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Redeemer Bible Church

Unreserved Accountability to Christ. Undeserved Acceptance from Christ.
In Search of Able Men
Exodus 18:13-27

Introduction
In Exodus 18, Moses is visited by his father-in-law, Jethro. Excited by the rumors of
the Lord’s deliverance of the sons of Israel, Jethro wants to hear Moses’ eyewitness account
of God’s redemption.

And Moses doesn’t disappoint. Responding to his father-in-law’s inquiry, he gives a

blow-by-blow—which is an almost literal way of putting it—a blow-by-blow account of “all
that the Lord had done to Pharaoh and the Egyptians for Israel’s sake” (18:8).

To this, the priest of Midian responds with a confession of the incomparability of

Yahweh, an offering of worship, and a meal of communion with the representatives of the
Israeli people. “Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods,” he says. “Now I
know.”

Perhaps more surprising to Moses’ father-in-law is the less than expeditious way
Moses has chosen to address the disputes that arise in this fledgling community on the
move. The day after Moses’ proclamation about God’s mighty hand and outstretched arm,
Jethro notices Moses hearing cases between Jewish brethren all day long, “from morning
until evening,” as Exod 18:14 says.

Seeing the utter impracticality of this procedure, Jethro communicates the obvious:
“That ain’t good,” he says. Moses is going to burn himself out and frustrate the people. He
needs to take a different approach. There is a better way…which is found in Exod 18:19-
23. Turn with me in your Bibles to Exodus 18 and we’ll begin reading in v 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. 22 "Let them judge the people at all times; and let it be that every major dispute
they will bring to you, but every minor dispute they themselves will judge. So it will
be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you. 23 "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."

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The thrust of Jethro’s counsel is clear. First, Moses, occupying the unique position
as the Lord’s mouthpiece, should continue to function as the people’s representative before
God, bringing the disputes to God and instructing the people in God’s statutes and laws.

Second, Moses should delegate some of his authority for settling disputes to those
whom Jethro in v 21 calls able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate
dishonest gain. These men should then be established as leaders of thousands, of
hundreds, of fifties and of tens. They will then handle the minor disputes; Moses the
major ones, thus bearing the burden with Moses.

Then in v 23, Jethro assures Moses not only of the divine origin of the advice, but
also of the practical benefit of it: If you do this thing—and (literally) God commands you—
then you will be able to endure, and all these people also will go to their place in peace.
The divine mandate given through Jethro is the recipe for peace.

The Qualities of an Able Man

And for a moment, I’d like you to look with me a bit more closely at that recipe,
especially the ingredient called leadership. Look again at v 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.

The men who should occupy the position of Moses’ delegates need to be selected out
of all the people. The idea is that Moses is to scrutinize the people of God, to scour them, if
you will, for men to function in this (apparently) temporary judiciary.

And as he combs through the sons of Israel in search of leadership, Jethro tells him
that it must be qualified by three characteristics: the men must fear God, be men of truth,
and hate dishonest gain; that is, they need to be able men.

Now you might think that Jethro really has in mind four characteristics. They must
be (1) able men who (2) fear God and who are (3) men of truth and who (4) hate dishonest
gain. But that is not what Jethro means.

To call a man able is to say that he is of high moral value, not that he is especially
gifted.1 The term is used in the familiar passages from Proverbs about the wise woman. In
Prov 12:4 and 31:10 she is called the excellent woman, the excellent wife.

So Jethro is not talking about gifted men who also fear God, are men of truth, and
hate dishonest gain; instead, he is talking about excellent men, whom he defines as those who
fear God, who are characterized by truth, and who hate dishonest gain.

No, there are not four characteristics; there are three, which are summed up by this
one word—able, or the translation I prefer, “excellent.”

1
lyIx;

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So then, Jethro’s advice is for Moses to search through Israel to find not just any men
to serve as his judicial delegates, but excellent men.

And as I’ve already mentioned, Jethro clarifies what he means. Moses must find and
appoint men who fear God, men of truth, who hate dishonest gain.

So the excellent man is first characterized as an individual who fears the Lord. And
although we could preach an entire series of sermons on what this means, perhaps the best
way of understanding the idea is that these men are to be those who take God seriously.

In the context of the book of Exodus, at the very least, fearing God means acting like
the Hebrew midwives are depicted in Ch 1. It means that Moses’ delegates should be men
who are willing to submit to the Lord even when it involves being in danger for their lives,
and even if it were to entail refusing to obey the voice of the most powerful political leader
on the planet.

And if I may borrow the language of the writer to the Hebrews, fearing the Lord
means believing that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him (Heb 11:6). Just
as the Lord rewarded the Hebrew midwives for their fear of the Lord, so too, must the
excellent man be one who, seeing their example, knows that the Lord will reward him.

Fearing God means having a Moses-like reverence for God, recognizing God’s
awesome majesty and superlative splendor and infinite holiness. It means remembering that
our God is a fire that burns the bush without consuming it. A mysterious fire, yes, but a fire
nonetheless.

Fearing God means believing that what he says he will do. In this sense it means
behaving not unlike the servants of Pharaoh, who in 9:20 recognize that their livestock will
not be spared the calamitous hail that is on its way unless they respond to God’s merciful
threat with appropriate action. It means having true regard for God’s word, acting on his
threats and promises.

Fearing God means submitting to the authority of God’s servant, Moses, recognizing
him to be the chosen representative of the people before the Lord. It means having respect
for those the Lord has placed in authority over us.

Fearing God means responding to the mighty hand and outstretched arm of the Lord
with worship and praise, honor and thanksgiving. It means giving God all the glory for
every victory.

And fearing God, as we shall see later in Exodus, means acknowledging that God is
the author and taker of life, that he is the one who has the power to save and to destroy,
acknowledging this by making every effort to say no to sin.

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So fearing God is a pretty comprehensive idea. It means obeying the Lord in spite of
the risk from other men, living life in light of God’s approval and reward, recognizing God’s
wholly otherness, as a mysterious all-consuming, not-consuming fire, trusting in his
promises and acting on his threats, appropriately revering God’s earthly representatives, our
earthly authorities, worshipping and honoring him, and strenuously avoiding all sin.

And it is this kind of man whom Jethro establishes as appropriate for this first
judicial body in Israel—a man who takes God seriously.

Second, Moses is to qualify men as his delegates on the basis of their faithfulness.
That’s what the phrase men of truth means. They have to be reliable. And, of course, to be
a reliable man means to be a man of proven worth, a man who has shown that he can deliver
the goods, so to speak. In order for Moses to find such men, they need a reputation for
trustworthiness. A man of truth is someone who means what he says and proves it by
acting accordingly.

In this way, he is to be a man who emulates the Lord. You know Exod 34:6, which
says, “The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and
abounding in lovingkindness and truth.”

The Lord himself is the one who overflows with steadfast, covenant-keeping love.
He is the one who is manifestly faithful by maintaining his relationship to Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob in spite of and in defiance of their unworthiness. And why? Because he
promised and it is impossible for him to lie (Heb 6:18). And it is precisely this that should
characterize Moses’ board of judges. They must be men of truth.

The third quality that Jethro holds out to Moses is that of hating dishonest gain. Of
course, in the position of a judge, impartiality is paramount. If a man’s decision can be
bought, there is no hope for justice for the people.

Implicit in this character trait also is the idea that such a man has a greater interest in
the good of the people than his own comfort. Men who place their own interests and the
betterment of themselves first easily fall prey to the temptation of accepting gifts and
resorting to extortion.

So he needs to me a man who is repulsed by monetary deception in high places, a

man who is disgusted by the miscarriages of justice that inevitably flows from such
foolishness.

Later in Israel’s history, the appointment of judges expands on this crucial character
quality. Deuteronomy 16:18-20 says,

You shall appoint for yourself judges and officers in all your towns which the
LORD your God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the
people with righteous judgment. 19 You shall not distort justice; you shall not be
partial, and you shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and

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perverts the words of the righteous. 20 Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue, that
you may live and possess the land which the LORD your God is giving you.

So then, as Moses combs through the sons of Israel in search of leadership; the men
with whom he will share his burden must be qualified by three characteristics: they must
fear God, be men of truth, and hate dishonest gain; that is, they need to be able men.
They need to be excellent men, excellent men to lead the people of God.

Excellence Always the Standard

And as you know, such has always been God’s intention for any and all leadership of
his people. The men must have unimpeachable character.

Throughout the Old Testament the Lord commends men for leading with integrity
and castigates and condemns those who do not. In Jeremiah 22, the Lord proclaims a woe
upon the king who “builds his house without righteousness And his upper rooms without
justice, Who uses his neighbor's services without pay And does not give him his wages” (Jer
22:13). He brings his curse upon kings whose “eyes and your heart Are intent only upon
your own dishonest gain, And on shedding innocent blood And on practicing oppression
and extortion” (Jer 22:17).

And how can we forget the strong words of Ezekiel 34?

Woe, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves! Should not the
shepherds feed the flock? 3 You eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool, you
slaughter the fat sheep without feeding the flock. 4 Those who are sickly you have not
strengthened, the diseased you have not healed, the broken you have not bound up,
the scattered you have not brought back, nor have you sought for the lost; but with
force and with severity you have dominated them. 5 They were scattered for lack of a
shepherd, and they became food for every beast of the field and were scattered. 6 My
flock wandered through all the mountains and on every high hill; My flock was
scattered over all the surface of the earth, and there was no one to search or seek for
them (Ezek 34:2-6).

Poor leadership became an entrenched and perennial problem in Israel. There were
virtually no men of character to whom the Lord could turn for the leadership of his people.
God’s interest, however, did not change. Israel needed godly leaders: judges and priests and
prophets and elders who were wise and humble and just and devout. And the Lord would
settle for nothing less.

Neither does he settle for anything less in the leadership of the church. First
Timothy 3 and Titus 1 teach us that the church leader must be “above reproach as God’s
steward” (Titus 1:7); his character must be unassailable. He must be a man who is devoted
to his own wife and no other woman; a man who is temperate, prudent, respectable,
hospitable, gentle, and uncontentious. He must be a man who manages his household well,
with faithful, obedient children. He must have a good reputation with those outside the
church. And he must love what is good, be sensible and self-controlled.

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And he must not be self-willed or quick-tempered or addicted to wine or pugnacious

or a new convert to Christianity.

And like his judicial counterparts mentioned in Exodus 18, he must be devout (a
man who fears God), just, free from the love of money, a man not willing to sell out for a
pocket full of silver. And he must be a faithful man, a trustworthy steward of the mysteries
of God.

This is what the Lord has always required of his leaders and it has never changed.
The men who serve as leaders in the church must be excellent men. God will settle for
nothing less.

Now perhaps this is all quite familiar to you. Perhaps you are well aware of the
requirements for leaders in the church. I know I am! Rehearsing them right now in the
context of this message, and duly noting the Lord’s displeasure with men who occupy the
office but fail to live up to the standard is very sobering indeed.

And maybe you look at your leaders and pray fervently for us knowing these
demands and the difficulty of sustaining an unimpeachable character. As you do, you
might even offer a kind of, “Whew! I’m glad I’m not them! That bar is awfully high.”

Well, with that in mind I want to draw your attention to something right here in
Exodus 18, or rather, something that isn’t here in Exodus 18, somthing that Jethro does not
counsel and something therefore that Moses does not do.

What Moses is not called to do is develop the men of Israel into these faithful, God-
fearing, just men. He does not make them excellent and then install them as leaders;
instead, he scours the people of God to find those men who already manifest those qualities.

The same is true for Timothy’s task with respect to the elders’ and deacons’
qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and for Titus’ task regarding the elders’ qualifications in Titus
1. Their duty was to find men in their respective regions who manifested the requisite
character to fill the church offices. So think of it like this. Men who qualify are those who
are not qualified by the leadership, but who are qualified before the leadership.

What this means is that the qualifications here in Exodus 18 and really throughout
the Scripture are not really the character traits of godly leaders per se, they are the character
traits of godly men, of all godly men. They are the measure of maturity, the standard of
sanctified living, the rule of righteousness for all men!

So what Moses or Paul or Timothy or Titus does is to scour the congregations for
men who exemplify godly character that he might install them as leaders of the people,
leaders, if you will, of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens.

Developing Able Men One Generation at a Time

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This being the case, there seems to me to be an obvious question; namely, how did
they get this way? If Moses’ job was to find men who were already like this, what were the
circumstances of their lives that allowed them to become excellent men?

Well, there are some hints right here in the book of Exodus. Turn back to Exod
10:1-2: Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and
the heart of his servants, that I may perform these signs of Mine among them, 2 and that you
may tell in the hearing of your son, and of your grandson, how I made a mockery of the
Egyptians and how I performed My signs among them, that you may know that I am the
LORD."

Notice that in v 2, Moses is told to tell of the mighty acts of God in the hearing of
your son, and of your grandson. It is an event that the Lord wants taught to the next
generation. Keep that in mind as you turn ahead to 12:24-27.

And you shall observe this event as an ordinance for you and your children
forever. 25 "When you enter the land which the LORD will give you, as He has
promised, you shall observe this rite. 26 "And when your children say to you, 'What
does this rite mean to you?' 27 you shall say, 'It is a Passover sacrifice to the LORD
who passed over the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt when He smote the
Egyptians, but spared our homes.'" And the people bowed low and worshiped.

Here, the Lord is giving the liturgy of the Passover and calling on his people in v 24
to observe the event as an ordinance for them and their children forever. Now remember
that as we move to 13:8, 14-15.

"You shall tell your son on that day, saying, 'It is because of what the LORD
did for me when I came out of Egypt.’…14And it shall be when your son asks you in
time to come, saying, 'What is this?' then you shall say to him, 'With a powerful
hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery. 15 'It came about,
when Pharaoh was stubborn about letting us go, that the LORD killed every
firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of beast.
Therefore, I sacrifice to the LORD the males, the first offspring of every womb, but
every firstborn of my sons I redeem.'

In these verses, both the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the consecration of the
firstborn sons are to be accompanied by a verbal explanation of the rites to the next
generation.

Now then, what does this all suggest? Well, allow me to submit to you that the
reason why there exist in Israel excellent men at the time of the events of Exodus 18 is that
the character qualities were imparted to them from their youth up. They learned what it
meant to be a man of integrity—a God-fearing, faithful, and just man—by the senior
generation, and in particular, by their fathers.

Now you may be saying, “Wait a minute! The excellent men selected by Moses in
Exodus 18 belong to the generation that experienced the plagues and the events

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commemorated by the Passover, Unleavened Bread, and the consecration of the firstborn.
They can’t possibly have learned the qualities of an excellent man from their fathers.”

Well, yes and no. Yes, the godly men of Exodus 18 are men of the exodus
generation, but does that mean that the idea of teaching the next generation to fear the Lord
is something original to those who experienced the exodus? Of course not.

So what I am saying is that what we could call, “baton-passing,” mentioned in Chs

10, 12 & 13 is not something new to Israel, but something that belonged to the descendants
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob generations prior to the events of the exodus.

How else would this generation have known the circumstances leading up to their
captivity and their occupation of the land of Goshen and the promises of God to the
patriarchs? Four hundred and thirty years is a long time. How else would the memory of
Joseph—his deeds, his integrity and compassion and his deliverance of the known world
from famine—how else would the memory of Joseph, son of Jacob, been preserved?

So what I am saying is that baton-passing, the training of successive generations is

something that was built into the very framework of Israel’s existence, which is evidenced
by its inclusion in God’s instruction about the recollection of the plagues and the celebration
of the Passover liturgy here in Exodus.

And it is this training of generation after generation that becomes an explicit feature
of the Mosaic Law. Turn ahead to Deut 6:4-7:

"Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! 5 "You shall love
the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
might. 6 "These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. 7
You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in
your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you
rise up.

Verse 7 is the most significant for our purposes, and it couldn’t be clearer. The
mandate is to teach the Law to our sons diligently. Fathers are to teach their sons all the
Law in every possible context. The baton must be passed to the next generation of men, to
the next generation of those who would lead their homes and possibly, if called, the nation.

This happened before and after the giving of the Law in order that each generation
would learn the fear of the Lord, to please him in all things, being obedient to his
commandments, his statutes, and his laws.

All this is to point us in the direction of the answer to the question with which we
began; namely, how is it that the excellent men of Exodus 18 became excellent? Answer:
they were brought up to be excellent. They did not arrive at excellence accidentally or
haphazardly.

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And even in the instances when a generation of godliness follows a generation of

ungodliness, the answer is still the same; for the heritage of integrity is passed from
generation to generation in the community at large through the sacred writings.

Nevertheless, as we have seen, the predominant way a given generation received its
instruction in the works and ways of the Lord was from the previous generation directly —
boys learning what pleases God from fathers who learned from their fathers what pleases
God. This was Israel’s practice and Israel’s mandate.

The Making of Excellent Christian Men

And Christian fathers, it is your mandate as well. Turn with me in your Bibles to
Eph 6:1-4:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 HONOR YOUR
FATHER AND MOTHER (which is the first commandment with a promise), 3 SO
THAT IT MAY BE WELL WITH YOU, AND THAT YOU MAY LIVE LONG
ON THE EARTH. 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them
up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

What I want you to see here is that although the Apostle Paul begins Ch 6 with a call
for children to obey their parents, both dad and mom, it is fathers as heads of their respective
households who in v 4 are explicitly delineated as the primary purveyors of the discipline
and instruction of the Lord. Fathers are to train their children in the ways of the Lord.

Now what you need to understand at this point is that in light of this command we
can say that no one else in the church can do what you as father can do in the home. Men,
you are the only ones who can fulfill this duty—the church cannot do it for you; in fact, the
church is not even given that mandate. The command is given to fathers.

Men, as your family’s head you represent your household before the Lord. You are
therefore ultimately responsible before God for the confessional and practical theology of
your children. And by that I mean that you are responsible to teach them what to believe
and especially how to live in light of such belief.

Now don’t get me wrong. This does not mean that mothers have no place in the
impartation of beliefs and behaviors to their children. Of course they do! After all, in the
absence of a Jewish father, Timothy was faithfully instructed by his mother and his
grandmother, having been taught the sacred writings by them from his youth up. But the
point here is one of primary versus secondary. I’m afraid that today we have it reversed!

Fatherhood in Crisis
Women seem to be much more interested in the spiritual well-being of their children,
in bringing up their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord than their
husbands. Indeed, they seem to be more interested in the faith…period!

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And in reality, women not only seem to be more interested, they are more interested.
According to the most recent statistics I could find, the ratio of women to men in the pews
of American churches on any given Sunday morning is 61 to 39.2 Statistics also show that
women read more Christian literature than men; they are more concerned for the spiritual
development of their husbands than men are for their wives, and married women who
attend church without their husbands outnumber men attending without their wives by four
to one.3

Little wonder, then, that, as one writer puts it, “the picture of men at church is that
of the hapless drone, maneuvered through the doors by a pious wife. He is not exactly
spiritual, but he is docile, and that is reckoned to be close enough.”4

Another says,

For too long the boys of America have been viewing the church as a
sanctuary for women and Sunday school as a place for sissies. For too long the most
predictable fact about young males in the church is that the majority of them will
leave by the time they are young adults. For too long the feminized clergy of our
land have been known as nice guys rather than courageous leaders.5

And it has to stop.

Now I’m not saying that our church is in the throes of catastrophe. But what I am
saying is that we need to take more seriously our mandate as men. Brothers, you need to
act like the men you are.

You need to stop transferring the brunt of the responsibility to your wives for
bringing up your children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

You need to be the one who initiates prayer at meal time and bedtime, who gathers
the family for devotions, who gets the family out of bed for worship on Sunday morning,
who sets the tone and the pace for the moral and theological development of the
household—you need to be the one who takes initiative rather than sitting passively by as
your spiritually sensitive wife takes up the lead in the wake of your negligence. You are
ultimately responsible for all these things—so you need to take responsibility for your
children’s well-being in the fear of the Lord.

This is a colossal task that will require sustained effort over the long haul. And yet
there are too many men in the church today who put more sacrificial energy into their

2
“Between the Times,” Modern Reformation Jan/Feb 2004: 8.
3
R Kent Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Man, Tenth Anniversary Edition, Revised Edition (Wheaton, IL:
Crossway, 2001), 15-16.
4
Douglas Wilson, “Pastoring Masculinity” in R C Sproul, Jr. (Editor), Family Practice: God’s Prescription for
a Healthy Home (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2001), 87.
5
Weldon Hardenbrook, “Where’s Dad?: A Call for Fathers with the Spirit of Elijah” in John Piper and
Wayne Grudem (editors), Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism
(Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), 378.

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professions and personal hobbies and amusements6 than their responsibility to leave a godly
heritage to their children.

And brothers, let me say this, if your work is so demanding that you literally do not
have the time to lead your children in the things that matter most, you need to begin
developing an exit strategy to move from your current profession to another, or your current
employer to another—a profession or employer who makes demands of you that do not
require the pillaging of your family.

Listen. I know this may sound radical and even scary. But let me put it this way. It
is clear from Scripture that you have this God-given duty, is it not? Well, then, if your work
truly removes you from the home to the extent that you have nothing left to give your
family, then you can be certain that the Lord does not want you to continue in such a
situation; for he will never give you two duties such that performing one forces you to
neglect the other.

So if your work is so demanding that you are neglecting your duties to your children,
then you need to develop an exit strategy. That might mean a smaller house, a less fancy
car, giving up the cabin or the timeshare, failing to keep up with the Jones’s. But let me tell
you this. The benefits will far outweigh the losses.

You will be doing your duty before the Lord. You will be honoring him with your
obedience. You will be banking for yourself heavenly rewards that cannot be moth-eaten or
rust-corroded.

Oh, it is true that you must provide for your children’s physical needs: they need a
roof over their heads and clothes on their backs and food in their stomachs. But they don’t
need a mansion over their heads and Ike Behar and Donna Karan clothes on their backs and
gourmet food in their stomachs. They need their needs met.

And at the same time, they need much more than that. They need you! They need
you. They need you not to neglect them, not to ignore them, not to condescend to them,
not to use them vicariously to live out the fulfillment of your broken dreams. They need
you to raise them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. “Fathers, says the Apostle
Paul in Eph 6:4, “fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the
discipline and instruction of the Lord.” They need you to love them, to listen to them, to
take a genuine interest in them.

Conclusion
The men of Exodus 18 were men of integrity long before Jethro’s counsel was given
to Moses. And Timothy and Titus were called to find those who were already men of
integrity to fill the offices of the church. How did the men get this way? Predominantly,
they got this way because they had fathers who took the Lord seriously and passed the
baton to the next generation.

6
I owe this language to ibid.

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There is a crisis of leadership in the church today, which is merely symptomatic of a

crisis of family, a crisis of fatherhood in the church today. The Lord is calling for excellent
men to train their boys to be excellent men who will train their boys to be excellent men.
God is in search of able men. He wants you.

So step up to the plate. Stop whining! Do something about your situation! The Lord
will help you. He will strengthen you. He will uphold you with his righteous right hand as
you take seriously your obligations to your home. You can do this. You can do it! But not
alone.

So hold one another accountable to meet the divine standard. As Prov 27:17 says,
“Iron sharpens iron, So one man sharpens another.” Don’t do it alone. Enlist the help of
some iron.
And above all, in all your striving, in all your admonishing and being admonished,
“Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to the
gospel” (2 Tim 2:8). Remember the gospel that though it tells you to go and sin no more, it
also reminds you that you are not condemned, resting as you do on the finished work of the
forgiving Christ.

Redeemer Bible Church

16205 Highway 7
Minnetonka, MN 55345
Office: 952.935.2425
Fax: 952.938.8299
info@redeemerbiblechurch.com
www.redeemerbiblechurch.com
www.solidfood.net

Exod 18:13-27: In Search of Able Men © 2005 by R W Glenn