Moses. I mean, Moses clues him in on everything from when Moses left with his family and went back to Egypt, who were still in slavery at the time. And then now that they've been freed from Egypt, and he sits down with Jethro, tells him the whole story, and Jethro is just blown away.
I mean, it literally changes him when he hears the details of what he'd only heard in probably snatches as news that spread through the area as these things were happening. Yeah, so much that he says, blessed be the Lord who has delivered you, the Lord, the I Am God. Yeah, and he's glorified all through it.
Great conversation, great conversation. So today, Jethro is still in the camp. He's still with Moses and the nation of Israel. And the night before they had had, Jethro had brought a sacrifice. That's right. They had all sat down to a meal. Yeah. Moses and his brother Aaron and elders of Israel. And the elders, yeah, a big gathering together.
Yeah, a great scene, great warm scene. So Jethro has not hightailed it back to Midian. Not yet.
He's still in the camp, and some fascinating things happened today as a result of that. So we're jumping in to the next day, which happens in chapter 18, verse 13. Do you want me to start out? Okay, no, I'll start.
Okay, go ahead. So the next day, Moses sat to judge the people, and the people stood around Moses from morning till evening. When Moses' father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the people, he said, What is this that you're doing for the people?
Why do you sit alone and all the people stand around you from morning till evening? And Moses said to his father-in-law, Because the people come to me to inquire of God. When they have a dispute, they come to me, and I decide between one person and another, and I make them know the statutes of God and his laws. Moses' father-in-law said to him, What you're doing is not good.
You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to do it alone. You know, let's stop there for just a minute. Yeah.
So an outsider comes in and makes an interesting observation. Well, and think about this, we know that they're only about three months out of Egypt at this point, and there's some water under the bridge, right? Moses has had quite some time just bringing these people together and getting them going the same direction, right? They've complained to him, we've got no bread. They've complained to him, we've got no water. Grumble, grumble, grumble. Where are we going? Why did we come this way? We want to go back to Egypt.
It's been rocky, a rocky three months. Yeah, yeah. And that burden, the burden of all that strife and grumbling has fallen on Moses' shoulders.
Right. In fact, later, and I think you're going to mention this, Moses says, Hey, did I give birth to these people that I have to put up with this? That's Jim's translation, but it's like, yeah, this has been a tremendous burden on him. Just the strife that's come from the people. You'd think it would be enough for him to carry the burden of the plagues and getting, you know, Israel out of Egypt.
But now that they're in the desert, he's heavily burdened with the, you know, the normal strife and conflict. Okay, but he has become the guy that they've identified as saying we want to hear what God has to say. Let's ask Moses, because we can't hear from God ourselves. Well, you know, in a couple of weeks when we talk about what happens right after this, we'll find out that when God speaks, they don't want to hear. They want to hear from Moses instead.
Yeah, so what do you want anyway? But it's interesting that Moses says here, now they come to me and they bring me their issues, and I make known to them the statutes of God and his laws. Well, in the sequence of Exodus, that God has not officially given his statutes and laws yet.
Ten commandments are not yet. But Moses has an understanding of God's thinking and God's purpose and God's direction. And so the people recognize that and they come to him. So in a real sense, he is the sole source of understanding the laws of God and how things work. And so here you have this nascent nation, this new nation that's coming into being.
They don't have any history, well, not much history, in terms of how do you run a nation. And it's starting to wear on Moses. Well, and the question comes up in my mind, what was Aaron doing? Because if you remember, God had said to Moses at the very beginning, okay, you don't want to speak, Aaron will be your mouthpiece. Well, that was before Pharaoh, not necessarily before the people. So here we're seeing that the burden of leadership has fallen squarely on Moses.
Aaron's not carrying any of the burden, it seems like. And they really aren't yet a nation. They are a ragged crowd of loosely related people. And that's a great observation, because from this point on you're actually going to see God form a nation, which means laws and rules and a lot of ways of how you should structure a nation to work.
A form of government. And so that's what they need. And here you're actually seeing it in the flesh. You're seeing the fact that we have a justice system in one man, in Moses.
And when you've got half a million families out in the desert, that's not going to work for very long. I mean, there's going to be strife between people all the time. And so somehow you've got to rectify this. And I love how Jethro makes his observation, you know, why do you sit alone, it's just you. And all the people stand around you. By the way, that's the Semitic courtroom scene, is the judge always sits and the litigants always stand.
So this is what you've got. You've got basically people lined up waiting for the judge, Moses, to settle the disputes. Because Moses is the one who's connected to God and he understands God's justice. And we know that God sees what we do.
So if we come to Moses, then the real person who's at fault here will become clear if we come to Moses. But, you know, it's just wearing on him. So Jethro, a guy from the outside, looks in and says, you know, this isn't good. I like how he says that straight up in the end of 17. You know, what you're doing is not good.
And he's not saying that the judging is poor, the quality of the judging isn't poor. He's just saying that the manpower issue is going to wear you out. It's going to kill you, man. And Moses himself later says, this is killing me.
This is killing me. It's going to wear you out and it's going to wear them out because they have to wait in line so long. Exactly. And there's a phrase, I'm going to quote it wrong, I think it's a justice deferred is a justice denied. So really when justice waits too long, people feel like they're going to get justice even if they do eventually get to the judge. So timeliness is just a really big deal when it comes to justice. And that's not happening here. You're not getting timeliness.
You're standing in line in front of thousands of other people. So it's just tough. And this system had just sort of evolved as they're going about the business of getting out of Egypt and getting into the wilderness. And here comes Jethro, who's been serving as a priest for a very long time. He's a generation older than Moses and he just observes it and says, this is not a good way to do things.
Don't do this. I've always wondered that from where he came from in Midian, since he was a priest of Midian, whether his role there is also as a judge, that he sees how this works. I mean, just from a voice of experience, you have to sort of, you have to spread out the load a little bit. And my suspicion is that that's what they were doing in Midian. Because it just makes sense when you have an established, a long-standing established community in Midian. And this guy's a leader. Well, an understanding of the role of a priest, even in a pagan religion, is the priest speaks for the god you're coming to worship. Right, so Jethro presumably has some experience at speaking or interpreting what God intends people to understand.
Yeah, so this is a wonderfully practical thing that he's making an observation about his son-in-law. This isn't good. You can't keep doing this. Okay, so he says in verse 18, you are not able to do it alone. Now, verse 19, obey my voice.
I'll give you advice and God will be with you. You shall represent the people before God and bring their cases to God. And you shall warn them about the statutes and the laws and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do. Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe. And place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands of hundreds of fifties and of tens. And let them judge the people at all times. Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide themselves. So it will be easier for you and they will bear the burden with you. If you do this, God will direct you. You will be able to endure and all these people also will go to their place in peace. Boy, that's good advice.
Good, good advice. And there's some wonderful tidbits in this good advice that he gives. I like how in 19 he directs Moses. He says, look, what you need to do is you need to represent the people before God. That's praying for them, actually. You need to pray for these people and bring them to God.
Bring their cases to God. And you need to really focus on communicating the statutes and the laws. You need to teach.
You need to teach the law. And that's your job right there. And that really is a one man job. That's a one man job, exactly.
And it can be handled by one man. As we were talking before about Moses being kind of the sole leader of this giant group of people, suddenly in my mind I was thinking about Moses as a type of Christ. And what came to mind was what Paul says in 1 Timothy 5, 1-5, 2-5, there's one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus.
So that actually is the pattern. God said there is a mediator between God and men and it's one man. So here's Moses fulfilling that type, but we know that it is all pointing to the living word of God in Christ who is the one man who mediates between God and us. But here it's very practical.
It's very, very practical. It's not just a time issue, it's some other stuff. But Moses is the one that God called and said, even when Moses is saying, I can't speak to people and God says, I'll be with your lips. Okay, I'll give you Aaron. He'll be your speaker and stuff. But even after Aaron's added to the team, God says, I'll speak to you and you'll speak to Aaron. So you see this kind of passing down of the information that's important. And in this case, it's not just to Aaron, it's to a lot of people.
So he's remaining in that center role. God said, I want you to be connected to me and I'll tell you what you want. The one mediator, I think for the purpose of the type. I think so too.
I really think so too. So I like the fact, you know, we talk about pastors these days and what their role is. And I see in here the principle role of a pastor is to pray for the people, I mean to bring them before God and to teach them, to teach them what's going on. This whole idea about teaching the statutes and laws, I was thinking about this a lot. It's not just an academic issue, it's the fact that if you want to talk about forming a nation from scratch, which is what we're doing here, people will self-regulate to some degree based on knowing what you should and shouldn't do. And if the people love the law, then it's very seldom that you'll actually have to intercede and tell them you need to do this or not do that. You know, like if the law tells me I need to drive 55 on the freeway and stuff like that, I could say, well, I can safely drive 70 today and I could do that.
But if instead I say, well, you know, I understand why they said 55 because it's unsafe out here if I drive at 70 miles an hour. So because I love the people and I actually love this law because this loving law is looking after the people who are at risk, then I will incorporate that in my life and I'll self-regulate myself. So laws that are built into people's hearts are something that you don't have to bother Moses about. Okay, that's a really important distinction because we know, if you've ever read Lord of the Flies, people are not self-regulating for good.
People self-regulate on the basis of self-interest or pursuit of power or control. So, you know, that sense of right and wrong, yes, initially or at its very root comes from God, but all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We need an external source to understand what is right and wrong and then it's God who implants that in our heart and we become lovers of God's law. Right, yeah, even the giving of the law that Moses is going to do more in depth as the chapters go on is not going to keep them from sinning. But in a sense, what God is saying, here's what you need to do.
If you live like this in community, life will be good because God knows the way we're made. So I'm going to give you these laws and these are for your good. I mean, he says don't steal from one another.
I want to live in a place where people don't steal from each other. I mean, that's a good thing. So in a sense, even just the giving of the law means that the conflict load that Moses is dealing with might actually be prevented through the parties knowing God's law and justice.
Well, okay, so Jethro gives him some specific characteristics. Yeah, for these people. For those ones, look for helpers, right? The delegated ones. Able men who fear God, okay, well there it is, do I fear God?
Am I concerned about what God wants? And who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, right? So they can't be... So glad he included that part.
They can't be twisted. Well, those characteristics are recognized, fundamentally recognized as important. And that set me thinking of Psalm 15, which David wrote hundreds of years later. But he says, who, Lord, may bide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill? He who walks with integrity and works righteousness and speaks truth in his heart.
And then that Psalm ends up by saying, and he won't take a bribe against the innocent, right? So those characteristics ring true over centuries. We recognize that men of integrity who can't be bribed and can't be budged off what is true and good and right are essential to sound government. Yeah, it's a great list.
It could be more detailed, but I like it in general. Able men, so these are men who they know how to intercede in these kind of things. Able men, men who fear God, oh man, big, big deal. That's prerequisite number one.
That's prerequisite number one, yeah. Men who are trustworthy. Because Moses is going to entrust to these men the deal of judging. And if they judge poorly, this is going to get worse. So he needs to entrust to them for them to make decisions that Moses is not going to micromanage his way into.
He's got to allow them to do that. And hating a bribe, it's so practical. When we talk about corruption in government today, it's really all about bribes. It's about changing decisions based on money flowing and stuff like that. And it's not just not accepting a bribe. It's hating the whole concept of being able to be twisted on the basis of self-gain. That's right, yeah.
It's horrible because this is a position of serving people and not lining your pocket. And so if those two things get crossed, you get bad judgments and you get more turmoil in the country and Moses is back into trying to sort it out. So yeah, it's a great list and it's a list that, like you say, it consists with generalities that are just beautiful that go all the way into the New Testament. And pretty universally recognized.
Yeah, yeah. So he has to find these guys. Theoretically, God in his presence with Moses will point out the right people. And as I think about it, there's some ups and downs in terms of the judges in Israel. But I might point out, speaking of judges in Israel, that if you read the book of Judges.
Oh my gosh. Which is about people who decided things in conflict. Right.
That's why it's called Judges. Well, one of my favorites is Deborah and she's a woman. Oh, well, yes, okay.
Just wanted to let you know. We can divert to talk about Deborah. But I was thinking the repeated refrain in Judges is, and every man did what was right in his own eyes. Right in his own eyes. So that takes us back to this first important thing. Those who fear God. Yeah.
Not who think, okay, how can I line this up for my own benefit or what's right for me. This is my truth. That's your truth. Yeah.
Boy, do we hear that. And you mentioned Lord of the Flies. It was written as an experiment on what happens when you take innocent young English boys.
Right, school boys. Who technically are supposed to be pure in many respects. And it just becomes hellish in the end. So it's a great commentary on mankind. You let mankind design his own civilization with not a good understanding of the heart of humankind.
Right. And you're going to get a hellish kind of civilization. And God's saying the only way to prevent that is for me to tell you how a civilization is supposed to run. And that indeed is what Israel is meant to be for the world. It's supposed to be a model nation to show you how life really works in community if God is at the center of it. Right. And people who are in right relationship with God conduct themselves as a nation.
Conduct themselves. Yeah. Yeah. And as the, I call it an experiment, but as the history of Israel goes on and you even get through David and through Solomon, getting to the zenith of the great kings of Israel, I mean the reputation of what's going on in Israel goes worldwide. And even the Queen of Sheba comes up from Africa and says, I've got to find out what you're doing here.
I know. If you back up from there, the first king of Israel was who? Saul. Saul. The people did.
The people. Oops. That didn't work out well.
You know, we can talk another time about how that turned out. But the second king of Israel was David, a man after God's own heart, who God chose. Yeah.
Yeah. So the bottom line is the degree to which we allow God to be the center of our community as a gathered people, you will have peace and you'll have an organization that works. But if you put men at the center and leave God out, it just spirals downward. Well, sure, because then your decisions get made on the basis of what's good for me or what's true for me, not necessarily for you, and it devolves to a power struggle and an effort to control or get in my way and gather followers so I can sway the rest of the people.
Yeah, exactly. Instead of looking outside myself to the God who rules the universe in righteousness. Yeah, so here we have the birth of this nation and God's saying, you know, you need to get my laws and my statutes out because this is going to change everything and you need to reinforce by how things go here that I'm actually the king of this country and not you. And when you get up through the kings, like we mentioned David, David's principal advantage was the fact that he preserved the fact that God was the king of the nation, not himself.
That's right. And in doing so, things went well. And when David put himself on the throne and thought he was the king of the nation, things went down. So again, it's like Moses holding up his staff during the battle. You know, as long as you recognize that God's the one who's superintending on everything that's going on, God will bring order to it. And don't you think you can replace God because you're just not smart enough. So it's interesting here that Moses, it says in verse 24 now, pressing on, so Moses listened to the voice of his father-in-law and did all that he had said. You know, that's an interesting statement on Moses' humility. It is, it is, yeah. Here's this outsider coming in and saying, son, I think you need to change things.
He goes, okay. Well, based on his relationship with Jethro. Exactly, yeah. Okay, so verse 24, Moses listened. Verse 25, Moses chose able men out of all Israel and made them heads over the people, chiefs of thousands of hundreds and fifties of tens, and they judged the people at all times. In any hard case they brought to Moses, but any small matter they decided themselves.
Then Moses let his father-in-law depart and he went away to his own country. But what a great contribution. Oh, yes.
What a great contribution. And this whole idea about delegating to able men, I mean, that comes up in other passages. Did you get Deuteronomy 1?
I do, yeah. Moses at the end of his life makes a commentary to the people on this very thing when he's, and this is right before they enter into the Promised Land, just before Moses dies. And he says when after they leave Sinai, so after the giving of the law, he says in Deuteronomy 1, 9, and he's reviewing their own history for them. I spoke to you at that time saying, I'm not able to bear the burden of you alone. The Lord your God has multiplied you and behold you are this day as the stars of heaven from multitude.
May the Lord your God of the fathers increase you a thousandfold more than you are and bless you just as he promised you. But how can I bear the load and the burden of you and your strife? Choose wise and discerning and experienced men from your tribes and I will appoint them as your heads.
And then you answered me and said, the thing which you've said is good to do. So I took the heads of your tribes, wise and experienced men and appointed them heads over you, leaders of thousands and of hundreds and of fifties and of tens and officers for your tribes. Then I charged your judges at that time saying, here are the cases between your fellow countrymen and judge righteously between a man and his fellow countrymen or the alien who is with you. You shall not show partiality and judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not fear man for the judgment is God's and the case that's too hard for you, you shall bring to me and I will hear it. And I commanded you at that time all the things that you should do. So there he is reviewing for them.
This is exactly what we do. Deuteronomy is life changing. And we've mentioned this before, but Deuteronomy is Moses's first hand commentary on this history we're reading.
On the whole 40 years. It's Moses saying, let me tell you what happened there. And there he goes right there in Deuteronomy. Well, he's telling it to the new generation, to the generation that was born in the wilderness. That's right. Who didn't live through what we're reading. Right.
Their parents did, but they didn't. Yeah. So he's explaining to them, this is how we got this system. Yeah. So you fill in the details when you read Deuteronomy with Moses commenting on this actual history for our benefit.
It's really good. And there's another place too where Moses mentions this just before the big quail incident in Numbers. Yeah. But the basic thing there is I need some more people to carry the burden of all the grumbling.
But it clearly is a gigantic load on him. So this is God seeing to the humanity of Moses and saying, yeah, we need to delegate so we can take this off his shoulders, but I don't want you to stop bringing the people before me and I don't want you to stop teaching what my statutes and laws are. So that's what they go into the promised land.
Remembering it's the first thing that Moses mentions in his commentary going into the promised land. Right. He reminds them this is the way things are going to work. Right. No partiality and hear the small and the great alike. Yeah. Small and the great alike. Everybody has access.
Yeah. So this is how the new society will run and this is how we will decide all these disputes between people and one person can't do this. It also reminds me when Paul was writing to the pastoral letters we call them when he's training up Timothy and Titus. The letters he writes to Timothy are really to train him to be kind of a pastor. And he said in 2 Timothy 2, he says, you know, the things that I've taught you, Timothy, you need to entrust those to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. And so this principle keeps going on and Paul even realizes I can't do the whole show. Timothy, you need to continue this.
Titus, you need to continue this. And to this very day, that's why the word is so central to a lot of congregations is disseminating, disseminating who God is, teaching them about what his ideal is for us living in community with one another, what Paul calls the body of Christ and how God needs to stay central to how your gathered assemblies work. And if you do that, if you do that, then God promises a community that will be unlike anything else you've ever, ever seen before in human history because the Creator God is at the center of it rather than me. And because of the continuity of discipleship.
Discipleship and actually is a theme in Deuteronomy, the discipleship of fathers to sons, sons to sons. Yeah. Well, we're done with Jethro. We're out of time.
Yeah. And we won't see Jethro ever again. But his contribution was just stellar and we really appreciate it for it and it really took a load off of Moses' shoulders. So we're glad you're with us looking at Jethro and next week we're going to actually talk about laws and statutes a little bit as we come to the mountain of God and we'll see God bring things to Israel. So join with us next week on More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org. Bring things to Israel. Yeah, I don't know what you meant.
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