No Hero-Ball - Pastor Tom Loghry
In Exodus 18, we see Moses taking on an overwhelming amount of work acting as judge for the Israelites. His father-in-law Jethro offers a solution.
Transcript:
This reading is from Exodus 18:13 through 17. "The next day, Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around him from morning until evening. When his father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, 'What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge while all these people stand around, around you from morning until evening?' Moses answered him, 'Because the people come to me to seek God's will. Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God's decrees and instructions.' Moses's father-in-law replied, 'What you're doing is not good.'"
Let us pray as we come before God's word
Father, as we approach your word this morning, we pray that you'd open up our hearts. Father, expose our hearts before our very eyes, our very own eyes, Father. Show us those areas in which you are calling upon us to be humble and to share our labors with others and to not rely upon our own strength. We ask this, Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. You may be seated.
If you watch football, then you know that last Sunday was a rough one for the Patriots. If you're not into football, I'll just put it like this. The Patriots star quarterback Drake Maye performed in ways that lost the game for them. Now, his poor performance could be broken down in a few different ways, but one major problem is that it seems like he's trying to do too much for the team on his own.
Instead of taking what he can get, which admittedly isn't always a lot, but instead of just doing that, he's tried to play the hero a bit too much, putting too much on his own shoulders by forcing the ball into places where the other team is able to intercept it and take over possession. Now, of course, he's not trying to throw away the game.
He really wants to win. In fact, he feels the pressure to win from the media, from the fan base, probably even from his own expectations. The trouble, however, or at least part of the trouble is that he's not accepting the reality that he needs to work within his limits. Now, as we see in today's passage, Drake Maye isn't the only one who tries to play hero ball.
While it has been God who has brought the Israelites out of Egypt and through various trials and hardships, Moses has been at the head of the people, leading them all along the way. As we imagine this kind of situation, it's easy to imagine how Moses would get himself into a position where he's taking on more than he really should.
It takes the appearance of his father-in-law to bring this reality to the surface. So we turn to Exodus 18, beginning in verse one, where we find the appearance of Jethro, his father-in-law. Says, "Now Jethro, the priest of Midian and father-in-law of Moses, heard of everything God had done for Moses and for His people of Israel, and how the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt.
After Moses had sent his, away his wife Zipporah, his father-in-law Jethro received her and her two sons. One son was named Gershom, for Moses said, 'I have become a foreigner in a foreign land,' and the other was named Eliezer, for he said, 'My father's God was my helper. He saved me from the sword of Pharaoh.' Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, together with Moses' sons and wife, came to him in the wilderness where he was camped near the mountain of God. Jethro had sent word to him, 'I, your father-in-law Jethro, am coming to you with your wife and her two sons.'
So Moses went out to meet his father-in-law and bowed down and kissed him. They greeted each other and they then went into the tent. Moses told his father-in-law about everything the Lord had done to Pharaoh and the Egyptians for Israel's sake, and about all the hardships they had met along the way, and how the Lord had saved them. Jethro was delighted to hear about all the good things the Lord had done for Israel in rescuing them from the hand of the Egyptians.
He said, 'Praise be to the Lord who rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians and of Pharaoh, and who rescued the people from the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all other gods, for He did this to those who had treated Israel arrogantly.' Then Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and other sacrifices to God, and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat a meal with Moses' father-in-law in the presence of God."
Now, if you're not familiar with the story of Exodus, if you weren't with us last fall and heard us go through this portion of Moses' early life, Moses came to marry a Midianite because he had to go into exile from Egypt. Now, again, Moses was a Hebrew, but he ended up growing up in the household of Pharaoh because male children had been forbidden, basically, among the Hebrew people.
Secretly they saved the life of Moses, and they entrusted him to God's care by putting him in a basket in the Nile River. And there the, the princess of Egypt found him and raised him in the home of Pharaoh. But Moses came to be at odds with Pharaoh's household because on one occasion he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, and he killed the Egyptian.
And once Pharaoh found out about that, he's like, "We're gonna get you, Moses." And so Moses fled out into the wilderness, into the area of Midian, and that's where he encountered his wife Zipporah, and came to marry her, and that's how he came to have Jethro as his father-in-law. And for a while, he tended Jethro's herds, and this is actually how he, he came to the place of Mount Horeb.
He encounters the burning bush. And so he's, Moses is in, traveling in territory that's actually familiar with him. Now apparently, Moses' family, his wife and his two sons, hadn't stayed with him in going to Egypt, but had rather remained with Jethro. And so at this point, now that they're far removed from Egypt, they are being reunited.
Now apparently, they had heard something of what had, had happened. You gotta remember, they didn't have telephones, they didn't have social media, none of all of that. But word had gotten to them that God had successfully delivered the people of Israel from Egypt, and a message is sent to Moses saying, "Your family's coming to you."
And when they arrive, we see Moses show great respect for his father. He bows down before him, he kisses him, and,, and then, then he catches him up on everything that has happened, the story of how God had saved him. Moses, you can almost imagine, Moses could have been like, "Oh, yeah, I was really awesome. I stood before Pharaoh, and I, you know, put my staff in the water, and the water spread," you know, all, all those things. But he, he didn't credit himself. He credited God. And this leads to Jethro offering praise unto the Lord, recognizing that the Lord is greater than all other gods. Now, what we know about Jethro is that he was a priest of Midian.
Now, did he probably hold polytheistic beliefs that there was many gods? That wouldn't be surprising if he did. But at this point, having seen what the Lord has done for Israel, whatever he thinks about other gods, he, he's recognizing this God, he's greater than all the rest. He's greater than the gods of, of, of Egypt.
He's done this mighty thing in delivering this people from the hand of Pharaoh. And I think if we step back, it's important for us to consider our own story, our own history, in reckoning how it is God who has preserved us all along the way. And there's various respects we could consider this. We can consider it more broadly just in terms of the world and Western civilization.
So often we take the values that we hold dear for granted as though they just popped out of thin air, when in reality, the cornerstone of all values in Western civilization is Jesus Christ. And there's a historian that's written about this. He's written a book called Dominion. I haven't read it personally myself, I've heard a lot about it. His name is Tom Holland. He's not someone who's come all the way to being a Christian, but he's advanced this quite a bit in saying, "Listen, Westerners, you can't take your values for granted. They come from Christ. And if there was no Christ, this world would be a much, much different place."
I'm actually gonna text you a video later this afternoon. You can watch him talking about that a little bit. None, and so we see how Christ has shaped history, and we, we have to say none of this is by chance. It's by God's providential care for us. This is mercy towards us. Otherwise, this world would be in a much, much different and worse place.
We can think about the history of our own church. This is a picture of what is, i would say it's probably our first pastor, Eleazer Bellows. That's the original picture. I amped it up a little bit using AI so you could get a better look at, at him. Him and Miles Pray had a very strong hand in the founding of this church in Scituate.
But you have to understand that the early years of this church were, were not easy. They were very difficult, and there's times in which thing, things looked pretty grim. In nineteen ninety-two, we wrote a history of our church on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of our church. And around that time, they tell the story of how difficult things had become.
It says, "The remaining members of the congregation began meeting in private homes for services. From April 1861 to the spring of 1867, meetings were held regularly on Sunday, and studies and prayer meetings throughout the week at various locations, Miles Pray's house being something of a center of interest. And then on September twenty-second, 1866, Elder Daniel D. Reed of Bristol, Rhode Island, a traveling evangelist for the Advent Christian denomination, came to North Scituate with his large meeting tent and, assisted by Elders Eleazer Bellows, A. Durfee, H.T. Carpenter, and Sisters E.L. Crum and Katie Taylor, held a twenty-day revival. The meetings were well attended, and a great and widespread interest resulted between seventy to eighty confessing conversion, meeting in the cellar kitchen of Miles Pray's home, the congregation was formally organized."
So we went from a position where the church was really struggling to hold together, they originally had a building. They had to sell it. They were renting it out, and then they couldn't even afford to rent it. They were meeting in people's homes. And then God, by his grace, brought about this revival so that our church was revived. And if that hadn't happened, we wouldn't be here today. So we see God's faithfulness there.
We've seen God's faithfulness in the hand of this church throughout our history. There's been various point, a couple of points where there's been church splits, there's been all kinds of other difficulties. Some of you may know them better than I do. But God has been faithful. And if you think about your own personal life, you can think about ways in which God has been faithful, and you can say, "That's not me. I can see how God showed His mercy and grace so that I am where I am today." So, and that's just a picture of our original building that they moved into from that point onward. Now, from hearing this testimony and responding by glorifying God, Jethro goes a step further and he offers up a burnt offering, where that offering's giving completely unto God, and offers other sacrifices.
And then he, along with Moses and the elders, they share in a meal in the presence of God. Now, that might seem a little curious, but something you have to recall with sacrifices that were offered is that in the case of some of these sacrifices, you would cook up the meat, and then those who were offering the meat would eat in it and share in it.
And in so doing, they're sharing in fellowship with God, in His presence. And, and we see this more formally termed later on as fellowship offerings, and the people of Israel are encouraged to come and offer such offerings in the presence of God. Now, when we think about animal sacrifices, it's kind of a weird concept.
But we have to remember that everything is ramping up towards Jesus Christ. When we think about, well, what could human beings possibly offer to God? Well, you think about where they're beginning. They have, they have the fruits of their labor, these animals, agriculture, sometimes they'd offer grain. And so they were invited by God to offer these things up to Him, not imagining that God was eating these things, but as, as gifts of praise, recognizing God for who He is.
And then we, as we go further on in the Old Testament, we see how it's explained what God's really desiring is that we'd offer ourselves up to Him, that we'd offer ourselves, our lives up to Him in perfect obedience and righteousness. Now, of course, none of us do that. None of us offer ourselves in the whole sacrifice way that we ought to, which points us to Jesus, who offered Himself as the one perfect sacrifice to atone for our sins.
But following in His footsteps, we are, as Paul invites us and calls us to do in Romans 12, we are to offer ourselves up as living sacrifices unto God. And so this is the worship that they offer up to God. Worship at its heart is, is sacrifice. It's not just mere words. It's offering something of, of value unto God because it's a recognition of who He is. Now, continuing on in verse thirteen, Jethro becomes acquainted with the duties that Moses has assumed in trying to lead the people of Israel.
The next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around from him from morning till evening. When his father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, "What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge, while all these people stand around you from morning till evening?" Moses answered him, "Because the people come to see me, come to me to seek God's will. Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God's decrees and instructions."
Moses' father-in-law replied, "What you're doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you, you cannot handle it alone. Listen now to me, and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you. You must be the people's representative before God and bring their disputes to him. Teach them his decrees and instructions and show them the way they are to live and how they are to behave.
But select capable men from all the people, men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain, and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. Have them serve as judges for the people at all times, but have them bring every difficult case to you; the simple cases they can decide themselves. That will make your load lighter, because they will share it with you. If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied."
Again, we can imagine how Moses would come into this situation in which people are coming to him with their cases all day long, and he's having to hear their cases and give answers to them because he's the point man here. He's God's prophet. He's the one who's been leading the people. He, he knows God's will.
And the trouble is, is it kinda creates a situation like the DMV. It's like people are waiting around like, "Hey, when's my number gonna come up when I can talk to Moses about my case and figure out what I should, should do here?" Now, there's a deep irony here, of course, because in, in Exodus 2, we hear a retort from a Hebrew when Moses, this is right in between where, between him going to exile and him having killed this Egyptian. He sees two Hebrews fighting with each other, and he says, "Hey, you know, don't do that." And then the guy says, "Who are you to be judge? Who made you ruler and judge over us?" So like, kinda get away, who made you boss kinda thing, and then Moses goes into exile.
So the great ironic thing here is now he, he is serving as a judge for the people, and everyone's going to him. They're bringing all their problems to him. Now, Jethro sees this, and you gotta love Jethro because he doesn't, no one else may have thought to call Moses out on this, but he's, him coming out, in from the outside says, you know, "What are you doing here? What you're doing is not good." And the reason being is that he's gonna wear himself and all the people out because, again, it's probably, like, very much like the DMV, waiting around all day. And, and so it's not just about Moses. It's about the people. The work's too heavy for him. He can't do it all on his own.
And this just reminds me that, how valuable it is to have people like Jethro in our lives, people who are willing to point out when we're trying to take on too much on our own, when we're trying to play that hero ball, because we're trying to do good things, and we're thinking we're doing good things. But in fact, what we're doing is not good because we're taking on too much. And, and we can see how Jethro's concern here is very right because we see even later on in Numbers 11 Moses has experienced a little bit of a burnout because of the burden that he's bearing in trying to lead this, these, this people.
In recognizing our weakness, we're recognizing that we're only human. That is, that we are finite, that we are not God, we're not the Messiah. And, and even when we look at the Messiah, when we look at Jesus, it's interesting because we see that he doesn't hoard the ministry all for himself, but rather he sends his disciples out, and in fact, he, he has sent all of us out to the ends of the Earth.
He's brought us in on the mission. And so if, if Christ has, has done that, and we're not even the Messiah, how much more should we share our responsibilities and our work with others, and support others in their work? We see this in the situation of the early church where there's a dispute among the widows between the Hellenistic widows, Jewish widows, and those that are not Hellenistic.
Hellenistic meaning that they were kind of given more over to the Greek sort of culture. And there's a dispute, and they, they're trying to, they're bringing their complaints to the apostles, and it's taking the apostles away from work that they need to focus on. And so what do they do? They appoint seven deacons to help make sure that everyone's needs are being met in a just and right way. Paul in Galatians 6 verse 2 admonishes the Galatian Christians, and this is an admonishment we should hear.
He says, "Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." Carry each other's burdens. No one of us should be bearing all the burden. As we see each other carrying, bearing burdens, we should share the load with each other. Now, the solution that Jethro suggests here for Moses isn't that Moses should completely remove himself.
Moses definitely has something that he has to offer here. He has leadership. He is God's prophet. He does need to teach the people. It's just that he's not supposed to do everything himself. And so he says, "Appoint men who are capable, who can serve as judges." And it's important to note he says capable. And this is the great challenge that we have in trying to share responsibilities with others because we can't simply just say, "Oh yeah, okay, I'm just gonna give this to someone else," when they might not be prepared to bear that burden, to bear that responsibility.
We have to make sure that we're entrusting responsibilities to people that are responsible and who are prepared. And in the case here, people who are capable. And, and this applies to, in church, in work, in the home, to people of integrity that you know that you can count on, because guess what? If people are bringing their cases before judges, the judges might be put in situations where someone's trying to bribe them to have the case go their way.
And so that's why Jethro is telling him, "You need to pick the right people so that you can entrust them with this, with this responsibility." Now, of course, we see this sort of system even in our, in our country where there's various levels of, of courts. It makes sense. Imagine if every case was brought to the Supreme Court. They wouldn't, they'd be there all day and all night. And so the, the system that Jethro recommends here is just entrust the simple cases to these guys, and anything that's really complicated, have them bring it to you, kind of, kind of like the Supreme, Supreme Court. And in that way, everyone's gonna be happy because, Moses, you're not gonna be burnt out, and the people aren't gonna be waiting around all day like they're at the DMV.
And the great thing that we see here is that Moses actually shows the wisdom of a true leader by listening to his father-in-law. We see him take off his Superman cape and share responsibility with others. Continuing in verse 24, it says, "Moses listened to his father-in-law and did everything he said. He chose capable men from all Israel and made them leaders of the people, officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. They served as judges for the people at all times. The difficult cases they brought to Moses, but the simple ones they decided themselves. Then Moses sent his father-in-law on his way, and Jethro returned to his own country."
So Moses institutes this system of being able to handle these cases, and again, we see a lot of similarities between, like, roughly that system and the sort of delegation we see in our country and other countries. Now we, we have to consider, well, what does this mean for us as the, as the church? Because obviously Israel was a people, they were a country, and they had to deal with these sorts of disputes.
What about in the church? What, what do we have to think about judgment when it comes to the church? Well, in, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says, 1 Corinthians 5 rather, Paul tells us that the church is a place in which judgments do need to be made. Not regarding those outside of the church, those who are non-Christians, 'cause we don't expect non-Christians to walk in the way of Christ.
But for those who are Christians, we are responsible for calling them to account and saying and calling them to be faithful in walking after Christ. And Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 is addressing a situation in which the Corinthians are failing to address calling someone to account. Then, "Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. Expel the wicked person from among you." And then in the next chapter, he, he criticizes them for bringing their cases to civil judges rather than dealing with matters internally, because they should be able to do that as Christians. Now, when we think about, well, whose responsibility is that within the church?
We would say, well, certainly elders have a role in doing this. Paul in his instruction to Timothy, a pastor, in 2 Timothy 4:2 tells him, "Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of, out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction." Now, when we're thinking about elders, like, yes, that would include myself as pastor, but it should include other elders when you're able to have other elders.
In the case of the governance of our church, we have a board because we also shouldn't want just judgment all going down to one single person. That wouldn't be good for me. It wouldn't be good for, for anybody. This is a shared responsibility of the church. And we also have to just think more broadly about just the day-to-day sort of questions that we have.
Not everything is like this big issue that necessarily has to go to the pastor or go, go to a board. It's just, sometimes people have questions, "What do, what do you think about this situation? What do you think I should do?" And as your pastor, I'm always willing to offer wisdom, but my ultimate goal isn't that all of you would be coming to me.
I'm not a guru. I don't contain all the wisdom in the world. I, I want us to cultivate a situation where you're able to look to one another and ask each other, "What should I do in this sort of situation?" We wanna cultivate a community here of wise counselors, and that will, that will be really good for our church, and it'll be really good for your, for, for your pastor too, that I'll be able to lean and rely upon other people that can serve as wise leaders in offering this sort of counsel.
So we see that Jethro offers his counsel, and then he leaves Moses, which is, you know, I don't wanna make too much of it, but it's interesting how he's able to speak very directly into the situation and change things quite radically in their organization. But then he doesn't stick around and try to meddle with things.
He's like, "That's Moses' thing, and now I'm gonna go home." And that's a lesson for us, too, is, like, we can help people, and it's good for us to speak in that sort of way, but we can't micromanage people either. We shouldn't do that. That wouldn't be good either. So I, I think that Exodus 18 offers both a comfort and a challenge to us.
And it's really two sides of one coin here, I think, because if, if Moses was not called to do everything himself, we should not imagine that it would be good for us to try to do everything on our own. Now, that's a comfort. I guess it's like, "Oh, great. I don't have to do everything myself." But it's also a challenge 'cause we're always very tempted to try to do things on our own.
I think part of the lesson here is that our labors are meant to be shared with others. Because you and I are not God. We are not the Messiah. God isn't calling us to play hero ball. Rather, what God is calling us to do is to join hands and to share the work together. As a church, we know that we have various needs that we have to address and take care of.
It's not the responsibility of any one single person. Ultimately, it's something that we are sharing all together to one degree or, or another, and it's important that we keep that in mind. Now, with having this mindset, though, it, it, it calls for us to have humility, because Moses had to admit his own weakness.
He had to recognize that God could use others besides himself, and that things would be better if he stepped back just a little bit. And so I think the application for us here is twofold, is we need to be willing to do that ourselves, stepping back and empowering others to step up. And number two, we need to be willing to step up to help others step back.
It's, it's one thing to say like, "Oh, I, yeah, I think it's a great idea that, you know, this person should share their responsibilities." Okay, well, who are they gonna share it with? We need to be willing to step up to help share those responsibilities with others. And so I wanna challenge you to think about what this would look like in the various spheres of your life.
What would this look like in your home? What might it look like in your workplace? Now, obviously your, your workplace isn't necessarily a Christian workplace in the same way that your home might be a Christian home, or certainly the church, but you can have a gospel presence in your workplace. What would it look like in your workplace? And of course, what would it look like in our church?
Now, it's easy for us to just content ourselves with the status quo as long as things are getting done, as needs, as long as needs are being met. And we can think about that's kind of the situation Moses was in. He was providing the judgments for the people. It did have outcomes, but to only look at that would be to ignore the fact that Moses was getting worn out, and it was exhausting for the people to wait around all day just to have their matters adjudicated.
There are probably things at home, in your job, in our church, where we can look and say, "Well, things are getting done," and we might content ourselves with that. But it's important for us to look more closely, like Jethro, and consider, "But is the status quo good?" Or are we putting, are, are we allowing people to put themselves in a position where they're taking on too much?
Are you and I doing that to ourselves? Clinging to doing the job because we think we're the only ones who can do it right, rather than sharing that labor with others. I'll tell you what, it's a sobering reflection, and it's one that I find personally challenging. I am not the Christ. I am not the Messiah.
But even looking at Christ, I see the example of one who invited others into his work. While only Christ could atone for our sins, a work we cannot share, he invites us to labor in the work that might be shared. Where the workers are few to gather in the harvest, Christ calls us to pray, not for a Billy Graham, not for a singular figure who might do everything, but for more workers, plural This is the collective work of the church to which every role is contributing.
So don't do too much. That's not good. Don't do too little. That's not good. Together, let us discern and do the work to which we are called. Let's pray.
Father, we come to you this morning in confession that sometimes we have tried to play hero ball. We've sometimes thought that we're the only ones that can do something, and it's been to our detriment, the detriment of others, that we keep trying to do everything ourself.
Father, we confess that there's times where we've seen a need that needs to be met and we haven't stepped up to help with that, because we can say, "Well, things are getting done." Father, let us have a heart to share our labors all together.
That we wouldn't think of ourselves more highly than we should, but that we would be filled with humility, recognizing our own finitude, our own weakness, and that you have surrounded us with people, with brothers and sisters, who you have gifted and equipped to be able to contribute the ministry to which you've called all of us. Father, we do pray that you would form us to be capable people, to be people of skill so that we might share in this work together.
And that, Father, as we cultivate this sort of culture in the church, we pray, Father, that you would carry it outward into our families and into our workplaces, and that In so doing, that you might bring true flourishing and prosperity and use us as lights of the truth of the gospel, of the life that Christ brings for all those that seek him and depend upon him.
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from the Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us in person or virtually this Sunday as we worship God together. It's our joy to welcome you into our community
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)