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Titus 1:7-9
For an overseer, as God's steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. Establishing leadership alongside Moses had its benefits but also its dangers. When God starts speaking directly to people, eventually they think they are spiritual enough in their own rights and assume themselves answerable to God only. It is the classic prophet-Syndrome where people believe themselves exempted from submission to authority even when ordained. This creates anarchy and goes diametrically against the idea of appointing these judges as what Moses did, was to establish the validity of clerical authority (Exodus 18:21).. A Congregation leader I know took an informal poll of his congregation with the questions, “Do you believe in submission to spiritual leadership and authority?” The congregation answered affirmatively. The next question was, “What happens if you disagree with a ruling or a decision from that leadership?” Some answered “I won’t follow”, others, “I’ll leave”. While everyone does have free choice, to submit only when you agree is not submission. If it is, it is submission only to yourself; you then become your own leader, which makes you as Yeshua put it, a ‘blind guide to the blind!’ Submission to an earthly authority is a divine exercise which teaches godly humility. It is impossible for one to say, “I submit to God’s authority only”. That very claim is born of pride because it infers that you have a private personal connection with God and His will. We only learn to submit to God by learning to submit to the earthly authorities He has set upon us especially when they disagree with us. Paul encouraged it (Romans 13:1), and even himself submitted to the council of elders in Jerusalem (Acts 15). He even went to check with them to see if what he was doing was right (Galatians 2:2). This is why spiritual leaders have a great responsibility and therefore need to be men of integrity. They need to be able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe (Exodus 18:21). Paul also advises that whereas they can receive gifts from people, they do not be at charge to the people but earn their own keep (1 Corinthians 4:12). Many spiritual leaders claim tithes as their due, but that tithe was designated for God in the service of the Temple and helping the needy of the congregation. What priests and Rabbis got were voluntary gifts and offerings. May God provide us today with such leaders for the flock of God. Leaders with the wisdom of Solomon, the insight of Daniel, the teaching style of Ezra, the sagacity of Abraham, the courage of David, the strength of Samson and the love of Yeshua.
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1Timothy 3:1-6 (CJB)
Here is a statement you can trust: … A congregation leader must be above reproach, he must be faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, orderly, hospitable and able to teach. He must not … get into fights; …, he must be kind and gentle. He must not be a lover of money. … if a man can't manage his own household, how will he be able to care for God's Messianic Community? He must not be a new believer, because he might become puffed up with pride and thus fall under the same judgment as did the Adversary. The concerns and intentions God wanted to express in this statement seem to be lost either in translation or in the chauvinist bias of the translator. Instead of “helper fit for him”, the Hebrew says, “a helper against him”. It seems that the help man most often needs is someone to be ‘against’ him; not someone to fight him, but someone to be a balance to him. Because of this, Judaism even advises to not trust the teaching of a man who is not married. Such a man doesn’t have balance. As much as it goes against his grain, a wise man will invite the counsel of his wife. Not only his life will be more harmonious if he willingly listens to her, but he will make wiser decisions. A wise woman needs to learn how to ‘fitly’ advise her husband. If she nags him or makes him feel inferior, he’ll turn off and she won’t be able to fulfill her God-given duty. She needs also not to do it as an attempt to control him. If because of control issues, passiveness, or a lack of wisdom a wife is not able to advise her husband, she fails in her main reason for being. The same goes for one who fans her husband. A woman usually does that because she wants to bask in his glory. She will then be responsible for his downfall.. A beautiful example of a married relationship in American History is that of the second president of the Unite States John Adams, and his wife Abigail Adams. It is even said that one time Georges Washington went to Abigail Adams to convey an important piece of advice to her husband. When Roman Emperor Tiberias started commandeering the Senate, one senator protested and compared his governing body to an unheard and ignored wife. If a man, if a leader does not have a wife, he should at least be able to listen to the counsel of those wise people God put around him. It is a wise man who surrounds himself with people who are wiser than him. Paul was not married, but he worked within counsel. Though he took some liberties, he went to Jerusalem to make sure that his race was not in vain. He sought the approval of his own apostolic leaders.. Sad to say though, many leaders in their pride, fear, and insecurity surround themselves with passive people, or people who adulate them. There are also those who find an interest in the relationship. All those will not balance a leader or a teacher. Even if they try, they eventually will give in. The leader knows it and it will be his downfall in the sight of God if not in the sight of men. May God give us leaders men who have a right spirit before Him; leaders whom the position of office does not corrupt with pride; true humble ministers of God’s flock who only wish to serve. Acts 6:3
Look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. Flabbergasted Jethro looks at Moses single-handedly dealing with every problem in the camp. He foresees danger in that kind of leadership. Mainly, Jethro sees that eventually people will learn to lean too heavily on Moses. His son-in-law will not last very long. At that rate, he will burn out quickly. Jethro, who is a spiritual leader in his own rights, suggests a lower court to be established to care for simpler cases. Moses would then share the load of leadership with others. God’s leadership is not autocracy. In God’s Kingdom even a King has advisors, and a wise king leans on the council of his advisers as a cripple does on a cane. God’s style of government is not democracy either. The ‘will of the people’ is not supreme; God’s will is! God’s government is usually made up of a leadership teamwork; a group of upright people elected by the congregation. It is to be no less than three people, so a tie vote between them is less likely. Also a man and his wife either tend to have a dominant party or they fan each other, so a couple generally does not provide a good balance for judgment. Also, no one person is perfectly well-rounded so this leadership teamwork should be composed of people exerting different views and ways of looking at things. They should also be filled with a spirit of humility so they can yield to each other’s counsel and advice. We can see this pattern as God’s leadership all throughout the Scriptures. Even Yeshua used it. He did not keep the whole burden on Himself but established a group of disciples who also went to preach, exhort, exorcise, and heal people. He even said that they will sit on twelve thrones judging the tribes Israel, so even Yeshua shared the responsibility of judgment. Peter and the disciples later followed that same example and asked the congregation to submit seven people that they could ordain as leaders (Acts 6:1-7). These forms of congregation leadership follow the ‘Jethro’ pattern, and if Yeshua Himself did it, why shouldn’t we? The answers to that question are varied and can be scary. We will try to answer them in later articles. In the mean time, may God give us leaders, men and women of integrity whose sole desire is to do whatever needs to be done, either it be to step in or to step out, that His Kingdom be established on earth as it is in Heaven. Revelations 11:15
“The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever”. As Moses arrived at Mt Horeb with the people of God, his Father-in-law Jethro pays him a visit. Jethro by the way is not really his name. Jethro is a title defining a societal rank. His name was Reuel (Exodus 2:18). With Reuel’s visit, we realize the greater purpose for the Exodus program. Reuel was a descendant of Abraham through his third wife Keturah (Genesis 25: 1-2). It is recorded that Abraham gave that side of his descendance what is today called Saudi Arabia to settle in. It seems that they did not continue in the faith of Abraham but adopted the paganism of the area, thus we find Jethro, a descendant of Abraham as a pagan priest of Median. Jethro witnessed the life of Moses as a seeker. Like Abraham in Ur, Moses was not satisfied with he had learned in Egypt (Hebrews 11:8-16; 24-28). Moses was not going to put up with the magic tricks of the Egyptian priests. He wanted the real thing. He searched for God with all his heart; that’s why he found Him (Jeremiah 29:13). Jethro also was a seeker. He probably knew about the God of Israel but thought He was dead, or maybe asleep. Whichever the case, this God, this Creator of Heaven and earth was on the verge of doing something that would meet all His seekers for generations and generations even until today. He was about to make such a grand entrance on the scene of World History that it would not be forgotten for generations, not even until today. As Jethro received knowledge of all God had done to Egypt in order to free His people, he returned to the faith of his ancestor Abraham. He said, Blessed be the LORD, who hath delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of Pharaoh, who hath delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods: for in the thing wherein they dealt proudly he was above them. And Jethro, Moses' father in law, took a burnt offering and sacrifices for God: and Aaron came, and all the elders of Israel, to eat bread with Moses' father in law before God (Exodus 18:6:12). A greater Exodus is coming, a time is coming when people will not say anymore, “blessed be the Lord who delivered His people from Egypt”, but rather, “Blessed be the Lord who brought back His people from all the nations where He scattered them”. This will have the same effect as the first Exodus. Like Jethro, the whole world will then know that God is the Lord of all the earth. In the greatness of His presence, in the acknowledgment of His greatness, our puny will our petty earthly concern seem; our like nothing will all the earthly objects of adoration of the earth will seem. May it be soon Abba, even in our days! Romans 11:15
For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? Israel could have gone from Goshen Egypt to Israel without any Red Sea crossing. Had they walked straight North-East, they would have been back Home in a few days and the whole ordeal was over. But this wasn’t God’s plan. Not only God needed to bait pharaoh’s army into the Red Sea, but Israel needed to go through a cultural renewal before entering their restored independent lives as the people of God. Part of the program was for Israel, and for the ‘mixed multitude’ from the nations following them to go through a rebirth process (Exodus 12:38). They needed to get ‘baptized’ clean from their old Egyptian lives and ways into their new identity. For the Israelites it meant to be cleansed from ‘Egypt’, but it meant literal conversion for the strangers with them. The process would be repeated forty years later when the second desert generation crossed the Jordan (Joshua 3). In Judaism the main staple of conversion is immersion in water. In keeping with Jewish ideas, Paul mentions the crossing of the Red Sea as a baptism (Rabbi Kaplan: The Waters of Eden; 1 Corinthians 10:1-2). This was the gist of the conversation between Yeshua and Nicodemus. Just as the Priests and Levites did with John the Immerser, Nicodemus boasted that being already Jewish he didn’t need the conversion rebirth of immersion, but just like John answered the Jerusalem visitors Yeshua told Nicodemus that he still needed to be reborn (Matthew 3:9-11; John 3:1-21). Judaism teaches that when the ‘mixed multitude’ crossed the Red Sea with Israel, they became Children of Abraham, they became Israelite. It is interesting because the whole time in the desert no circumcision (and important part of conversion to Judaism) was performed. They just had a mass circumcision just before they entered the land (Joshua 5:2-8). Another important event is Amalek intercepting Israel (Deuteronomy 25:18). It seems that the descendants of Esau always intercept Israel returning home. It happened before with Jacob (Genesis 32:6), then during the Exodus, and it is happening again today. The first time peace was reached (Genesis 33), the second time God ordered the destruction of Amalek (Deuteronomy 25:19; 1 Samuel 15:1-3). What will it be this time? The Yeshua believing world needs to know that as believers in the Jewish Messiah, as true born again people, they share the fate of Israel just like the ‘mixed multitude’ of the Exodus. The Children of Esau are intercepting trying to annihilate Israel. They have done so from the on start in 1948. Can Israel count on the ‘mixed multitude’ with them fight at their side? This is not just Israel’s fight; the future of all believers is at stake (Romans 11:15). “He that stands idle while the rights of others are being violated will very soon become victim to these same evil forces” (Personal narration of famous quote). Revelations 15:3
And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, "Great and amazing are your deeds. 3,400 years ago the Children of Israel celebrated a great victory on the Eastern bank of the Gulf of Aqaba. Miraculously supplied with ‘bread from heaven (John 6:31)’ they crossed the Sinai Desert Pharaoh’s armies at their heels. Later they saw more of the majestic power of God as the waters of the Red Sea stood as walls at their sides to give them passage. Then they witnessed the same receding waters swallow the army of their enemy whole dealing a deathly blow to the power that once was Egypt. The Biblical records tell us that of, “all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained (Exodus 14:28).” On the other side, in the Land called today Saudi Arabia but then Midian, under the leadership of Moses and Miriam the Children of Israel erupted into a song of praise that will echo through the centuries (Exodus 15). The song of Miriam finds an echo over a hundred years after the initial conquest of the Land. After Joshua’s death, Israel was left without central leadership. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 17:6), so, the LORD sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor (Judges 4:2). Eventually, when Israel is ready to amend his ways, God allows Judge/prophetess Deborah and military leader Barak to muster an army to challenge Jabin. As Sisera, Jabin’s general, positions his army to intercept Israel, God again works in Israel’s favor. He shows His great glory and power while unleashing from the sky a torrential storm thus flooding the Kishon waterway (Judges 4). The flood waters and muddy ground rendered Sisera’s chariots helpless and vulnerable to Israel’s army. The Biblical records again tell us that ‘all the army of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword; not a man was left (Judges 4:16). Again, an army trying to trap Israel was rendered helpless through a flood of waters. Like with Moses and Miriam, Barak and Deborah celebrated with a song (Judges 5). Is there another echo? Zechariah tells us of another war against Israel; a war where all nations will rise against Jerusalem (Zechariah 14). At that time it is a flood of blood that will render the armies of the enemy useless (Revelations 14:20). By the Mountain of Megiddo, at the same place where Sisera’s army fell, the armies of the Anti-Messiah will gather against Jerusalem and fall. Again, none will be left (Revelations 16:16; Revelations 19). At that time, Miriam’s song will echo, this time in the mouth of the Children of God of all ages, through a spontaneous eruption of praise and adoration to our mighty God (Revelations 5:9; 14:3; 15:3). May it be soon Abba, even in our days! |
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