Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Can You Really Do It All? | Torah | Exodus 18

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

Are you balancing too many responsibilities? How do you prioritize your time? Do you find yourself multitasking often? In today's episode, Keith discusses Jethro's advice to Moses in Exodus 18 and what you can learn from his advice. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Exodus 18 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. My name is Keith Simon, and right now we're going through the Book of Exodus. My wife and I have four kids, three boys and one girl. And if you have a girl, what you find is that people warn you that when that girl hits her teenage ears, that she and her mom are going to have a weird relationship. Now, they eventually get it worked out, and I know a lot of moms and daughters, including my own daughter and my own wife, who are very close. But there were a few rough years. And when they had those rough years, my wife would look at me and she would be completely baffled.

Like, what in the world do I do? And I would look at her and I would say, hey, let me handle this. I've been dealing with this kind of thing in our marriage for a long time. I've had lots of practice. Now, I was just joking with my wife. I always got an eye roll from her when I said something like that. But what I was saying is, let me be a mediator between you and. her. A mediator is a go-between. We're used to using that term in a legal setting where a mediator tries to resolve

the dispute between two parties. Well, what we're going to see in Exodus 18 is that Moses is the mediator between God and the Israelites, that he's representing God to the people and he's representing the people to God. But Moses is a human being just like us, so he can't be the ultimate mediator. Instead, he's a type or a picture pointing us to the true mediator who is Jesus. Because Moses was a human being like us, we can look at him and learn something about ourselves. But because he points to the true mediator, we can also learn something about Jesus. Now as mediator between the Israelites and God, Moses had a huge responsibility. Here's what it says in Exodus 1813. The next day, Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people

and they stood around him from morning till evening. Now imagine Moses's situation. I mean, as the mediator between God and what a million plus people, the workload was staggering. Large parts of every day he would just sit and teach and settle disputes among the people. Verse 14. When his father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, what is this you are doing?

Why do you sit alone and judge while all these people stand around you from morning till evening. See, when Jethro, his father-in-law sees this, he's like, what the heck? Moses thought he knew what he was doing. He goes, look, I'm God's appointed mediator. I've got to do this. Verse 15. Moses answered, because the people come to me and seek God's will, whenever they have a dispute is brought to me and I decide between the parties and informed them of God's decrees and instructions. So what Moses is saying is, look, this is God's will for me. This is really important stuff. It must be done. And it was important. I mean, Moses was helping them apply the Word of God to their life.

So you might think that Moses's father-in-law would be impressed. I mean, look, Moses is really important, but that's not his reaction at all. Instead, his father-in-law is concerned. Verse 17, Moses's father-in-law replied, What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you, and you cannot handle it alone. Okay, so what can we learn about ourselves?

Well, one is we can't do it all. I mean, we know that intellectually we'd never claim that we can do it all, but sometimes we act like we can do it all. We're going to have a booming career, an organized house, and we're going to read to our kids, and we're going to have our cars properly maintained. We're going to have a well-manicured yard. We're going to eat dinner every night together as a family. We're going to raise little geniuses.

We're going to raise incredible athletes who have a devotional time with God every day, serve in the community, serve in the church, invest in your marriage, build close friendships, Remember to flip your mattress so it doesn't wear out. Rotate your tires so they don't wear out. Keep up with the latest health news and diet and exercise so your body doesn't wear out. It's just exhausting, isn't it? I mean, nobody can do it all. You need sleep.

Multitasking. Has this limit. That's true whether you're a Christian or not. When you trust in Christ, great things happen to you, but you don't stop being human. You don't get exempted from the laws of nature. So Moses was God's appointed leader, but he couldn't do it all. all, and neither can you. The second thing we learn about ourselves is that we often get distracted from the most

important things in life, right? The good things keep us from the most important things. Listen to what Jethro, his father-in-law, says to Moses. He says, listen to me and I'll give you some advice. May God be with you. You must be the people's representative before God and bring their disputes to him, teach them his decrees and instructions, and show them the way they are to live and how they are to behave.

So what Jethro is trying to do is help Moses, recognize what the most important things are because the person who never sets priorities is the person who believes that they can really do everything. See, when you set priorities, what you're doing is acknowledging, look, I can't do everything. And so I've got to commit to the most important things. So I have to decide what am I going to do and what am I intentionally going to not do? What am I going to leave undone? What balls am I going to drop so that I don't drop a really important ball? because the reality is that everything you say yes to means you're saying no to something else. The question is, are you saying yes and no to the right things?

If someone looked at your schedule, your calendar, what would they think your priorities are? Are you happy with those priorities? I mean, what do you want your priorities to be? At the end of your life, what will you be glad that you did and what will you feel like was a waste of time? The things that you are committed to, put those in your schedule first, and make everything else fit around those most important things. Because if you do the most important things when you get to the end of a day or the end of a week or the end of the month or the end of a year or the end of your life,

you'll know you did the things that mattered most. You didn't get everything done, but you got done the most important things. And what's the most important thing? Well, what Jethro told Moses is help people walk with Jesus. Your walk with Jesus is the most important thing you got in your life. So because Moses was a human being, we learn a lot about ourselves from the story. And what we learn is we can't do it all. We've got limits. We've got to take an honest look at ourselves and realize that we have to make commitments and priorities and choices of what to do and what not to do. But we also look at the story of Moses being a mediator and we think of Jesus. He was perfect. He's God. He is the one that Moses was pointing us to.

So not only do we learn something about ourselves from looking at Moses, but we also learn something about Jesus. And what we learn about Jesus is that because he's the true mediator, he is never stumped. I mean, I'm sure Moses had people that brought him problems and he didn't really know what the right answer was. But that's not true with Jesus. In Luke 2, it says, everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. In Colossians 2, it says, in Jesus are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Jesus's wisdom and knowledge make him the master of every situation. He's never caught off guard. He's never unsure what to do. He knows the thoughts on our mind and the motives of our heart. Nobody perplexes Jesus. No thought or action is unintelligible to him. He knows the beginning and the end. He knows not only what we did today, but what we'll do think and believe tomorrow.

So Jesus always knows not just the right answer, but the best answer. Because Jesus is the true mediator, he never tires out. Moses grew weary under the burden of the Israelites. I mean, people had to stand around all day. They had to wait. Sometimes Moses would get tired. They wouldn't be able to get their questions answered. Moses was probably a lot like the presidents that we have in our country.

Many of the presidents get in the habit of reading and responding to a few letters each day from the American people. But they can only read a fraction of what they receive. I read a newspaper article about President Obama. It said that when he was in office, he would receive about six. 65,000 paper letters every week. Now, can we just ask, who in the world is sending President Obama letters on paper? But he also received about 100,000 emails every week and a bunch of phone calls. So he had his staff pick out about 10, and then he would write a short little response to those 10 letters. I'm surprised he even had the time to do that. Jesus responds to every prayer. He never

misses one. Because he never grows weary. He never runs short of time. He knows every situation he hears every prayer, every groan, every exasperated plea. Jesus knows exactly what you need. He's never overwhelmed. And that's why he's the ultimate mediator. He never gets tired of interceding on your behalf. Jesus is the true mediator because he never dies. Moses lived to be 120, but like everybody else, he eventually dies.

So what's true of Moses is true of every prophet, every high priest and every mediator. They all died and their death showed that they were human beings. like us, but not Jesus. Hebrews 7 says, because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. He permanently intercedes for us. The more you know yourself, the more you want to look away from yourself and look to Jesus. You don't have all the answers, but Jesus does. You can't do it all, but Jesus can. Put your hope in him. Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. You'll get a short, email once a week. It'll challenge you to grow in your faith, give you interesting background on

today's passage, and a lot, lot more. Just click the link in the show notes to sign up. It'll help you deepen your journey with Jesus.