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Resolutions: Study God’s Word
I’ve been convinced and convicted recently regarding my lack of discipline. I don’t need (or want) to be legalistic, but honestly, my lack of discipline has not produced any good results. Being more disciplined would produce better results – duh! So how do I get to where I want to be from where I am as far as my productive habits (individual disciplines) go? I think that a major part of what I was up against before was that I was trying to fit so many things into my schedule all at once, not in terms of having more things to do than hours in the day, but in terms of adding all of the new goals at once, like a traffic jam of to-do’s commuting into my schedule. Having failed to fit everything in that way, I’ve backed off a bit. I’m trying something different, adding just one thing at once, in order of priority.
Why in order of priority, instead of in order of ease or simplicity or fun? Frankly, because if I admission into my schedule is based on how fun something is, I’ll only do the things that I want to do, and not the things I need to do. If I add things based on how simple or easy they are to accomplish, I’ll only do the easy stuff, not the hard stuff. Nothing worth doing comes easily, right? So I am adding things in order of priority – and starting to sound like another annoying self help or motivational writer (seriously, they drive me up the wall).
So the way that I have decided to determine what disciplines get top priority is by who it serves, or who that discipline with bring me closer to. So here’s the order that someone smarter than me came up with: J.O.Y.; or Jesus, Others, You. I believe that this idea is fitting with the Greatest Commandment: “… You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:38-39). Loving God comes first, loving people comes second, and the command is finished with “as yourself” – a reminder to love and serve other people AT LEAST as much as you love and serve yourself.
Since loving God comes first, getting to know God is very important (might be kind of awkward to love someone I don’t know). On top of that, as a Christian, no matter what I do, I am an ambassador of Jesus Christ, which means that I represent Him to the people around me. In order to effectively represent Him, I need to know Him very well. I’m going to keep this short and just simply say that the chief and primary way of getting to know God better is by reading the Bible. Not everyone buys that, but I do, and here is not the time or place to defend why I believe that – or this won’t be a short post.
So my first resolution is to be a tireless student of God’s Word. This is not a New Year’s Resolution, partly because it’s November. I’ll have a few more resolutions by the time 1-1-2013 comes around, but I mean for this to last the rest of my life, not just for 2013. I also mean for all of the resolutions I settle on to last beyond just 2013. I know it’s a rabbit trail, but I hate New Year’s Resolutions because people don’t keep them.
Read the Bible for a Change, by Ray Lubeck
Wrapped up in that resolution to be a tireless student of God’s Word are (for me) four other long term commitments, three of which I’m borrowing from Ray Lubeck’s Read the Bible for a Change:
- To read through the entire Bible at least once a year, but preferably twice.
- To steward and hone the intellectual and spiritual gifts God has given me (especially the ones that enable me to study and better understand God’s Word).
- To seek knowledge to enable better understanding of God’s Word.
- To honestly examine my heart and attitude, and pray for God to create in me a clean heart so that His Word can be heard in my heart.
Here’s my thinking in those mini-resolutions: they are quality assurance for the main resolution. For most Christians, you don’t have to think very hard for personal experiences where people have misused the Bible and it caused harm to someone – perhaps even you personally. This is one of many reasons critics of Christians say that we’re nothing but a bunch of self righteous hypocrites.
Anyway… Those are my thoughts on my first, and most important resolution. One more time, even though I will probably have my little list of resolutions done and start incorporating them into my daily life by around the New Year, I don’t see these as New Year’s Resolutions for any other reason than their timing. However I would still strongly encourage anyone reading this to give yourself an honest self examination of your own self discipline, and to consider what changes you might need to make. If you are someone who is into New Year’s Resolutions, now is the time to start thinking about them.
Related articles
- A Confession… And a Resolution… (thinkrhema.wordpress.com)
- What is a Spiritual Discipline, Anyway? (buddyhowarddotme.wordpress.com)
Filed under Journal
A Confession… And a Resolution…
Rev. Jonathan Edwards, a leader of the Great Awakening, is still remembered for his extraordinary resolve. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I have a confession: I am an undisciplined, arrogant hack.
And I have a resolution: To become more disciplined (in what, specifically, is still developing).
God’s timing never ceases to terrify, amuse, and amaze me. When you live (only because He graciously helps you to do so) a life that honors God, he seems to teach you things you never wanted to know about yourself – at the most relevant, and simultaneously inconvenient times.
September and October of this year were really busy for me – at least in terms of milestones – looking back on them I am convicted of my daily laziness.
Skylar and I were in the panicked process of finishing some home improvement projects (adding a master suite, moving into the master suite, turning our old bedroom into a nursery) and at the same time doing paperwork to refinance our house – which meant a lot of pressure on me to finish the projects. Add to that, I started a new job in September. I was hired to do a particular task in which I had no prior training, experience, or education – I had no idea what I was doing, and I spent a lot of time spinning my wheels. Then in October, my role changed (thank God) to something totally different, but still something where I have no prior experience – parent mentoring. My daughter Keaton (my first) was born on October 20th; and we closed on our refinance on the 26th.
So, a lot of “major” milestones happened or were wrapped up in the last two months, so I must have been busy, right? Sadly, no. I didn’t read my Bible, I didn’t invest time in my relationship with my wife, I didn’t work out, I didn’t eat well (yes, that takes more time than just stuffing my face), and I didn’t write anything worth posting (mostly just complaints and ungracious political rants). I took every excuse that I could for a “guys night” with my brothers, I watched TV probably two to three hours a night, and I got hooked into another stupid Facebook game. Despite all that laziness, I’ve had quite the self righteous attitude that I’ve got it together and I’m doing what needs done.
Don’t take me wrong here. I believe that B.U.S.Y. stand for Burdened Under Satan’s Yoke. There’s the whole rabbit trail of Good vs. Great that we could get into, also known as the tyranny of the urgent, but I’ll let this post be a discussion of examples, instead of ideas. Yes, those house projects were a good (and necessary) thing to put my time and energy into, as was figuring out my new job(s), and doing the refinance paperwork. To some degree, “resting” is also a good thing, but I took it too far. In a number of ways, I’ve come to think that the Great things are the often boring or difficult commitments we’ve made that require an enormous amount of our time before they produce results – but when the results come, they’re worth the wait.
Why the sudden conviction that I’ve been lazy and undisciplined? One thing is the contrast between myself and a Great Christian of History whom I’ve been reading about: Jonathan Edwards (The Unwavering Resolve of Jonathan Edward by Steven J. Lawson). The man’s incredible discipline continues to inspire Christians today, 254 years after his death. Another is a Leadership Training video from Mark Driscoll (An Observation after Breakfast with Chuck Smith) which essentially says that it can take years of faithfulness (discipline) to produce fruit. And the final straw is that even though I knew I was behind in my bible reading, that today, November 10th), I finally did the reading that was on my calendar for September 29th, and I’ve been doing two readings a day for the last week to catch up. I don’t know why it only struck me today that I was that far behind, but it did.
So, with that conviction, I confess: I am undisciplined and prone to laziness; and I resolve: to hone discipline. As I mentioned above, the timing of this is amusing. God has brought me to where I am in life, in His sovereign timing. I’ll probably finish that Edwards book just before Christmas (I’m reading it as a part of a men’s group, not just for leisure), but of course the New Year will be right on the heels of Christmas. With this conviction, and this timing, it seems fitting to start thinking now of of my New Year’s resolution(s), which I have never done because I thought them fruitless, apparently due to my lack of discipline. Not only is the New Year coming quickly, but in January I go back to school, to begin working on my Master’s degree. So this conviction of needing discipline falls uncomfortably close to adding another iron to the proverbial fire.
More to come.
Not gone, just busy
For the few, but committed people in this audience. I haven’t stopped writing. I’ve just been incredibly busy with a new job, finishing a home renovation, and getting ready for my daughter to arrive. Thank you all for your patience and understanding. I’ll have some more material for you soon.
Blessings.
-Dan Stephens
Filed under Uncategorized
Headline Highlights: Week of August 18th, 2012
- Newspaper (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I link these articles here because I believe the issues are important for Christians to be mindful of and to carefully weigh out. Some articles are of a controversial nature, and their inclusion here does not necessarily express my agreement with either the political or theological views of the source. I simply find these articles worth discussing and bringing to the attention of my fellow believers (or worth reminding about).
Ephesians 6:12: For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
Romans 12:18: If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
As Christians, we absolutely MUST remember these verses as we weigh out our positions on moral-civil issues and then seek to enact and support laws, policies and practices in society that reflect our positions. It is not the people who disagree with us that we “fight” against, but the devil behind them (whether or not they are aware of it). Because the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbors, we must extend a Christian grace even to those with whom we disagree. When we fail to extend such a grace, we fail as credible ambassadors of Christ.
Issue 1: Inciting Bible Study:
Desiring God: All Scripture Is Breathed Out by God, Continue in It: This is an excellent message on the authority of Scripture, and also has some tie-in with the Issue 2, below.
Desiring God: The Shelf Life on Preaching the Gospel to Yourself:
John 5 shows the folly of fixing on the Scriptures while ignoring the God of grace. Jesus crossed paths with a troop who liked to think of themselves as soaked in the Scriptures, but they were getting them all wrong, taking them in through the wrong grid. What an epic tragedy: They had God himself in the flesh, standing in their very midst, and they missed him because their Bible reading was going awry with self at the center.
Jesus says to them, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39–40). The lesson for us is to never disconnect our searching of the Scriptures from a conscious awareness and pursuit of Jesus as our Savior, Lord, and Treasure. The gospel of Jesus is the core, culmination, and meaning of the Scriptures. No matter how passionate the study, regular Bible intake that is not in accord with the truth of the gospel becomes zeal without knowledge.
Displace the gospel from the center, and studiousness with the Scriptures soon becomes a massive self-salvation project.
Issue 2: Degrading Church Leadership: There are two primary dimensions in which I see this happening on the macro scale, one is the egalitarian view that allows women to become the heads of a church body, and one is the condoning of open sexual immorality by church leaders. The condoning of open sin is the simpler issue to handle, it just shouldn’t happen. But the egalitarianism vs. complementarianism issue needs a more careful address than that (the TGC video linked below does an excellent job). First, it is important to clarify that complementarianism is not the “traditional” approach to headship and submission that egalitarians and feminists characterize it as. Complementarianism is the historically traditional approach, but egalitarians and feminists will most often approach the issue in a way that only casts it in light of the abuses and wrongs done under it – much like characterizing all of Christianity by the abuses, wrongs, and brutality that happened during the Crusades. It is also helpful to distinguish between men from boys and women from girls (basically, distinguish adults from children, for both genders).
In the marriage and theological (teaching) dimensions of life, men have explicit biblical headship over everyone (women and children). Also in the marriage and theological dimension, women have headship over children. The 5th commandment is to honor your father and mother (Exodus 20:12), and Timothy had learned his faith from his mother and grandmother (2 Timothy 1:5). It’s not explicitly stated, but I think that it’s safe to pull out the principle that if a godly woman is old enough to be a mother or grandmother to a young man, that she can rebuke him if there is a biblically valid reason, even though she has no explicit headship over him. Frankly, if you’re a physically mature male, but morally and theologically immature, then you’re still a boy, and you have no headship whatsoever, over anyone. Mark Driscoll would call you – and I would agree with him – a boy who can shave (thank you, Pastor Mark, for that very helpful term).
I have no particular objection to women having headship over men in an administrative or civic capacity, until her administrative or civic authority bleeds over into a theological issue, then her headship runs out. I have no objection to my wife being in charge of my to-do list (mainly because if I’m in charge of it, nothing will get done), but I speak for my house on theological issues – even if my wife disagrees with me (which she very rarely does, and when she does disagree, it’s discussed in private).
Associated Baptist Press: Baptist Women Pastors Reach Milestone:
The Gospel Coalition: Why is TGC Complementarian?
The Gospel Coalition: To my Egalitarian Friends and What’s Wrong With Patriarchy?
Christianity Today: Are Women Happy At Church? Nearly 75% Say Yes, Yet Feel Guilty:
Barna Group: Christian Women Today, Part 1 of 4:
Christianity Today: Canada’s Largest Protestant Church Elects Openly Gay Leader: Homosexuality is not some especially depraved sin or brand of sexual immorality, it is just another type of sexual immorality. The biblical inconsistency of churches like this one is demonstrated in their (sinful) condoning of open homosexuality, but their (correct) disdain for open adultery.
Issue 3: Intolerance of Orthodox Christianity:
Christianity Today: Family Research Council Points to Southern Poverty Law Center in Sparking Shooter’s Reaction:
Some good news: Christianity Today: InterVarsity Re-Instated As New York University Decides Leadership Policy Is “Common Sense, Not Discrimination”
Issue 4: Voting by Faith: What is the role of our faith in our vote? I have said before that morality can come from nearly any religion, even though salvation only comes from one. Even though I do not agree with the theology of either of our main presidential candidates (or vice presidential candidates, for that matter), there is one with whom I share more ideas about morality than the other.
The Resurgence: Politics and the Kingdom of God: The last two sentences summarize the whole article, and make a strong case for balanced thought and careful discernment.
Those who act as though politics are the primary way God has determined to bring about the kingdom of God will inevitably downplay the significance of the church as God’s agent through which the Spirit works in the world. On the other hand, those who avoid all political or cultural involvement as inherently evil will miss or downplay the social and cultural ramifications of the gospel of Jesus.
The All of Life series from which this article comes is also a worthwhile read, though it doesn’t focus entirely on Christian political engagement.
Associated Baptist Press: Analyst says Romney plays religion card:
Pew Research Center: Religion & Politics 2012:
Christianity Today: President Obama’s Faith Council Focuses On Human Trafficking:
Related articles
- Headline Highlights: Week of August 10th, 2012 (thinkrhema.wordpress.com)
Filed under Headline Highlights, Politics
Showing up
Exodus 19:7-25 with notes from the Reformation Study Bible and Faithlife Study Bible.
After being reminded of God’s call and plan for Israel. Moses is told that God is “coming… in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you forever.” Then God tells Moses to get the people ready for something big. They have to go through their ceremonial washing of themselves and their clothes, abstain from sex, and build a fence at the base of the mountain. No one is allowed to cross that fence without specific direction from God, on the penalty of death. All that Israel knows is that God would be here in three days to do something significant, but they don’t know what exactly, all they know is “get ready.” Centuries later, John the Baptist would be telling Israel to “get ready,” and in fact he would tell them to repent and be baptized (which would have been understood as a variation on ceremonial washing) (Matthew 3). Here in Exodus 19, Moses is preparing Israel for the introduction of God’s Law, the first purpose of which is to point us to God by contrasting our depravity with His Holiness (See The Threefold Use of the Law from R.C. Sproul’s Essential Truths). In Matthew 3, John would be preparing Israel for the introduction of God’s Kingdom through the coming of the Messiah, whose purpose was to restore the possibility fellowship between depraved humanity and Holy God.
After the preparation, God comes, just as promised. God shows up at Mount Sinai in an undeniably miraculous way. Jesus shows up to be our Savior from the penalty of our sin. But presumably, some in Israel still doubted. After God showed up at Sinai in fire, smoke, an earth quake, and thunder all at once; and after Moses had gone up the mountain to hear from God, he still had to go back down the mountain to remind the people that this was no joke, they really did have to stay off the Mountain. Many in Jesus’ Israel denied and doubted that he was the Messiah, because even after God the Father showed up after Jesus’ baptism and confirmed Jesus as His Son, their anticipated picture of the Messiah wasn’t what they saw in front of them, so it just couldn’t be that the Kingdom of God was really at hand.
But it was. After all that Israel had been through during their slavery and exodus, and after all the times that God had thoroughly proven his superiority and sovereignty over the other “gods” that were worshiped in Egypt and the neighboring pagan societies, God still showed up at Sinai in a seriously attention getting way. After centuries of cyclic obedience and blessing, disobedience and punishment, and repentance, Jesus Christ showed up in Roman subjected Israel to bring in the Kingdom of God.
Related articles
- Called to God – Blessed for no Other Reason (thinkrhema.wordpress.com)
- A Family Reunion, and a Father-in-law’s Advice (thinkrhema.wordpress.com)
- Deliverance, Remembrance, Complacence (thinkrhema.wordpress.com)
Filed under Journal
A bit over a week old, but an excellent piece on the Chick-Fil-A issue as it pertains to how thoughtful Christians should probably react.
I had a seminary professor who was what I call a true liberal. By that I mean, she really believed in and lived according to the idea that we all have the liberty to hold our own opinion of things, live by them, and express them. Our differing opinions, when shared and engaged, make us wiser and stronger. To her, disagreement was an opportunity for learning and growth. Being a true liberal she was always open to hearing what others said and even when she disagreed with them it was as a learning experience, characterized by respect in the midst of disagreement. The disagreements could at times be serious and important, from the nature of God, to the reality of the resurrection of Jesus, or even if the crucifixion was necessary for the forgiveness of sin. In a seminary those are hot topics and could at times produce a shower…
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Filed under Uncategorized
Called to God – Blessed for no Other Reason
Exodus 19:3-6 with notes from the Reformation Study Bible and Faithlife Study Bible.
The Exodus narrative continues as Israel arrives at Mount Sinai, and God prepares the people to receive the Law (Exodus 20:1-23:19). God’s sovereignty and power have already been demonstrated substantially to Israel by what He did to get them out of Egypt and bring them safely to Sinai – He even says, “I carried you on eagles’ wings.” While He clearly doesn’t mean that they had traveled to Sinai in luxury, they traveled under his divine protection. Now, after reminding them about the things they’d seen and how they’d arrived at Sinai, God says, “if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all people…” Not unlike Jesus words in John 14:15 that if we love Him we will obey His commands. Unfortunately, we are not unlike Israel will show themselves to be, because we also repeatedly show by our actions that we do not love God. Fortunately for us, His love does not depend on our merit, but on His sovereign will. Over and over again, God calls us back to Himself in a way that we cannot refuse, who can possibly refuse being released from slavery to sin? Who can resist being kept safe in the hands of a completely sovereign God?
If we authentically love Jesus for what He has accomplished on our account, we will keep his commandments, we will obey God, and we will hear His voice (first and foremost through Scripture). But we cannot authentically love as God loves, obey His commands, or hear His voice if we are not faithful students of Scripture. Fortunately when Jesus said that if we love Him we’ll obey Him, He followed up with the promise of a Helper, the Holy Spirit (John 14:16). Speaking of how the Holy Spirit helps us to understand Scripture, Joel Beeke says, “Knowledge is the soil in which the Holy Spirit sows the seed of understanding.” Not only does the Holy Spirit help us to understand God’s expectations in the first place, but He helps us to meet them, because we are so much like Israel in that we have absolutely no power within ourselves to meet those expectations.
Israel’s covenantal obligation to God was to obey Him, and God’s promised reward for obedience was that Israel would remain under the Abrahamic blessing and become God’s “treasured possession” (v. 5). Because we live in the Church age, that same covenantal blessings is extended to us, not because of any merit on our part, but because after God has called us to Himself, He gives us the Holy Spirit to enable us to obey Him and then receive His blessing. We don’t receive that blessing because we deserve it, and we don’t receive it only for the benefit of the Holy Spirit’s help, but because God called us in the first place. Going back to when God called Abraham (Genesis 12), God could have just as easily called Abraham’s father Terah, or his brother Haran. But God, in His own sovereign pleasure, picked Abram to call out of his homeland, and to bless. God picked Isaac, rather than Ishmael, to carry on his father’s blessing. God picked Jacob, rather than Esau, to carry his grandfather’s blessing. And on down the line until the nation of Israel is called to God out of Egypt, and out of all the rest of the world that God had made and that belongs to Him anyway.
We are blessed, as Israel was, for no other reason than that God called us out of the world, and out of our slavery to sin. Why Israel and not the rest of the world? Why the Church and not the rest of the world? We don’t know. But we do know that God’s thoughts and ways are not ours, and that His are higher than ours (Isaiah 55).
Related articles
- A Family Reunion, and a Father-in-law’s Advice (thinkrhema.wordpress.com)
- Deliverance, Remembrance, Complacence (thinkrhema.wordpress.com)
- My God can beat your god (thinkrhema.wordpress.com)
Related books
Headline Highlights: Week of August 10th, 2012
- Highlights are back, but being reduced to a once-a-week frequency to help balance other responsibilities. Enjoy.
- Newspaper (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I link these articles here because I believe the issues are important for Christians to be mindful of and to carefully weigh out. Some articles are of a controversial nature, and their inclusion here does not necessarily express my agreement with either the political or theological views of the source. I simply find these articles worth discussing and bringing to the attention of my fellow believers (or worth reminding about).
Ephesians 6:12: For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
Romans 12:18: If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
As Christians, we absolutely MUST remember these verses as we weigh out our positions on moral-civil issues and then seek to enact and support laws, policies and practices in society that reflect our positions. It is not the people who disagree with us that we “fight” against, but the devil behind them (whether or not they are aware of it). Because the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbors, we must extend a Christian grace even to those with whom we disagree. When we fail to extend such a grace, we fail as credible ambassadors of Christ.
Issue 1: A Trending Lack of Discernment: “Knowledge is the soil in which the Holy Spirit sows the seed of understanding” (modified from this article). There is a tragic illiteracy of Scripture among modern Western Christians, and that illiteracy and lack of knowledge is growing into a possibly more tragic lack of understanding of, and discernment between, false teachings or sound doctrine. This lack of discernment also plays into how we will (or won’t) respond to the other two issues in this Highlights post.
Ligonier: Where East Meets West; Desiring God: Fight the Poverty of Attention and Do We Ignore the Bible.
Issue 2: Religious Liberty vs. “Discrimination” based on Homosexuality (or other sin issue): Chick-fil-A aside, “tolerance” vs. Religious Liberty and Christian Morals remains a prevalent issue in current events. Conservative Christians are castigated by the political (and religious) left because of a firm belief that homosexuality is outside of God’s design and morally wrong. The hypocrisy in some Christian groups is that they lack of grace towards this particular sexual sin, while silently condoning or not actively fighting other sexual sin within their congregation. The hypocrisy of the far left is their “tolerance” of everyone but Conservative Christians, and it is particularly ironic with regards to this issue because they are “tolerant” of Conservative Muslims, who are violently anti-homosexual (in nations where Sharia law is in place and enforce, homosexuality is a capital crime punished by death).
World Magazine: Philosophical Differences and Vanderbilt Squeeze:
Excerpt from Philosophical Differences: “A sharp-eyed reader [of the average anti-discrimination policy] will grasp both the central issue and the embedded fallacy. The issue: An institution (such as a Christian college) that refuses hiring on the basis of homosexual practice is thereby discriminatory. The fallacy: If a non-discrimination policy includes religion in its list of protected categories, then any institution religiously opposed to hiring a [person practicing a lifestyle contrary to the institution’s beliefs] is itself discriminated against…”
Desiring God: Not Your Mother’s Kind of Tolerance and No One is More Tolerant Than God:
A strongly recommended book for this discussion: D.A. Carson, Intolerance of Tolerance.
Issue 3: Systemic Academic Antagonism of Christianity: This issue is more of the same lack of “tolerance” for Christians, but in a more narrow scope than the above issue. I also have personal experience on the untolerated end of this particular issue, which I may write about later.
World Magazine: Soaping the Slippery Slope, Into Exile, Good Deeds Punished, and Vanderbilt Squeeze:
On a brighter note… Christianity Today: Missouri Students Can Now Opt Out of School Assignments on Religious Grounds:
Related articles
- Headline Highlights: 2012, July 31st (thinkrhema.wordpress.com)
- Headline Highlights: 2012, July 30th (thinkrhema.wordpress.com)
- Headline Highlights: 2012, July 28th (thinkrhema.wordpress.com)
Filed under Headline Highlights, Politics
A Family Reunion, and a Father-in-law’s Advice
Gavel & Stryker (Photo credit: KeithBurtis)
Exodus 18 with notes from the Reformation Study Bible.
Apparently Moses had sent his wife and boys back home while he was dealing with Pharaoh and getting Israel out of Egypt. Now that Israel is on its way to Sinai, and news has reached Jethro (Moses’ Father-in-law), Jethro brings Moses’ family back to him. In Exodus 18:1-12 there is a lot going on, there’s a family reunion, a time of story telling and testimony that is centered on God (compare that to the non-God-centered story telling in Genesis 47:7-10) . Since Jethro is a priest of Midian, and Midian is a descendant of Abraham (Genesis 25:2), it is possible that Jethro also followed Yahweh, although we don’t know this for certain. So this story telling time might serve as either a strengthening of Jethro’s faith, or a conversion from a pagan faith to following Yahweh.
But the next day is also very interesting. Because Moses was playing the role of a legal and spiritual mediator to an entire nation, and trying to do so within his human limitations. He was mediating legally between individuals within the nation, and spiritually between the nation and God. The two roles individually are far outside the realm of human capacity, but Moses was trying to do them both. We’re not told if he was succeeding (even temporarily) or if he was failing in the performance of these roles, but from Jethro’s strong reaction, it’s pretty clear that Moses, like many modern jack-of-all-trades pastors, was on a path to burn-out. He had to delegate his civil role while maintaining his spiritual role. This is not much different from the apostles delegating the care and feeding of widows in Acts 6 to deacons so that they (the apostles) could focus on teaching the Gospel.
While pastors today still play an important role in making known to us the statutes and laws of God, as Moses did for Israel (Exodus 18:16), our only remaining spiritual mediator is now Jesus Christ himself (1 Timothy 2:5; Hebrews 9:15, 12:24). We don’t have to wait in line in a spiritual court room. We read the Bible to hear from God the Father regarding Jesus Christ, we pray to and in the name of Jesus Christ, and the answer (should we have the sensitivity to “hear” it, and the discernment to validate it with Scripture) comes from the Holy Spirit.
See Also: Timothy Lovegrove on Exodus 18
Related articles
- We can’t get off the hook. (thinkrhema.wordpress.com)
- Deliverance, Remembrance, Complacence (thinkrhema.wordpress.com)
Filed under Journal
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