Today's Daily lesson comes from Exodus chapter 18 verses 13 through 23:
13 The next day Moses sat to judge the people, and the people stood around Moses from morning till evening. 14 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?” 15 And Moses said to his father-in-law, “Because the people come to me to inquire of God; 16 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.” 17 Moses' father-in-law said to him, “What you are doing is not good. 18 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. 19 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, 20 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. 21 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. 22 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. 23 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.”
Upon his recent retirement, Jim Jackson, one of the great Methodist preachers and leaders in Texas of the last quarter century, wrote a list of 100 things he said he learned the hard way. Among those 100 things was this: that many a ministry have been undone for failure to say these four simple words: "I need your help."
No leader can do it all. Not Jim Jackson; and, as today's lesson shows, not even Moses. Those who try crash and burn. Psychologists call them "over functioners". The annals of church records everywhere are littered with the bodies of over-functioning pastors who tried to do it all. Moses was almost one of them.
No leader can do it all; nor should they have to. God's vision, spoken through the wisdom of Moses' father-in-law, was for the Israelites to have leaders but for all the people to shoulder the burden together. In the end, this was not only so that Moses would be spared, but also so that the people themselves could be empowered. In the new society the Israelites were building, the people themselves would be generating their own ideas, solving their own problems, and discovering their own capacity make decisions. In other words, the people at the bottom of the Pharaoh's pyramid society were now going to discover their own gifts and power.
There is an old Chinese proverb:
Go to the people
Live among them
Learn from them
Love them
Start with what they know
Build on what they have
The best leaders, when their work is finished
Their task is done
The people will need to say ‘we have done it ourselves’.
That's almost Biblical.
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