Listen to Wise Counsel
The Israelites are on their journey to the land God had promised them, camping when the cloud stopped, moving when the cloud moved. They have had a battle and God gave them the victory. By the time of Exodus 18 they were well settled into camp life.
There are a number of speculations on the number of Israelites who left Egypt, but whatever the number, there were a lot of them, plus the mixed multitude that went with them. With this many people living in close proximity there were bound to be problems. If the people were as quarrelsome one with the other as they were with God, no doubt Moses had many causes brought before him. (Matthew Henry Commentary) Moses sat as judge giving advice and deciding over disputes from morning until evening.
When Moses had run for his life he had gone to Midian and was taken in by Jethro, the priest of Midian, or "prince of Midian." Jethro was the ruler of the people called Cushites or Ethiopians, and like many other chiefs of pastoral people in that early age, he still retained the faith and worship of the true God. (Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary). Moses had ended up tending sheep for him and married one of his daughters. Now Jethro had heard how the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt and came to where the Israelites were camped to visit and bring Moses' wife and two sons back to Moses.
Jethro observed Moses sitting all day acting as judge and asked Moses, "Why do you alone sit as judge, while all these people stand around you from morning to evening?" In our modern day vernacular, I think what he said was "What in the world are you doing?" Then he went one step further and told Moses what he was doing was not good, that he was going to wear himself out. Those could have been touchy words, coming from a father-in-law. Sometimes in-law relationships can be tenuous. Moses could have said, "I didn't ask for your advice," and turned a deaf ear or felt he was being criticized.
But Jethro went on to describe a better way of handling this situation. It sounds like he was a very wise, kind man in the way he spoke to Moses. Appoint trustworthy men as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. Let them decide the easy cases and only bring the difficult ones to Moses. And Moses heeded his father-in-law's advice and made the appointments.
How do you take advice? Do you bristle at even the hint that you could do some things better or different? Proverbs 11:14 says "Where no counsel is, the people fall but in the multitude of counselors there is safety." KJV. Prov. 1:8: "Listen, my son, to your father's instruction, and do not forsake your mother's teaching." Prov. 2:1: "My son....accept my words and store up my commands within you." God has placed people in our lives and in the church, people who have learned by experience to handle various situations, who have gone through the "college of hard knocks," to be wise counselors. Our first step towards wisdom would be to listen to them with an open mind and learn from their experiences. Take a lesson from Moses and graciously accept the wisdom dispensed.
Listen to wise counsel.
God is good all the time,
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