FBC Daily Devotional – March 8, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good morning to you. New day, new week, second week of March, and we are marching closer and closer to spring.

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Aren't you excited about that? I know I am. One thing I'm not particularly excited about is how we have to change our clocks later at the end of the week, lose that hour of sleep, if you will, but it'll be nice later in the day.

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The sun will still be up at 7 o 'clock in the evening. I like that. I do like those longer evenings of daylight hours.

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Well, anyway, so in our Bible reading schedule today, we're in the book of Exodus and chapters 17, 18, and 19, and we're reintroduced in chapter 18 to this man

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Jethro. He's Moses' father -in -law, but one of the things I wanted to highlight this morning is the title that is ascribed to Jethro almost every time his name is referred to, and that is the

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Priest of Midian. I want you to think about that for a minute because Jethro is not an

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Israelite. He's not a Hebrew, so as a priest of Midian, of what

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God is he a priest, right? It kind of takes us back to the book of Genesis with Melchizedek and Melchizedek encountering

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Abraham. Obviously, Melchizedek wasn't a Hebrew, he wasn't an Israelite, because none of them were even born yet.

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Abraham was the progenitor of the Israelites, of the Hebrews, so of whom was

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Melchizedek a priest? Well, we're told in Genesis that he's a priest of the Most High God.

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Well, here we come to another priest, Jethro, a priest of Midian.

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So what kind of priest, and to what kind of God is he a priest? As you read this passage, it's pretty clear that he is obviously a priest of the

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God of the Bible. So notice how, like in verse 8,

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Moses recounted the works that Yahweh, the Lord, and your Bibles, that name

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Lord is in all caps, it's telling you that's that name Yahweh, or sometimes Jehovah is the way it's pronounced, there's a variation there, but anyway, it's very clearly, and that's the name that God gave to Moses to tell the people who had sent him to deliver them from Egypt.

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You know, Moses said, who shall I say sent me to do this? And God said, tell them, I, Yahweh has sent you.

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So, in verse 8, we read that Moses told his father -in -law all that Yahweh had done to Pharaoh and the

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Egyptians for Israel's sake. He's telling them all the things about the plagues and the deliverance and how God miraculously delivered them.

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Well then, how does Jethro respond to that? In verse 9, Jethro rejoiced for all the good that Yahweh had done to Israel and that he had delivered them out of the hand of the

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Egyptians. So, Jethro is referring to God as Yahweh, to Yahweh as God, and then he actually praises

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Yahweh in verses 10 and 11. Jethro said, blessed be Yahweh who has delivered you out of the hand of the

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Egyptians and out of the hand of Pharaoh and has delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. But now listen to what he says.

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Did you catch this in verse 10? He says, now I know that Yahweh is greater than all gods.

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He's greater than all gods, because in this affair, they dealt arrogantly with his people.

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So, Yahweh, he affirms, is greater than all the gods. And later on, when

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God gives the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, what's the first one? You shall have no other gods before me, he says.

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And Jethro is recognizing that there are no other gods, that Yahweh is the

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God. Yahweh is greater than all other so -called gods. So, he praises

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Yahweh. And then, in verse 12, he offers a sacrifice. He's functioning as a priest, offering a sacrifice to God in verse 12.

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Jethro, Moses' father -in -law, brought burnt offerings and sacrifices to God. Now, we also have to keep in mind here that, at this point, there is no sacrificial system.

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The ceremonial law is yet to come. It's coming later in the book of Exodus. So there is no ceremonial law about the offering of burnt offerings and sacrifices and so on.

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So the regulations aren't there yet, that they only be offered through the priesthood of Aaron.

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And so Jethro, operating as a priest outside of being descended from Aaron, who, by the way, is right here with him, we're going to see this in just a moment, he offers this burnt offering and sacrifices to God, to Elohim.

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And then I want you to notice how Moses and Aaron and the elders all gather together with Jethro, and they have like a fellowship meal together.

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So continuing in verse 12, it says, Jethro offered this, brought this burnt offering and sacrifices, and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses' father -in -law before God.

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Before God. So Moses and Aaron and the elders of Israel are all acknowledging the legitimacy of Jethro being a priest before God, of God, and they are welcoming him and having fellowship with him at the table before God.

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So then, as you continue in the chapter, Jethro observes what

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Moses is doing every day and how all the people are coming to Moses for advice and counsel and so on and so forth, and Jethro says, hey, this is not a good idea.

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This is what you need to do. You need to pick out some men who have wisdom and skill that you can teach, and they can make those decisions and the lesser things, and really important big things, then they can come to you, but you need to delegate and divide up this responsibility.

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Moses hears that advice, he accepts it as coming basically from God, and God honors it.

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God blesses that advice that Jethro gives and that Moses heeds.

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So I think it's safe to say that Jethro is a priest of the

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Most High God, like Melchizedek was, and he's showing that relationship to God in this very tangible way, very helpful way.

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Now, one thing I get from this is I think we need to beware of developing such a party spirit in our

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Bible -believing Christian faith, and what I mean by that is, well,

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I've been pastoring for 40 years, in the ministry for 40 -plus years now, and I've seen too many

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Christians develop this party spirit that says, if you're not of my stripe, if you're not exactly like I am, then

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I don't want to have anything, I don't want to have anything, I don't want to recognize you and have any fellowship with you.

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I need to be isolated from you. You need to stay away from me. So for example, just to give you an illustration,

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I was reading the other day in the biography of Samuel Davies, he's the pastor who took over after Jonathan Edwards, so we're talking 300, almost 300 years ago, 250 years ago now.

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And Samuel Davies' grandmother, I think it was, was a Welsh Baptist, and she came from Wales, to the continent, to the colonies, and when she came to the colonies, she and her family joined up with a

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Welsh Baptist, they call it the Welsh, in the Welsh tract, but that particular strain of Welsh Baptist was different from the strain of Welsh Baptist that she came from in Wales.

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And she ended up being, she ended up being excommunicated, if you will, to be cut off from the strain here, because the strain here believed in practicing,

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I think, if I'm recalling correctly, practicing foot washing. And where she came from, they didn't.

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And so, well, you're not like us, you're not one of us, so we can't have any fellowship with you. That's the kind of party spirit

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I'm talking about. In more modern times, you know, I have a good friend that is a

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Presbyterian, and he loves, I mean, he is a faithful pastor, and he's godly, and he believes the word, and all the rest of that.

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I mean, he's not a liberal Presbyterian or anything like that. And I know some other friends that would say, you know, you really shouldn't, you really shouldn't fellowship with a guy like that, because, you know, he's not a

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Baptist. This is the thing I'm talking about here, the party spirit. Jethro was a priest of the

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Most High God, he was recognized as such, even though he wasn't a Hebrew of the

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Hebrews, if you will, and they sat down together, they had a meal together, they accepted his sacrifice to God together, they recognized him as a brother, if you will, in the faith.

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So, I know we can go to seed on that in both directions, and I think we need to be careful about it.

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Well, this is one of the things that came across my mind as I read this passage today.

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I hope this is some food for our thoughts. Well, let's have a word of prayer together and ask

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God to give us a good spirit about these things, shall we? So, our

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Father and our God, we do thank you for this evidence and testimony of Jethro, and how you used that relationship between Jethro and Moses and Aaron, and it was a blessing to all.

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And we thank you that you can use your people, your servants, who are of even different stripes than we are, and they can be such a blessing and encouragement to us and we to them.

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Help us to realize the blessing that can be ours when we truly understand the fellowship that is ours in Christ Jesus.

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And so, this we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, have a good rest of your

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Monday, and I trust your week gets off to a great start. Have a good day. God bless.