Jethro's Advice

Good morning.

Today's reading is Exodus 18.

Settle in.

Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses' father-in-law, heard all that God had done for Moses and for Israel his people.

How the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt.

Now Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, had taken Zephora, Moses' wife, after he had sent her home, along with her two sons.

The name of one was Gershem, for he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.

And the name of the other, Elieazar, for he said, The God of my father was my help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh.

Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, came with his sons and his wife to Moses in the wilderness, where he had encamped at the mountain of God.

And when he sent word to Moses, I, your father-in-law, Jethro, am coming to you with your wife and her two sons with her.

Moses went out to meet his father-in-law and bowed down and kissed him.

And when they asked each other of their welfare and went into the tent.

Then Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord had done to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel's sake, all the hardship that had come upon them in the way, and how the Lord had delivered them.

And Jethro rejoiced for the good that the Lord had done to Israel, and that he had delivered them out of the hands of the Egyptians.

Jethro said, Blessed be the Lord who has delivered you out of the hands of the Egyptians and out of the hand of Pharaoh, and has delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians.

Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods because of this affair.

They had dealt arrogantly with the people.

And Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and sacrifices to God.

And Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses, Moses' father-in-law before God.

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 are 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 d 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 are doing is not good.

You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing for the thing is too heavy for you.

You are not able to do it alone.

Now obey my voice, I will give you advice, and God 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 laws, and make them known 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 this people also will go to their place in peace.

So Moses listened to the voice of his father-in-law, and did all that he said.

Moses chose able men out of all of Israel, and made them heads over the people, chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens, and they judged the people at all times.

Any hard case they brought to Moses, but any smaller case, or any smaller matter they decided themselves.

Then Moses let his father-in-law depart and went away to his own country.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

And Lord, that although you are God most high and you are over all things and over all people and nations, Lord, we praise you that you take a particular interest in us.

Lord, that when we pray to you, that we have your full attention.

Lord, this is a glorious and wonderful thing.

Father, I pray that you would help us to understand the wonder of what it means that the God of all creation condescends so that we might know you, and that in your glorious grace you condescend to our level so that we might even be saved by you, Lord.

Father, we praise you that although, as we read this morning in Psalm 40, although we are poor and needy, Lord, you take thought for us.

Lord, what else do we need to know?

But that you take thought for us.

We praise you for this.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So that's a long text.

Just a little bit.

Just a little bit.

But really, within it, there's two stories that we're looking at this morning in Exodus.

The first story is of Jethro's arrival.

Jethro is Moses' father-in-law.

And Jethro arrives and uh offers worship to the Lord.

That's the first part of the story.

And the second part of the story is that Jethro, when he arrives, he brings help.

And the help that he brings is to reorganize the people of God.

They are uh they they have a very um flat organizational structure.

And he instead makes it a very uh uh, well, an appropriately um hierarchical organizational structure that he brings to Israel.

And there's there's so much um meaning in all of this uh for us today, but uh uh one of the themes that I want you to have in your head and and uh kids, listen along for this theme.

I I want you to notice how God is the God of a particular nation.

We're gonna listen, what particular nation is God the God of?

You can listen for that.

And then you can also listen for how is God the God of all nations and all peoples?

And our question, one of the questions that a text like this pushes us into is well, how can it be both?

Which one is it?

Is God the God of Israel or is God God most high over all the nations?

Which one is it?

Which one is it?

You know, when push comes to when push comes to shove, who's God gonna side with?

Well, that's in some ways what the story is about today.

And we get to look at that through the lens of Jethro.

So the story that we're coming right out of is when uh what we looked at last week, which is when Israel was in Rephidim, and they're in the wilderness on the way to Sinai, and in Rephidim there's no water.

So they encounter a place where there is no water, and what God instructs Moses to do is to strike a rock, and in striking that rock, he will provide water for the people, even amidst their complaining.

And then after there is no water, they are attacked by an enemy nation called Amalek.

And Amalek attacks them, and he the this enemy nation focuses on the weak and the vulnerable.

He it says he picks off the tail, those that are lagging behind in the group of the big Israelite herd that's that's uh moving across the wilderness.

They're they're picking off the weak and the vulnerable.

And so Moses goes to the top of the mountain.

You'll remember the story, and he holds up his staff, and as he holds up his staff, then they are victorious and they prevail in battle over the Amalekites.

But as his staff drops, then the Amalekites prevail over Israel.

And it's a very strange sort of situation.

Wow, attacks, aerial assaults.

It's a very strange situation, and they are uh they prove to be victorious over the Amalekites.

And then God curses Amalek and says, There will be war with Amalek for generations, and God promises to destroy Amalek.

Now, why is God promising to destroy Amalek?

It's because they attacked Israel when Israel was vulnerable.

And God is the God of Israel.

And so if a nation comes and attacks his people when they are vulnerable, he will see to it that that nation is wiped from the face of the earth, which is like the best big brother you can imagine.

The coolest big brother you could possibly imagine.

And what's happening there is we're seeing that God is upholding the promises that he had made to his people, the promises, the covenant promises that he had made to Abraham.

And here's how they're being demonstrated.

You know, you remember when he first called Abraham, it sounded like this in Genesis 12, 2 through 3, God said to Abraham, and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

That's Genesis 2, 2 through 3.

So, what's the promise to Abraham?

You will be a great nation.

This is happening.

Israel is becoming a great nation.

There's millions of them.

And this great nation will be a blessing.

They will be blessed and they will be a blessing to the world.

And the Lord will put his particular favor upon them, such that the nations that bless Israel will be blessed, and the nations that curse Israel will be cursed.

And so we see this playing out.

Well, what happens with Amalek?

They curse Israel, and so what do they wind up being?

They wind up being cursed.

So, what is the relationship of Israel to the other nations of the world?

This is the question.

Also, I understand that this is this so far, all of these sentences have sounded very soundbitey.

I'm not talking about Iran right now, just so we're clear.

But I'm talking about Old Testament Israel.

This is the distinction that I want us to make, as I can.

It's very you're very hard to read, but I thought maybe some of you were thinking that.

And so, what what is the relationship of Israel, of God's chosen people, these people who just passed through the Exodus, to the other nations of the world?

Well, you can see that it's kind of complicated, isn't it?

It's not so straightforward.

If they are attacked by the other nations of the world, then those other nations will be cursed by God for attacking Israel.

If the nations that they interact with bless Israel, then those nations will be blessed by God because of their interaction with Israel.

Well, this seems very plain.

That's very plain, very straightforward, right?

It's like, you know, how are we gonna get along?

Well, it's up to you, friend.

You know, if we're gonna be friendly, if you're friendly, then we're friendly.

If you're an enemy, then we're an enemy.

That's very straightforward.

But that's not the way that the promise ends.

The way that the promise ends is, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

This is weird.

Which one is it?

Is it if you bless me, you're blessed, if you curse me, you're cursed.

Here's what it sounds like.

If you bless me, you're blessed.

If you curse me, you're cursed, and I'm going to bless you all.

Okay.

Well, this is now I don't know how to act.

You know, that's the that's a strange thing.

We're going to see.

Here's one way to think about this question.

It's what is the relationship?

There's this relationship of blessing and cursing, and then tucked within this relationship of blessing and cursing, there's the seed of a promise that is through the people of Israel, there will be a blessing to the whole world.

Here's another way to think of this.

Is God the God of Israel in the way that Ra is the God of Egypt?

Such that if Egypt is attacked, Ra will defend Egypt.

And that Ra is interested in the blessing of Egypt, in the cursing of Egypt's enemies.

Is God the God of Israel in the way that Baal is the God of Canaan?

Such that Baal has this local allegiance.

It is a he is a local deity for this particular nation.

And insofar as you bless that nation, you will be blessed.

Insofar as you curse that nation, you will be cursed.

Is this the way that God orders himself in being the God of Israel?

Well, in one sense, the answer is yes.

Yes.

He puts his name upon Israel.

He does not put his name upon the other nations of the world.

He reveals himself to the nation of Israel.

He does not reveal himself to the other nations of the world in this same way.

They are the locusts of his affection.

They are his people in a unique way.

And God is, of course, God most high.

God is the God of gods.

God is the one who draws all nations and all peoples to himself, having conquered the gods of all other nations.

This is a dynamic story.

It is a difficult one, I think, for us to comprehend.

But at the heart of this dynamic is this thing that about God that is that is frustrating about God, I think, to our modern sensibilities, which is if God is the God most high, if God is the God of all people, if God is the one who demands obedience from every person who exists in the world and will draw all nations to himself, how come the only way I can know him is through the one man, Jesus Christ?

How come the only nation by which I can know him through is the one nation, Israel?

How is this the case?

If God is God over all of us and over all people, and I think this is one of the most uh uh frustrating aspects of our faith to convey.

And it's one of the it's it's one of the most uh uh offensive aspects of our faith because what our faith says is God is the God over all over everyone.

You know, what we could say when we're talking to a non-Christian is God is the God over you.

He demands allegiance from you.

And they would say, well, how could I know this God?

How could I come to him?

We would say, There's one way.

In fact, there's one man by which you might come to him.

There's one name given under heaven by which you might be saved.

And that's frustrating and that's uh offensive because uh we we live in a world that's saturated with the idea that all roads lead to the same mountaintop.

Which is uh uh Gandhi said that.

But that's of course an absurd thing to say, because do you know about roads?

It's just plainly false.

There are lots of roads that don't lead to mountaintops.

This is most roads don't lead to mountaintops.

In fact, if we're talking about roads, different in my experience, different roads lead to different places.

This is my insight for the morning.

But it's a it's it's offensive because you hear the heart of it, and the heart of it is if I pursue by sincerity, then I will be able to arrive at who the true God is.

And you cannot place this constraint upon me to say that I cannot arrive at him by any other name other than Jesus Christ.

Theologians call this the scandal of particularity.

And it is, it is one of the great scandals of our faith.

One of the great scandals of our faith.

It's the scandal of particularity.

So we are being pressed into this this morning, into this sort of scandal, because what we're seeing, this story is is uh paired, it's right next to the story from last week because it's pushing us into this deep mystery of how can this promise that is given to Abraham play out in history?

How can the promise, which is if you bless them, you'll be blessed, if you curse them, you'll be cursed, and you will be a blessing to all of the families of the world.

Well, how can that promise play out in history?

How does that story take place?

And so last week we saw a nation attack.

We saw no water and a nation attack.

What comes on the heels of that story is a foreigner, somebody who is not of the nation of Israel, come into the nation of Israel, receive the truth of who God is, praise and offer sacrifices of worship to that God, and not become an Israelite, but at the end go to their own nation, honoring and proclaiming the glory, this news, the God of Israel is God most high.

This is the insight that he has.

And that man brings to Israel this incredible help of God.

A nation outside of Israel brings the help of God to Israel.

Okay, we're we're we're in the weeds, you guys.

We're in we're in the we're in deeply mysterious things.

We're in, as I've heard it called, you we're this is deep weird.

So just hold on.

This is not every sermon.

It's only about uh 75% of my sermons.

So just hang on to your hats, okay?

We're gonna meet Jethro.

We're going to see that the God of Israel is the God of Israel, and he is no local deity.

Exodus 18:1.

Exodus 18:1

Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses' father-in-law, heard of all that God had done for Moses and for Israel his people, how the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt.

Okay, so somebody arrives on the scene, just sort of out of nowhere, which sometimes happens in the Bible.

And his name is Jethro, and he is introduced to us as the priest of Midian.

Midian is a nation which basically, for the rest of the stories in Scripture, is just an enemy of God's people.

Midian is one of those nations that will be attacked by Israel.

This is not a foreign policy discussion.

Now, Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses' father-in-law, we've met him before.

And the way that we've met him before is under the name Rewel.

In Exodus 2, what happens is Moses, your Remember, he uh he saves the life of the Hebrew who's being beaten by killing the Egyptian.

And then he gets outed for killing the Egyptian, and so he has to flee so that he is not killed himself.

He has to flee from Egypt, and he flees into the land of Midian.

And in the land of Midian, he meets a man named Reuel.

Reuel means friend of God.

So in the wilderness, he meets a friend of God.

But he doesn't just meet Rahuel.

The way that he meets Rahuel is he meets his daughters first.

You may remember this story.

And what happens is Moses goes on like from like Exodus 1 to 4, Moses is just like Jason born.

That's the way to think of it.

And he meets his daughters, and they're being attacked by these evil shepherds.

You can think of them as like this wicked nation.

And so they aren't allowing them to get water.

Rayuel's daughters can't get the water that they need for their sheep.

So what happens?

Moses defeats the enemies and he provides water.

It's sort of exactly like the circumstance that we're meeting this man again.

Moses had just defeated his enemies and provided water.

You do something like that, apparently, Jethro shows up.

Jethro loves stories like this.

That's something that we know about Jethro.

So he catches wind of what you know water miracles and the um uh uh rescue of God's people and the defeating of enemy nations.

He hears that this happens, and so he goes to visit uh Moses.

What happens then in the first story is that uh uh Moses marries uh Rayuel's daughter.

Rayuel and Jethro, by the way, these are the same man, the same person.

Uh Rayuel is like his his regular name.

You know, that's his Christian name.

Rayuel.

Rayuel means friend of God.

And uh Jethro is a title, it means excellent.

So think your excellency.

So now we're realizing who this man is.

He is not uh um merely he is he is by the names that we have learned of him as, he is the friend of God who is also a king.

And he is a priest.

A priest king, friend of God, who just shows up out of nowhere in the wilderness who is not a part of the nation of Israel.

Does this remind is this ringing and i is a bell ringing?

Is anybody's bell?

Is anybody any anyway who does it sound like Jesus?

Yeah, Jesus is great.

That's obviously the right answer.

But there's a stranger one.

We're doing deep weird today.

Look.

Melchizedek.

Sounds just like Melchizedek.

Melchizedek is uh is if you're wondering who is that, well, welcome.

Melchizedek is a character in the Bible that is placed there so that you wonder who who is that?

And then there's an entire New Testament book that like 50% of it is dedicated to explaining how Jesus is the new Melchizedek, and then you read it over and over again and you're like, yay, yay, yeah, yeah.

Great, great.

But can you can we go back to who Melchizedek is one more time?

Would you mind explaining that to me?

Once again, we're in deep weird, so I hope you like it.

So he is uh so what happens is Jethro hears the news of the rescue that has been accomplished and of the exodus that the people of God have experienced.

And so he goes back to visit his son-in-law Moses, who he had sent away to accomplish this very mission uh uh years ago.

And as he sends him away, or as they return together, here's what happens is uh Moses goes out to greet his uh father-in-law.

In verse 18.7, it says, Moses went out to meet his father-in-law and bowed down and kissed him.

And they asked each other of their welfare and went into the tent.

Notice the greeting.

The way that the greeting takes place shows us that Jethro outranks Moses.

Jethro is a higher ranking man than Moses', because it is Moses that goes out to greet Jethro.

And when he goes out to greet Jethro, it is Moses who bows to Jethro, and it is Moses who kisses Jethro.

He is greeting the man who is a king, the high priest king who is the friend of God.

Moses goes out and he greets him in a way that is submissive to him, that shows that he is the higher-ranking one.

Now we learn of the sons that uh he is bringing.

Uh Moses had married Zipporah, and they had two sons.

But so far we've only heard the name of one of their sons, the first son that they had, whose name was Gershim.

Gershem means sojourner.

But here we learn that there's a second son that they had, and the second son's name is Eleazar.

Eleazar means God is my helper.

And so the reason that the scripture would do something like that, that they wouldn't introduce the second son until a time where his name would be particularly meaningful, is what we are meant to see is that this non-Israelite, who is a priest king, friend of God, is arriving to the people of God, and he is bringing with him the help of God.

So is God the God of Midian?

Or is God the God of Israel?

This these are the types of questions that we should be pushed into when we see an interaction like this.

So they have this joyful reunion, and Moses explains to him all that God, all the trials that they had faced, and how God had delivered them from these trials, and Jethro rejoices.

He rejoices at the news of who God is and of the salvation that he has brought to the people of God.

And in verses 10 through 11, it says, Jethro said, Blessed be the Lord who has delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of Pharaoh, and has delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians.

Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods, because in this affair they dealt arrogantly with the people.

So what is the confession of the priest of Midian?

The Lord is greater than all gods.

Here's what he comes in and sees.

He says that the God of Israel, who delivered the nation of Israel, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God who has placed his particular affection on these particular people, is God most high.

And how does he know this?

It's because he's heard the stories of God's deliverance.

And he looks, he hears the story of the Exodus, and he considers the gods of Egypt are the strongest ones we know.

There is no stronger empire than the nation of Egypt.

And they are humiliated.

Moses, you gotta tell me a part about the Nile again.

The Nile is the source of their life.

It's all their power, it's their lifeblood.

It provides them all of their wealth and prosperity.

That's why everybody has to go there whenever it doesn't rain anywhere else.

It's because the Nile provides the food that they need.

And what did he do again?

He turned it to blood.

He killed the god of the Nile right in front of them.

I wish I could have seen Pharaoh's face.

Jethro would have thought, you know, and he's and he's like, you know, God, I've I've had this.

I don't think this is Jethro's conversion, because his name is Friend of God.

I think Jethro was a worshiper, a devotee of God most high, in the sense that he could be.

In the way that like Job is, where it's like, how did what did Job know?

We don't know what Job knew.

But he knew he should offer sacrifices of worship.

He knew that there was sin and atonement.

He knew that there was a God who was over all other gods.

He knew that he could pray and be heard by him.

He knew these these wonderful things about God, and God honored that in him.

And then, and what happens here is that there is a particularity that is brought into the knowledge of God for Jethro, which is like the revelation of who God really is.

And there's a saying of there, there's like a, you want to know who God really is, who the true God is?

He's the God of Israel.

That's the true God.

You know the God most high?

The most high God?

Well, he's the God of this one nation.

He's revealed himself to this one people.

He can be known.

The Gentile nations by the mouth of Jethro stand in wonder at the deliverance that was given for God's people.

Exodus 18, 12 says, and Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and sacrifices to God.

And Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses, with Moses' father-in-law before God.

When people eat a meal in Scripture, this is not just describing lunch plans.

This is showing a covenantal unity.

And so there is a covenantal unity being demonstrated in worshipful sacrifices that are offered up by a Gentile within the nation of Israel.

And the nation of Israel is sharing this meal together with one of the nations of the world.

They are receiving this blessing together as they both say the God of Israel is God most high.

He doesn't say, this is the dynamic nature of what I want us to see here is that he doesn't say the God of Israel is the same as the God of Midian.

This is our tendency, okay?

This is our cultural tendency.

It's to say that the God of Christianity is the same as the God of Islam.

And we would like to say, see, they both are worshiping the same God from these different nations.

The high priest of Midian says Midian God name.

I don't know what it is.

The high priest of Israel says Israel God name, but they both mean the same thing.

This is the way that we that we try and resolve this in our culture.

One way to think of that is we we try and resolve this by having like a flat organizational structure, and everybody just reaches God, whatever way they want to go.

They can pick up the phone and contact him.

They can call him whatever name they want to call him.

They can assign whatever doctrinal claims to him that they want to assign to him.

There are all kinds of ways to him.

There are mystical ways of meditation by which you might arrive at God.

There are drug ways of doing drugs by which you might arrive at God.

There are romantic ways of going off into the woods and into the wilderness and getting to know God.

There are progressive ways of seeing how our social institutions might be transformed so that the justice of God might be demonstrated.

There are other religions' ways.

And the other religions' ways are just their ways, but they're the same roads.

They use this vocabulary, we use this vocabulary, but we're all talking about the same God.

This is not, this meal, this covenantal meal is not a picture of that.

This covenantal meal is a man from another nation coming in and saying, the gods of the other nations will be humiliated when they come into contact with the God of Israel.

There is one true God, and it's not the gods of the nations, it's the God of Israel.

He has revealed himself, and he can be known particularly.

The God of one nation is the God most high.

The God of all the other nations, the gods of all the other nations will be humiliated by him.

Do you hear the offense of this claim?

Do you hear the radical nature of this particularity?

And so how do the nations relate to this?

How is it that the nations could then relate to this particular blessing?

How might they be blessed?

They will be blessed when they say the God of Israel is the true God.

And we, as our nation, will submit ourselves to the God of that nation.

We did not mean the same thing.

The Egyptians could say, we did not mean the same thing when we said Ra.

The Canaanites would say, we did not mean the same thing when we said Baal.

In fact, Ra and Baal have been utterly humiliated by the God of Israel.

He is the true God.

He is the God most high.

This is the confession that Jethro makes.

I want to wind up the offense of it as high as I can.

Because you're gonna later on in the sermon, and I think it will make it more effective when I show the goodness of it.

It's a rhetorical strategy.

But it works even if you know it's happening, so I'm not afraid of talking about it.

Second part of the story.

Here's what Jethro, here's the help of God that Jethro brings, that this Gentile king brings to the nation of Israel.

The gentile king brings the help of God to the nation of Israel.

Deep weird.

Exodus 18, 13.

The next day Moses sat to judge the people.

And the people stood around Moses from morning till evening.

So this would happen every day.

Moses would go to you know the center of the people, and they would bring him his their problems all day.

He was the de facto king of the nation.

He's the high priest, the one who can talk directly with God.

And here's the um uh organizational strategy for the nation of Israel at this point.

Moses will handle it.

That's the strategy.

Moses will take care of this.

We'll just we gotta tell Moses.

How are we gonna figure this out?

I think Moses is gonna have to tell us what to do.

So that would happen all day from morning until evening.

And Moses would handle that all day, morning till evening, and then he would go back into his tent and think, oh man, this is a rough gig.

So in verses 17 and 18, it says, Moses' father-in-law said to him, What you are doing is not good.

Very father-in-law, E.

What you are doing is not good.

You're uh I can picture some of these.

You're gonna load this up, you're gonna tie it down like that?

The way you're tying it down is not good.

You know, that's the there's the weight, there's the restraint that father-in-law show, and then there's the nope, I gotta talk about it that happens, and then this is what happened with Jethro.

He sees them from morning till night, and he's like, So Moses, is this kind of a one-off day?

Is this like a court ruling holiday where everybody comes in and you answer all the ones you can, and Moses is like, no, this is what we do every day.

Yeah, Moses, this is not good.

What you are doing is not good.

In verse 18, he says, 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.

Look at the type of advice that Jethro gives to Moses.

This is God like counsel.

I can tell because it is precisely the way that God handles Adam in the garden.

God comes to Adam in the garden and he sees Adam alone.

This is not good.

It's the first time that God in Scripture says this is not good.

Jethro goes to Moses and he says, Moses alone, doing all of the rulings.

Moses, this is not good.

And then what does he establish for, what does God establish for Adam?

A helper.

He creates Eve.

He says, What I have tasked you with, it is not good to do alone.

So I will make a helper who is suitable for you.

Jethro offers this same godlike counsel to Moses when he sees him ruling over this nation in this way, this very flat organizational structure.

And uh and what he does is he says, This is not good, and I will create helpers that are that are suitable for you.

And his advice for how to do this is uh in verse 21, says, 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.

Verse twenty-two, 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.

He provides for him this organizational structure that instead of being flat is now hierarchical.

You can think of it, it's mountain-shaped.

It's like the shape of Sinai, it is the shape of unity, it is the way things hold together, it is the way families and nations and and corporations and civilizations hold together.

We learned this especially in our marriage series from a year ago, which is that egalitarianism, which is the flattening and equality of all things, is the shape of uh it's the it's the um I'm looking for a word.

Uh it's the shape of decomposition.

Because that means everything goes to its own way.

When a body decomposes, that means its cells no longer cohere towards the the operation of the head.

When the cells in a body cohere towards the operation of the head, that's called life and living.

You know?

You're doing it now.

Many of you are doing it now.

I can see from here.

And when those cells turn to their own way and they are not oriented towards the higher purpose, that's called decomposition.

There is not an ordering, there is a flattening, and the flattening is decomposition.

Hierarchy is the shape of life.

Hierarchy is the shape of unity.

It is the shape of life and flourishing.

Flattening is the shape of death, you know.

You can see that's you return to dust, you know, there's no no coherence.

Hierarchy is the shape of life.

Jethro.

Brings the shape of life to the people of God.

He orders them for worship like how a high priest would order them.

There's so much to be said about this shape.

Google it.

There's like 10,000 leadership essays written on this.

And you're all very smart people.

You could probably draw those conclusions for yourself.

It is good, don't try and do everything alone.

You need help.

This is the way that the world is structured.

And that help needs to be explicit and it needs to be hierarchically delegated.

It cannot be flatly delegated.

That is the shape of destruction.

And when things are hierarchically delegated towards a positive end with God at their head, then this is the shape of joy and flourishing and thriving.

This is that's the little sermon on that.

The second part of this that I that I want us to see, or another aspect of this that I want us to see, is that what's required for the men who are selected to fulfill these hierarchies, here's what Moses must do.

He must look out, judge the men who will be the chiefs over thousands, uh, hundreds, fifties, and tens, and he must rank them.

Judge and rank.

And then what he must do is put the best men over thousands, and he must put the second best men over hundreds, and he must put the third best over fifties and the fourth best over tens.

And so he must judge and rank.

And then, according to the giftings that God has given to these men, he must place them in their positions.

And then those men must receive those positions with gratitude, not with jealousy.

And they must receive those with responsibility, the fullness of the responsibility that they had been given for the people that are under them, so that they might serve and care for and lead the people that they have been given this responsibility for.

Now this becomes a flourishing world.

Why is it that God couldn't say, or that Jethro couldn't say, this structure, this structure of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and tens, this is the God-given structure of civilization.

You can put anybody you want in these roles.

Okay, but the point that I'm trying to make is there is no such structure, even a God-given structure, that can overcome men of weak character.

If they're men of weak character in a God-ordained structure, might as well be in no structure.

It doesn't, it won't help.

It won't help.

And uh a lot of times we in our culture goes, you know, it's the pendulum.

And so we do this thing where it's uh uh but but for the last uh I don't know, 25 years, we've thought of everything as structural.

These are it these are these are systemic issues, these are structural issues.

And it uh what they've and are they?

Yeah, yeah, it's part of it.

It's part of it.

You know what they also are?

Bad men issues.

The the people in these structures are bad people.

We have ranked them wrongly.

And because we have ranked them wrongly, we get bad stuff in return.

And you know what can work in a in a in a not ideal structure?

Great men.

Great men are some of the best, some of the best things you can get for a civilization.

If you like civilization, it's one of the best things you can get.

This ordering, this structure that we see, is the we can see this reflected in our church polity.

This is the hope of our church polity.

This is why we have a subsidiary sort of structure.

Now, how does here's here's a way that I want you to think of it.

What he does what God does to make Eve.

What uh uh Jethro does to to make this life-giving structure of flourishing is what God does to make Eve.

He takes the body and he breaks it apart, he orders those parts and then brings them back together into a well-ordered, more flourishing unity.

So, step one, you take the body.

Step two, you break it into parts.

Step three, you assemble those parts in it in a proper order, and that presents a more glorious shape of unity.

This is the way that all of creation works.

This is the way that this is the way that creation works.

This is the way you make bread.

You know, you take the wheat, you grind it up until it looks like dust, to it looks like like we're returning it to death, and then you fill it with the water of life, and then you add fire, and then now you can live off of it.

Now you can live off of it.

You know, if you just take the the flower and you eat the flower and you drink the water, you'll die.

Isn't that weird?

But if you if you grind it up and you kill it and then you like resurrect it back into a higher form, I'm just saying, we the the world is very strange.

So Jethro takes the people of God, he breaks them up into parts, and then he reforms them together into this uh well-ordered unity, which is a distribution of responsibility.

This is the the shape of a well-structured, well-ordered world.

And this is reflected in our polity.

You can see this in uh uh, this is why we have a model of parishes for the members of our church.

It is so that the elders and deacons will be over a part.

We we break up the church into parts so that we might better cohere into a whole.

And we are a part of a presbytery, which is a region of churches, which oversees us.

Our presbytery is a part of a general assembly, which is sort of like a national uh overarching ruling over the churches.

And the hope of this is that we might be well ordered as a church body.

Because here's what we require as people.

We require personal tending.

We require personal tending.

It is not a fluke.

Why is it structured this way?

Why does God structure it this way, where it tears all the way down to 10?

Because uh one person can tend to about 10 people.

You know, about 10 households, you might think.

And then what can that one person do for this for these people?

They can they can offer personal care.

They can be present when you pick up the phone and call.

They can show up when you're facing a crisis, they can help you move when you're overwhelmed, they can pro they can visit you when you're in the hospital, they can offer now.

So why does God structure things that way?

What does he what does he it's because, and this is where I'm putting a bow on the whole thing, so I it's it's because you can't, here's if you're you know, norm normal Israelite with normal problem that needs tending, you can't get to Moses.

You can't be heard.

And so, do you know what Moses means to you at that point?

The truth is, very little.

Because he can't know you, and you can't know him.

You have to be, in order to really know, in order to really participate in the community of God's people, you have to know and be known.

There have to be mechanisms in place for you to know and be known.

So here's the the thing that I want us to see.

God most high, God most high, the God of all nations, the God of all people, the God of the God who is the creator of everyone and everything, who we can truthfully say, there is no nation on earth by which you who doesn't owe their absolute allegiance to him, God most high, can he visit you?

Can he know you?

Can he offer concerns for your problems, for your issues?

Does he know the diagnosis?

Does he know the family problem that you're facing?

Does he know the anxiety that you're carrying?

Does he know, does it, does that, does the most high meet you particularly?

You are not a generic thing.

You are not a theoretical thing, you are a very particular one person type of thing.

And you know that you can't be helped by generalities, you can't be cared for.

You can't be known and understood by generalities.

Here is the glory of our God.

Our God is God most high.

And he is the Lord Jesus Christ.

One man.

He meets you as one man, as one person.

He knows you as a person.

When you pray to him, he is a person and gives you his full attention.

You have his attention.

Whose attention?

God most high, not generically as a principle, as one who is giving their attention to you.

We call it the scandal of particularity because it offends the ways that we would otherwise desire for all people to have like a direct line to him.

It is not the scandal of particularity, it is the wonder of particularity.

It is the God who would condescend to the level of being a person so that he might know and rescue you.

Moreover, that you might be rescued by him, that there might be a name under heaven by which you might call and know you will be saved.

That is what is given to us in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is no scandal, it is a wonder.

It is a wonder.

Because it is what we require as these particular people, you must be known by God.

You must know God as He has revealed Him to be.

God Most High is the Lord Jesus Christ.

He takes up the one who is the true Melchizedek, the true King of righteousness, the true Prince of Peace, who reconciles all people to himself.

All people are reconciled through the one man.

Because that's the only way we can be.

It's the type of thing you are.

All right, let's pray.

Holy Father, I pray that you would work in our hearts so that we might see the wonder that when we pray, we have your attention.

Lord, I pray that in the areas of our lives where we've where we feel overlecked or overlooked or neglected or ignored by you, Lord, where we feel that uh the wheels are coming off and that we are just poor and needy, how could we possibly get a call?

How could we possibly get any FaceTime with God most high?

Lord, this is the wonder of the incarnation, the wonder of your particularity and the particularity of your care.

Lord, help us to trust that you see us, you know us, you understand us, you know our frame, and that we can turn to you for the particular cares of our heart.

Lord, we pray that we would glorify you as Jethro does, in your particularity.

We would not be afraid of it in sharing it with others.

We would not be offended by it, Lord, and we would not be humiliated by it.

But instead, we would we would recognize that we have a God who has made himself known, which means that we can know you in the depth of your love for us.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.