Exodus 18 - Jethro's Advice

Jethro Hears of the Exodus and Reunites Moses with His Family

All right, let's pray and then we'll play the video. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this evening and we thank you for your word and your servant, Moses. We thank you for those Israelites who were in the wilderness and did not grumble and complain.

Lord, sometimes we read these events and we get the idea that they were all like that, but we know that that is not true. So Lord, we thank you for those who are faithful and we thank you today for those who remain faithful.

And I just pray that we would learn something from this that we can take and apply to our lives. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Exodus 18.

And Jethro, the priest of Nilean, Moses' father-in-law, heard of all that God had done for Moses and for Israel, his people, that the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt. Then Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, took Zipporah, Moses' wife, after he had sent her back with her two sons of whom the name of one was Gershon.

For Moses said,.

I have been a stranger in a foreign land.

And the name of the other was Eleazar. For he said, the God of my father was my help and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh. And Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, came with his sons and his wife to Moses in the wilderness where he was encamped at the mountain of God.

Now he had said to Moses,.

I, your father-in-law, Jethro, am coming to you with your wife. And her two sons with her.

So Moses went out to meet his father-in-law, bowed down and kissed him. And they asked each other about their well-being. And they went into the tent. 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 on the way and how the Lord had delivered them.

Then Jethro rejoiced for all the good which the Lord had done for Israel, whom he had delivered out of the hand of the Egyptians. And 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 who has delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods.

For in the very thing in which they behaved proudly, he was above them.

Then Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, took a burnt offering and other sacrifices to offer to God. And Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses' father-in-law before God. And so it was on the next day that Moses sat to judge the people.

And the people stood before Moses from morning until evening. So when Moses' father-in-law saw all that he did for the people, he said,.

What is this thing that you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit and all the people stand before you from morning until evening?

Because the people come to me to inquire of God. And they have a difficulty. They come to me and I judge between one and another. And I make known the statutes of God and his laws.

The thing that you do is not good. Both you and these people who are with you will surely wear yourselves out. For this thing is too much for you. You are not able to perform it by yourself. Listen now to my voice.

I will give you counsel and God will be with you. Stand before God for the people so that you may bring the difficulties to God. And you shall teach them the statutes and the laws and show them the way in which they must walk and the work they must do.

Moreover, you shall select from all the people able men such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.

And let them judge the people at all times. Then it will be that every great matter they shall bring to you, that every small matter they themselves shall judge. So it will be easier for you for they will bear the burden with you.

If you do this thing and God so commands you, then you will be able to endure and all those people will also go to their place in peace.

So Moses, heeded the voice of his father-in-law and did all that he had said. And Moses chose able men out of all Israel and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.

So they judged the people at all times. The hard cases they brought to Moses, but they judged every small case themselves. Then Moses let his father-in-law depart and he went his way to his own land.

Jethro’s Praise of the Lord and the Spread of God’s Mighty Works

All right, Exodus chapter 18 begins in verse one. And Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses' father-in-law heard of all that God had done for Moses and for Israel, his people, that the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt.

So we were introduced to Jethro the first time. Do you remember where that was? That was back in Exodus chapter two. And who remembers what he was called in Exodus chapter two? Jethro's other name, Reuel, okay, R-E-U-E-L.

Which means friend of God. So what do we know about Jethro? We don't know a whole lot about him. He was in the land of Midian. He was a priest. And what else do we know? Anything else?

Yes, Jim. I think Genesis 25, you may be gonna go there. Are you? I am not, no. I think it's 25. He may have been the son of Keturah, Abraham's wife, second wife. Okay. And he had, because Abraham had five sons.

And then Keturah, with Keturah, and then, because Midian's name is mentioned as one of her sons, or Abraham's sons. Yeah. And then down a little further in verse four, and the sons of Midian were, and then the names of them are pronounced.

And all these are the children of Keturah. So he may have been a distant relative. Is Rule one of them? Is one of the names?

Jethro isn't one of them? No. Okay, so it's a speculation then.

Well, I checked a couple commentaries and they were in agreement on that. Yeah.

I did see that. I didn't see anything in the Bible where I could make that connection, but yeah, I did read that in commentaries. But what do we know for sure? Moses marries Jethro's daughter. And in Exodus chapter four, if you were here, no doubt you remember the story where Moses and his wife, Zipporah, have this disagreement.

They didn't exactly see eye to eye over the subject of circumcision. So you remember, she really took issue with Moses. And at some point, Moses sends his wife back to her father. That's what we see here, because now she's coming back.

She was with him. Some point she was sent back and now she's coming back to Moses. Now, it's not really spelled out as to why Moses sent her back to her father. There's a few theories on that. One of them, that during the plagues of Egypt, Moses wanted his family safe.

So he sent his wife and kids back to the land of Midian. I mean, that's one possibility. Others think that it was more of an issue that they really just couldn't get along and it wasn't a good situation and he sends her back to dad.

That's the other theory, because it does seem kind of strange. She's been away with her father and then they all return. So Moses' wife comes back, his two sons come back and he runs out and greets Jethro and kisses Jethro and not his wife.

I mean, that seems a little odd. I look at verses six and seven. Now, it said to Moses, Jethro did, I, your father-in-law Jethro, am coming to you with your wife and her two sons with her. So Moses went out to meet his father-in-law, bowed down and kissed him.

And they asked about each other and about their wellbeing and they went into the tent. Now, I wouldn't read too much into this only because that's not what this chapter is about. It's not between Moses and his wife or his children.

This chapter is about Moses and Jethro and Jethro giving wise counsel to Moses. So we, bottom line is we don't really know. What we do see though, is not only does Jethro give Moses advice, they worship God and we see that news was spreading of what God had done for the Israelites.

This got into the land of Midian and I'm sure it was spreading throughout all the known world at the time. Again, verse one, it says Jethro heard of all that God had done for Moses and for Israel, his people that the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt.

Now skip down to verse eight, says, and Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord had done to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel's sake and all the hardship that had come upon them on the way and how the Lord had delivered them.

Then Jethro rejoiced for all the good which the Lord had done for Israel, whom he had delivered out of the hand of the Egyptians. So one thing we see here is that when people tell of God and his mighty deeds or God and his wonderful deeds, what does it cause people to do?

Cause people to kind of stand in awe and worship God. Of course, this is one of the reasons why we go through the books of Genesis and in Exodus and focus in on these Old Testament stories because many of the things that we've been reading about, these are really some of the most monumental events in the history of the world.

Obviously the creation is the biggest work of God. The flood, I mean, every culture has some story about the flood, that's a monumental event. The parting of the Red Sea, obviously. I think too many times though, the problem with us as modern Christians, we tend to focus on ourselves maybe, what does this have to do with me?

What can I get out of this? Well, this really didn't have to do with the parting of the Red Sea, the Exodus. It really didn't have much of anything to do with Jethro, did it? Not really. And yet Jethro, when he hears it, he praises God and worships God.

And that should be our response when we hear about these things. I would say this also, if the Lord, if God has done these great things for Israel, if God has done great things for you, do the same thing, tell people about it.

God has done something great in your life, tell somebody. When Moses and Jethro get together, what are they talking about? I'm sure they talked about a lot of things, but obviously they were talking about the things of God.

Marcus.

God did something very, very large in my lifetime by bringing the people back into the land and establishing Israel as a nation again. This is something monumental in my own opinion.

Well, when Israel was established in 48 and 49, it got the world's attention and people started looking at what the scripture said about Israel being back in the land. I mean, there's no question that people took notice.

Good, so Moses and Jethro, they're talking about the things of the Lord. And when Christians get together, you get together with a church member or other friends that are Christians, we wanna talk about the things of God.

We should tell whoever's willing to listen, tell our neighbors, tell our children. We don't have to preach at them necessarily, but God and his word should be a topic of conversation. See, if it's a topic of conversation, it just kind of flows naturally and you don't have to try to insert it into every conversation because that's what a lot of people don't like.

I'm sure you've heard this. People don't like one thing about Christians that they're trying to shove things down their throat or they're too pushy. Well, if it's just a normal thing we talk about day after day, it just kind of flows.

Let's face it some. Yes, Larry. I was just gonna say, I mean, we all have a history and his story is where we are now or where we were. And so just telling people our story of where we were before Christ and what he's done in our lives now, otherwise called a testimony.

We all have one and people can't refute it. Yeah. Hey, this is what he did for me. Right. Yep, Dennis. Just before coming here, there's a security guy by the name of Ernie who drives around the Moody area and he got out of his car and I was down by my car and I said, enough rain for you?

You know, it started the conversation. I said, you know what happened today? I was in a prayer meeting with a group of people and the woman was so funny. She was like, Lord, I think it's enough rain now.

It was so cute and I was able to tell him about that and then we can start talking about other things, but yeah, that was fun.

Yeah. He looked at me right in the middle to make of it. Right. But hey, some people, they're always talking about sports, right? Some people, others, their thing is complaining. Doesn't matter what they're talking about, they're just complaining.

Others, you know, they're always talking about their job or whatever it is. But as believers, you know, we should be able to talk about the faith. I mean, I think that goes without saying. I don't want to get into the details of this.

I don't want to get sidetracked, but you've noticed that there's been things in our culture. We've heard things over the past few years that we've never really heard before. There's kind of new slogans, new terminology, new phrases, new ideas that we recognize that I don't remember hearing anything about this five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

And it's everywhere. Like all these people are talking about it all the time and it's so pervasive. What does that lead to? When everyone's talking about the same thing and it's day after day after day, more and more people say, yeah, yeah.

And they get on board and it just spreads. So my only point here is that sometimes, you know, the world, it almost seems like they're better at spreading their message than Christians are spreading our message.

Look at verse 10. But Moses simply is relaying what God has done. And it leads to the praise and worship of the one true God. Verse 10, and 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 who has delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians.

Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods for in the very thing in which they behaved proudly, he was above them. Okay, so going back to what I said at the beginning, we don't really know a whole lot about Jethro and his background.

He was a priest, okay. What does that tell you? I don't know. We kind of assume he was a priest of the one true God and he knew the God of Israel. We kind of, kind of looks like that. Well, we don't really know for sure.

One commentator I read, he concluded that Jethro, at least up until this point, believed in many gods. Now he may have served one in particular, but he believed that there were many gods and deities out there.

Let me just read to you what one commentator said. Said, it would seem that Jethro, like the generality of the heathen, believed in a plurality of gods and had hitherto, you can tell this is kind of an old commentary, and had hitherto regarded the God of the Israelites as merely one among many equals.

Now though, he renounces this creed and emphatically declares his belief that Jehovah is above all other gods, greater, higher, and more powerful. That could be true. Maybe he believed that there were many gods before, but now after hearing about this, okay, Jehovah, he's it.

He's it. He's it. So is that true? I kind of thought about this. Why would you assume that he believed in many gods? Well, you notice what he says. He says, now I know the Lord is greater than all the other gods.

You see, well, see that he's acknowledging that there are other gods. But hold on a minute. What's the first commandment? So two chapters, God's gonna give the 10 commandments. What's the first commandment?

Thou shall have no other gods before me. Is Jehovah recognizing other gods and saying they're legitimate? No. And by the way, that doesn't mean that you can serve other gods as long as he's first. That's not what that means.

And the second commandment says don't make any.

Yeah, and don't make any out of wood or stone or anything else. But even the apostle Paul, what did he say in 1 Corinthians chapter eight, verse five? This was in a sermon I did a couple of weeks ago.

Paul said, there are many gods and many lords. And of course, in that same verse, he also calls them so-called gods, right? So that kind of tells you where he's coming from. But we talk like this, don't we?

And we shouldn't read too much into things to make that point again. So we talk like this, we talk about the God of Islam, the God of Mormonism, and there's great differences between the God they look to and the God that we believe in.

So we make this distinction. If there was a transcript of this or if I was writing this down, I would make the distinction between God, capital G, and God, lowercase g. So when you're talking about the one true God, it's a capital G, he's it.

When you're talking about God's plural or a God that isn't really a God, it's lowercase. So that's how we show that in writing. Also in 2 Corinthians 11, Paul speaks of those who preach another Jesus, right?

So the Bible does talk about other gods. And then Paul talks about those who preach another Jesus. And someone will say, how many Jesuses are there though? Well, there are as many as people can conceive of.

That you can kind of make up your own version of Jesus. And really, as far as Jesus, the Lord of Lord and Lords and King of Kings, the one true Jesus, it's evident just driving through New England. We know that churches have radically different ideas of who Jesus is.

So I know it seems like I'm getting off base here. I'm gonna bring this back around to Exodus in a moment. But I just wanna stress this point. We believe about Jesus. We believe about God. Everything that the Bible says about him.

Amen. Okay, everything the scripture says. If we only believe half and reject everything else, that's not really the God of the Bible. That's the God that we've selected, these parts that we like. So going back to Exodus, this is how that kind of thing would play out with Moses and Jethro.

Let's say Moses, this isn't what happened obviously, but let's say Moses told Jethro about the God of Israel that he just loved the people. He loved the Israelites. And Jethro says, that's wonderful. I'm so glad to hear that.

And then Moses said, and the Lord fed the people in the wilderness with the manna, the bread from heaven. And Jethro's, amen, that's so wonderful. And God, he provided for them and gave them the water out of the rock.

And Jethro's, that's so amazing. And Moses, yeah. And he drowned the entire Egyptian army after killing the firstborn of the land. And Jethro's like, whoa, that's not the God that I want anything to do with.

But you understand the point, like either you accept who he is and who the Bible presents as the Lord, or it's a God of your own making, really. And again, obviously that's not how Jethro responded because he did hear about all these things.

And what did he do? He worshiped, he worshiped God. So all of that to say this, Jethro certainly at this point, whatever he believed before, certainly at this point, he knows that there is only one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And he praises him for all that he's done. All right, so Jethro responds with praise and we should call upon people to do the same. That's what Sunday morning is all about. That's what Wednesday night's all about, to learn these things.

And it causes us to want to worship God more and tell others. All right, verse 12. Any questions or comments so far?

No? All right. Yeah. I was, what caught my eye about 10 and then the following verses, which is that Jethro said, blessed be the Lord, all caps, upper case. And he used the same word another time, which was for the Jew, Yahweh.

Okay. Switched. And you may be going to address this. Nope, no, it's all you. Okay. And then he switched, when you go down to verse 12, it says they took burnt offerings and other sacrifices to offer to God, Elohim.

So my thought was that he could very well have been a Gentile believer. Okay. At this point. All right. Because he's using different. These two words for God or the creator are typically Jewish.

Okay, so what you're saying is, he used the name of God, like G-O-D, that's how it's. Caps. But G-O-D is Elohim. That he was talking about God, but then he switches to.

No, he went and he said Lord first. Oh, okay. And then, because look at what it says. It says, now I know that the Lord, because I've already read, blessed be the Lord. Then it says in verse 11, now I know that the Lord, all caps, is greater than all the other gods.

And then if you go down, is then in verse 12, then Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, took a burnt offering and other sacrifices to offer to God. Okay. So he switched. All right. And then he says that Aaron came with the elders of Israel to eat bread and Moses' father-in-law before nine.

So they fellowshiped together.

Yeah. Well, I was thinking because Lord, all capitals is Jehovah or Yahweh. That's the covenant name of God that was unique for the Israelites at this time. But it's even like this today. When people talk about God, I believe in God.

You don't really know what that means. Because again, there are many gods and many Lords. But usually when people say the Lord, you tend to know that that's more specific. But anyway, thank you, Jim, for that.

Moses, Jethro, and the Meaning of Eating Before God

Verse 12, then Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, took a burnt offering and other sacrifices to offer to God. And Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses' father-in-law before God.

I thought, oh, that's interesting. What does it mean that they ate before God? Well, first of all, who is offering the sacrifice? Jethro is. So at this point in Israel's history, because we know for the children of Israel, the priests had to be Levites.

They had to be descendants of Aaron. Okay, so there would have been no outsider offering sacrifices that would not have been kosher. You know, no pun intended, or maybe pun intended, I guess. But that's not a problem here because the law hasn't yet been given.

So the priesthood of Israel has not yet been established, so it's no problem for Jethro to offer this sacrifice. But it says that they ate it before God. And I just think an application would be, for us, 1 Corinthians 10 .31, which says, therefore, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

So we do that believing that God sees all that we do. And maybe that's part of this, that Jethro is coming to the understanding that, yeah, the Lord is God and he's everywhere. He's omnipresent and he's omniscient and he sees everything.

I don't know if that's what he had in mind. Any other theories on what it means to eat before God or in God's presence?

They fellowship together with the sacrifice to God. Okay.

So where two or three are gathered together, there I am in the midst kind of a thing. Okay. All right, now we get to the final section with Moses. What's the problem? He's getting worn out, or he's going to get worn out.

Moses is judging the people and Jethro's looking at this day-to-day thing. And he's, this is, Moses, this is crazy. You gotta, let me give you some advice, young man, you know, look at verse 13. And so it was on the next day that Moses sat to judge the people.

And the people stood before Moses from morning until evening. So when Moses' father-in-law saw all that he did for the people, he said, what is this thing that you are doing for the people? Why do you sit alone and all the people stand before you from morning until evening?

And Moses said to his father-in-law, well, it's because the people come to me to inquire of God. When they have a difficulty, they come to me and I judge between one and another and I make known the statutes of God and his laws.

So Moses' father-in-law said to him, the thing that you do is not good. Both you and these people who are with you will surely wear yourselves out. For this thing is too much for you, you are not able to perform it by yourself.

So you can just imagine Moses day after day, just more, time he gets up in the morning to the time he goes to bed, he's hearing all the issues of the Israelites judging. And of course, they're standing in line all day, waiting to hear, there has to be a better way.

So Jethro now gives Moses counsel. And the first thing I'd point out, Moses is humble enough to receive it. Sometimes when somebody comes to us and this thing you're doing is not good, you get defensive or Moses could say, hey, I'm the man of God here, who are you to tell me?

That's not what he did, he took his advice. So we should be able to learn from this and we should be able to receive constructive criticism. Even if we don't actually implement the advice, we should still be able to hear it.

Later on, and when I was thinking about this chapter before I studied it, I got these two situations mixed up. But later on in Numbers chapter 11, the Lord will tell Moses something similar. Do you remember what happens later on?

The Lord tells Moses to take 70 elders and the Lord will take of that spirit that's upon Moses and distribute it to the 70 elders. And what that turned into throughout history, it turned into what we know as the Sanhedrin, which is the Jewish council.

So God told Moses, choose 70 elders. So there are 70 elders and Moses, the Sanhedrin of Jesus' day that condemned him to death was 70 men plus the high priest. So that's the origins of that really started here.

This whole concept started right here. And also in Matthew 23, do you remember when Jesus spoke to the multitude, he said of the scribes and Pharisees that they sit in Moses' seat. So they worked together, these men worked together to help Moses rule the nation.

All right, so what is this? This is organization. I know some people, they don't like organized religion. Have you ever heard this? You ever heard some of that? Well, I believe in God, I believe in this stuff, but I don't agree with organized religion.

You know what's worse than organized religion? Unorganized religion. Where everyone's doing what they think is right in their own eyes. But this is organization. A leadership structure is starting to develop.

Moses should not be doing it all by himself. This is not good. So he chooses certain men to help him in these responsibilities. Did the Lord bless this advice? I think he did. I think he did. So an organized leadership is developing.

This way, Moses doesn't get burnt out. This is a common thing with ministers today. They've probably all heard stories of people who experience burnout. So, and by the way, this is seven years for me, and this is a sabbatical, right?

There's this thing called a sabbatical, but anyway, I'll let you know if I'm feeling burnt out. One year off. Okay, I don't want a year off, but we'll bring this up at a later date, but. Seven years from now.

Yes. I don't, wait, I don't think that's how it works. But we see this in the New Testament church, don't we? In Acts chapter two, on the day of Pentecost. The church in Jerusalem had about 120 people, and then 3 ,000 people are added to them on the day of Pentecost.

You had 12 apostles, you had 12 men, or 11 and then 12, who were in charge of doing all this work for thousands of people. And you remember in Acts chapter six, they say, you know, we can't do all of this.

So they kind of took this advice here, and they chose seven men who basically served as deacons to help the apostles so that they could focus on the ministry of the word and prayer. And all those other duties fell on the deacons.

So Moses chose these men who feared God, men of truth, it says, hating covetousness. They're not in it for themselves to acquire wealth and power. We see some qualifications for church leaders, which you don't have time to get into in 1 Timothy three, and Titus chapter one, some similar things here.

And now Exodus 18 ends with verses 26 and 27, says, so they judged the people at all times, the hard cases they brought to Moses, but they judged every small case themselves. Then Moses let his father-in-law depart, and he went his way to his own land.