The
Companion Bible puts chapter
xviii. into a parenthesis saying that
the actual event occurred later, and quoting
Deut. i. 7-14 says that Jethro’s
counsel was given and taken when Israel was ready to depart from Sinai. If this be true, then we must seek the lesson
intended by the introduction of Jethro’s coming and advice immediately
following the conflict with Amalek. By
nature we are apt to be extremists.
Written in the fly-leaf of our Bible we have the following extract from
the writings of Adolph Saphir:--
"Men undertake to be spiritual, and
they become ascetic; or endeavouring to
hold a liberal view of the comforts and pleasures of society, they are soon
buried in the world, and slaves to its fashions: or holding a scrupulous watch to keep out
every particular sin, they become legal and fall out of liberty; or charmed with the noble and heavenly liberty,
they run to negligible and irresponsible living; so the earnest become violent, the fervent
fanatical and censorious, the gentle waver, the firm turn bigots, the liberal
grow lax, the benevolent ostentatious."
The flesh profiteth nothing. It can find no place in the service of
God. We should repudiate it and all its works. Let us, however, not fall into the error of
confounding the flesh with the physical, or of believing that God’s service
entirely suspends all creature co-operation.
We find in Exodus xvii., xviii., much as they differ, that they have one item
in common, viz., the overtaxed servant Moses, and the provision for his support
and relief.
A seat and
a stay.
Israel’s victory hinged upon the uplifted
hands of Moses:--
“And it came to pass, when Moses held up
his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek
prevailed” (Exod. xvii. 11).
We read, however, that “Moses’ hands were
heavy”. The hands of Moses, under God,
were hands of power. The rod he held
aloft commanded the very forces of nature, yet what miracle was wrought to
sustain the weary servant of God upon whose continued intercession so much
depended? Some one gave him a seat!:--
“And they took a stone, and put it under him,
and he sat thereon” (xvii. -12-).
What Divine provision was there made to
keep Moses’ hands upheld?:--
“And Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands,
the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going
down of the sun” (Exod. xvii. -12).
While these three together may represent
the perfect intercession of prophet
(Moses), priest (Aaron), and king (Hur), for Hur was of Judah (I
Chronicle ii.), the lesson for us is rather the humbler one of the place of
fellowship in the service of God. It is
this truth that reappears in chapter
xviii.:--
“And it came to pass on the morrow, that
Moses sat to judge the people: and the
people stood by Moses from morning until evening” (“even until evening” some
MSS read) (verse 13).
It was bad for both Moses and the people; it was bad for the ministry of the truth, and
it was an unnecessary martyrdom. Jethro
saw this, and said:--
“Why sittest thou thyself alone . . . . .
thou wilt surely wear away, both
thou, and this people that is with thee;
for this thing is too heavy for thee;
thou art not able to perform it thyself alone” (verses 14 and 18). (The LXX reads, “thou wilt wear away with
intolerable weariness”).
Now it may be that the time will come when
we shall have to face the same conditions as closed round the last years of
Paul, and if so, grace will be given to yield, no, not for an hour, that
strength will be given to finish the course and fight the good fight. We are not, however, called upon to invite
persecution or to invent a martyr’s conditions, otherwise the service we have
in heart and hand will suffer, for “thou art not able to perform it”, and those
to whom we minister will suffer too, “both thou and this people with
thee”. Moses, great leader as he was,
was a meek man: the counsel of Jethro
commended itself to him:--
“Be thou for the people to Godward . . . .
. teach them ..... shew them the way and the work” (Exod. xviii. 19, 20).
The lesser duties that could be undertaken
by other men should be undertaken, or the work would otherwise suffer, and so
Jethro counselled that Moses should provide able men who feared God, men of
truth, hating covetousness, and that these should be placed over thousands,
fifties and tens, thus simplifying the labour and preventing trifles from
interfering with the main work.
The warfare and the warfare of God’s
people necessitates fellowship. It would
have been a display of the flesh had Moses refused the stone as a seat or the
loving support of Aaron and Hur. It
would have been the work of the flesh had Moses chosen rather to wreck the
ministry he had received for the apparently high quality of independence. There were circumstances wherein Paul was
justified in saying, “it were better for me to die” than to receive fellowship
(I Cor. ix. 15), but to take this as a general rule would be harmful and
foolish. The church at Philippi were
ever in close touch with the apostle and his needs:--
“In as much as both in my bonds, and in
the defence and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers of my grace”
(Phil. i. 7).
This he called their “fellowship in the
gospel from the first day” (i. 5). We
see how practical this fellowship was by turning to Phil. iv. 15:--
“Now ye Philippians know also, that in the
beginning of the gospel (as i. 5) … no
church communicated koinoo (in i. 5
it is koinonia) with me as
concerning giving and receiving, but ye only.”
The
burden and the
blessing.
We
are joyfully to expect our duties to increase, and be ready to respond to the
growing need. Moses did not for one
moment regret the multiplying of Israel which added to his burden; he rejoiced in it, but he accepted Jethro’s
counsel to meet the situation:--
“And I spake unto you at that time,
saying, I am not able to bear you myself alone.
The Lord your God hath multiplied you, and, behold, ye are this day as
the stars of heaven for multitude (The Lord God of your fathers make you a
thousand times so many more as ye are, and bless you, as He hath promised
you!) How can I myself bear your
cumbrance, and your burden, and your strife?” (Deut. i. 9-12).
There came a moment in the early church
when the apostles had to decide whether they were justified in leaving the ministry of the word
of God and prayer, or whether, following the lines of Exodus xviii., the time had not come to look out men of
honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom they could appoint over
the business that was intruding into the time and strength of the apostles
(Acts vi. 1-4).
It is not the will of God that either His
servants or their ministry should suffer through false sense of independence,
neither is it His will that there should be any leaning upon the arm of the
flesh or warring with its weapons. It is
most certainly for our guidance and warning that the lesson of Exodus xvii.
should be restated in Exodus
xviii.
It may be that some will be called upon to
spend and be spent in the service of the truth, but there is no merit in
“wearing out with intolerable weariness” through missing the wise counsel of
Jethro, or the simple sense of that unnamed child of Israel who provided a seat
for the great mediator — Moses.
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