Daily Devotion for November 5, 2015
Prayers
Scripture
Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.
This anonymous version of an old hymn gives it a charming, soft quality.
Prayer to Conform to God’s Will
O Lord God, I am so lukewarm towards you so much of the time, in so much of my life. I try not to admit it to myself, but I read your Word and I can see the gap between what you want for me and what I do. I make excuses. You tell us to pick up our cross and follow Jesus, imitating Him in all we do, but the lure of property, politics, entertainment — all of the matters of this world — is powerful. I concern myself with them constantly, ignoring the plain and simple message of the Bible. I live too much in the secular world, anxious for status and concerned about my future.
Have patience with me, mighty God, and forgive me. Do not spew me out, as you have warned you might do with the lukewarm. Fill my soul with the fire of your Word and help me grow, to put more and more confidence in you and less and less in the world before me; forgive me my sins and help me to live in them less and less today, and every day, that I might more perfectly follow your commandments. In Christ's name I pray,
For Married Persons
Father God, you have consecrated the state of matrimony between men and women to represent the spiritual marriage and unity between Christ and his church. Look with mercy, I pray you, upon those who are married, that they may love, honor, and cherish each other, and so live together in faithfulness and patience, in wisdom and true godliness, that their home may be a haven of blessing and of peace for them. Let your Holy Spirit dwell with them, and guide them from pride and selfishness, and into the spirit of service for one another, and any children they might care for, as Christ humbled himself to serve us. This I ask in Jesus' name,
Meditation
[The Son and the Father are one God.]
Parting Prayer
O good shepherd, seek me out, and bring me home to your fold again. Deal favourably with me according to your good pleasure, until I may dwell in your house all the days of my life, and praise you forever and ever with them that are there.
Think of the day ahead in terms of God with you, and visualize health, strength, guidance, purity, calm confidence, and victory as the gifts of His presence.
Psalm 90:10-12 (NKJV)
The days of our lives are seventy years;
And if by reason of strength they are eighty years,
Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow;
For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Who knows the power of Your anger?
For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath.
So teach us to number our days,
That we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Exodus 18:13-27 (ESV)
Jethro’s Advice
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 decide between one person and another, and I make them know the statutes of God and his laws.”
Moses (by Tissot)
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 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 the laws, and make them know 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 had said.
Moses chose able men out of all 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 small matter they decided themselves.
Then Moses let his father-in-law depart, and he went away to his own country.
Notes on the Scripture
Moses is a prophet, perhaps the greatest prophet of Israel, but he is unprepared for the absolute leadership that has been dropped into his lap. We have seen him seek help. He is not an orator — he possibly has a physical speech impediment — and even before he accepted Yahweh's commission, Aaron became his spokesman. Aaron has more and more come to act like a minister, in both senses of the word: a subordinate political official, as well as the high priest of Yahweh. So Moses has much-needed assistance for one aspect of his rulership.
We have also just seen Moses delegate another important function of governance, for it was the young, vigorous, and capable Joshua who acted as the Hebrews' general in their first battle, against the Amalekites at Rephidim.
But it is, surprisingly, an outsider who first organizes a judicial system. The claims of later kings to be divinely ordained notwithstanding, God has generally seemed impartial to temporal politics; to organize a government, Moses is on his own. His father-in-law, an experienced leader (as the priest of the Midianites), gives him good counsel.
The division of the Israelites into thousands, hundred, fifties, and tens will endure. Likely, this hierarchy and terminology was already in place. Jethro strengthened it, and possibly modified it, rather than inventing it. The use of numbers were more descriptive than proscriptive. That is, the Hebrews were organized organically into kinship units that we might call tribes, clans, extended families, and immediate families of approximately the numbers of one thousand, etc.
Oddly, recounting that the judicial organization of Israel originated with a non-Hebrew man, rather than a commandment of God through Moses, lends credibility to Exodus as an historically accurate work. For if Exodus were a biased or fictionalized account seeking only to convince readers of God's power, it would never credit the intelligence and experience of a human mind with such a major role, much less the advice of a Midianite.
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