¹⁹ Now listen to me: I will give you counsel, and God be with you. You be the people’s representative before God, and you bring the disputes to God,²⁰ then teach them the statutes and the laws, and make known to them the way in which they are to walk and the work they are to do.²¹ Furthermore, you shall select out of all the people able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain; and you shall place these over them as leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens (Exodus 18:19-21).

Jethro gives Moses counsel so that he does not exhaust himself in leading the people of Israel. He does not expect Moses simply to take his human counsel but to make sure that it aligns with God's will: "If you do this thing and God so commands you..." (Exodus 18:23).

It is puzzling that though Moses follows through on Jethro's suggestion here, he finds himself overburdened again by Numbers 11. On that occasion God promises to put His Spirit into seventy leaders Moses choses. In fact, this would be the Scriptural basis for the creation of the Grand Sanhedrin (a council of seventy), which served as a kind of Supreme Court in Jesus' day.

By the time of the early church, the apostles find themselves over-stretched and choose to delegate some administrative duties to seven godly men "who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom" (Acts 6:3).

Jesus delegated His authority to twelve apostles (Matthew 10:1)  and to a larger group of seventy (Luke 10:1). Paul appointed elders in every church (Acts 14:23). He also instructed his disciples to do the same (e.g. Titus 1:5; 2 Timothy 2:2).

There is a great precedent for delegation of authority in Scripture. 

Friends, if you are in any kind of leadership, I hope you will take these examples to heart and will not make yourself the one and only leader of your group or ministry. Be both willing and intentional about sharing your responsibility and authority with others. Yoiu can carry the vision and inject yourself into any area of leadership you choose, but to always carry all the leadership on your own shoulders is neither prudent nor wise. 

Discipleship is in part delegation, for every disciple must learn to do what you do and at some point stand on their own.

Delegating your authority also requires humility, as you acknowledge that you cannot do it all. It also demands trust in God, for you are entrusting your delegated leaders to His care.

The TaeKwonDo program at First Baptist Dallas is successful because God led me to delegate my authority to trainers.

The Homebuilders Sunday School program is successful, with consistent numbers and growing ministry engagement, because God raised up a number of servant-leaders for the class. The Men's Bible Study is successful, growing from just a handful to averaging twenty every week, because God provided five men who have embraced leadership oversight for the group.

The World Youn Wha Ryu Association is successful because God continues to raise up instructors, who train instructors, who train other instructors, so that there is an unending stream of leaders being developed through the organization. 

Friends, build leaders. Delegate authority.

If you do this thing and God so commands you, then you will be able to endure, and all these people also will go to their place in peace (Exodus 18:23).

There are two accounts of the plan to delegate the responsibility of dispute resolution for the people. The first account is here, and Jethro is given credit for the idea. The second account is in Deuteronomy, and Moses does not mention Jethro but simply presents it as coming from him (cf. Deuteronomy 1:9-18). 

But what I see within the context of Jethro's counsel is this little phrase, "and God so commands you," which must not be missed. Earlier, when Jethro first began to introduce his counsel, he said,

Now listen to me: I will give you counsel, and (may) God be with you (Exodus 18:19).

Jethro understood something that most of those coming out of the Exodus would never understand; namely, God's will had to be at the center of any counsel, purpose and decision. That is why he told Moses to validate his counsel with God ("and God so commands you") and why he prefaced his counsel with the intention of seeking God's approval ("God be with you").

Friends, how do we listen to counsel? How do we pursue our plans? How do we make decisions? Do we consult the Lord and express as our chief interest that His will may be done? Do we validate every counsel, plan and decision by prayerfully seeking God's counsel and blessing? 

What is the source of anxiety? Is it not that we fail to surrender our every plan and decision to God? Are we not anxious because we take responsiility for outcomes rather than entrusting these to God?

What is the source of discouragement and defeat? Is it not because we see things within the horizon of our own plans, interests and desired results rather than giving these over to God, so that He can achieve His purposes, where we serve simply as a chain-link or a sprocket or a piece of the tapestry of God's great work?

Friends, I write this admitting my own failure to submit my every counsel, plan and decision to God. But I also testify that when I did so, I experienced God's peace, which chased away every anxious thought in me. When I prayerfully gave every purpose of my heart to God and declared my earnest interest that His will be done in me, my faith and hope found practical expression. I was seeking God's will to be done and not my own, for God's purposes to be accomplished, regardless of loss or gain. 

So this is my counsel to you, and may God be with you. 

How long do you refuse to keep My commandments and My instructions? (Exodus 16:28).

It should be clear to us that God did not intend Israel to follow Him because of His benefits. Certainly, there were benefits from following Him, but, as they would learn, there were also terrible judgments for disobeying Him.

God certainly could have coddled Israel all the way from Egypt to the Promised Land. He could have destroyed every enemy before them without them ever having to lift a finger to fight. He could have fed them luxurious food, even making all the nations around them cater their best food to them. The One who separated the waters of the Red Sea certainly could have paved a smooth path through the desert to the Promised Land. But He did not do these things, and it posed a frustration and a reason for complaint by the Israelites.

No, God did not want Israel to follow Him because of His benefits. He wanted them to follow Him because they believed that He alone was God. This was what Moses preached to the generation of Israel about to take the Promised Land while they were in the Plains of Moab:

You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides him there is no other (Deuteronomy 4:35).

God actually intended that they suffer hunger, thirst, and get tired of a monotonous diet of manna. He did this to humble and test them, so that they would not follow Him simply for the sake of the benefit of His physical provisions:

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD (Deuteronomy 8:3).

Jesus would echo these words in his response to the devil after fasting forty days in the wilderness (cf. Matthew 4:4). He also taught the proper response of believers with respect to their basic needs:

So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well (Matthew 6:31-33).

Friends, do you worship and follow the LORD for His benefits? What if He made you live in hardship instead of the comfort you experience now? Would you still worship and follow Him? What if He took away your child, your spouse, your mom, your dad, or someone else you care deeply about? Would you still worship and follow Him. Do you worship and follow the LORD for His benefits or because you know that He alone is God?!

I keep thinking as I read in Exodus that the Israelites have a very short memory. They were slaves in Egypt. They were mistreated; Pharoah tried to kill off their children, Pharoah stole from them, nothing belonged to them, and etc. And here they are, whining in the wilderness, that they should have stayed in Egypt because at least there they had food and water, no matter how badly they were treated!

 Proverbs says "Like a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool to his folly." How short sighted the Israelites were to have seen all the things God did to Egypt to save THEM when they were crying out to Him! God had provided for them in the midst of that situation and he was still providing for them when he led them out into the desert. If they were making a movie about the Exodus, it would have been like a movie about the apocalypse, but superman was there to save a very small group of people.

The Lord was still a physical presence with them, as well. In Chapter 15:19-21, God and His Angel had stood between Israel and the Egyptian army! So how quickly the Israelites went from singing that "God is exalted! He is my strength and salvation!" to "I wanna go back to Egypt to the bondage of slavery  because I'm scared that I won't have any breakfast!"

So God gives them what they want. They get the same food, day after day, night after night, for 40 years. I would be pretty sick of those cookies and quail by the time those 40 years were up, but that is how God provided for his children.

Ex. 16:35 says the Israelites ate manna for forty years.  I believe it was God who had given the Israelites the ability to eat this manna for such a long period of time.  I remember friends who worked at a local ice cream shop in high school.  As an employee they could eat as much as they wanted.  After only a few weeks their appetites for ice cream dissipated to a point where they could hardly stand to look at it.  Although the Israelites complained and God provided them with quail at some point during their 40 years of wandering, it is still a miracle to me that they were able to eat the same exact food every day for 40 years!  Even though this act of rebellion was met with a severe plague ending in death of those eating the quail, it was a miracle for the Israelites to not again lash out and ask for something else.  Because they were used to eating a variety of foods as indicated in Numbers 11:5, it is a work of God.  Like their sandals and clothes not wearing out over the term of their journey, it is amazing they could still eat manna every day.  Is there any other explanation?

In Exodus 16:4 we read,

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether or not they will walk in My instruction."

In what sense was God testing them? He provided food from heaven with certain instructions, namely, they were not to save any for the next day unless it was the day before the Sabbath. Now, while there was testing within the provision, there was also a larger test of trust and dependence:

He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD (Deuteronomy 8:3).

What we discover is a remarkable revelation. It was God's will that Israel be hungry, thirsty and even tired of eating the strange Manna from heaven. Why? As before, God was testing them. But in this case, there was no particular instruction. Instead, He wanted the people of Israel to understand that their lives were not sustained by food alone but by God's decree. He was not simply a repository of benefits. He was God. And He had absolute claim over their lives and  was worthy of absolute and unconditional trust by all, both from the people of Israel, as well as from the rest of the world.

From another perspective, God wanted to humble the people of Israel. He wanted them to recognize their complete and utter helplessness. Even when they would enter the promised land and experience the blessings of prosperity, God wanted them to remain humble and give all the glory to Him: 

In the wilderness He fed you manna which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do good for you in the end. Otherwise,you may say in your heart, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth' (Deuteronomy 8:16-17).

God wanted to keep Israel from pride, for it is pride that leads to all kinds of evil and idolatry. One famous Christian psychologist, Larry Crabb, proposed, "Every psychological problem of man can be traced back to his independence from God."

It is better to think less of yourselves than more, to deny yourselves than to affirm your self-worth. We are living in a generation that is plagued by a narcisistic preoccupation with the dignity of man and his unfettered freedom of self-determination. We need to meditate on Paul's conclusion that neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who provides the increase. We need to contemplate Paul's rhetorical questions, "Who makes you any different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?" As it is written, "Let those who boast, boast (only) in the Lord."

Brothers and sisters, God did not save you to affirm your dignity, nor your freedom of self-determination. He saved you to affirm His dignity and to demonstrate your absolute dependence upon Him. I encourage you to take a moment and reflect on this.