Moses' Dreams of Multiplication
Moses’ Dreams of Multiplication
In Exodus, chapter 18, Moses is handling all the disputes of the Israelites. 600,000 men, not to mention women and children. It’s pretty much all he is doing all day. His father-in-law Jethro asks him why he is doing that.
Moses’ answer is that, well, the people have all these issues and they come to me asking questions about God, handling disputes, and I tell them the laws of God…
Jethro tells Moses he is going to wear himself out, and that he needs to assign people to take over the main tasks, and bring to him the more difficult cases.
Makes good sense… takes some of the load off of Moses and trains others to be able to do the work… pretty good discipleship strategy! Give others a chance to do the work of ministry!
I was out in Seattle this past week for what is called the Multiplier’s Learning Community. It is a program run through Exponential (Exponential). I was blessed to get to hear a great sermon from Larry Walkemeyer. For those of you who have done training with Beau Crosetto, Larry was Beau’s pastor when Beau lived in L.A.
Larry leads one of the most amazing churches in the U.S., Light and Life Free Methodist in Long Beach, CA. Every year for 20 years, they have planted one or two churches. They do it by allowing church planters to draft some folks from their church to go out with them to start a new church!
Larry spoke to us about Numbers 11, where God had Moses gather 70 elders who would be given the Spirit to help Moses administer the work of leading the people to the Promised Land. When they met with Moses and the Lord, the Spirit came on them and they began to prophesy.
As it turned out, there were 2 men who although they were chosen to go to the mountain to receive the Spirit from the Lord, they did not go. Nonetheless, they began to prophesy where they had stayed in the camp. A young man ran to Moses and said, “Hey, these two guys did not come to the meeting, but they are out there prophesying anyway! You’ve got to stop them, Moses.”
Moses had an interesting response, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put His spirit on them!” Moses is dreaming of the people of God being able to know God and teach others and carry on the work and mission of God.
Here’s the thing… that is what the Lord has done in us. When we believe in Jesus, the Lord’s spirit enters us. If we will not quench the Spirit, He will continue to work in us, growing us into the person He has for us to be to carry on the ministry of Jesus! We believe in a priesthood of all believers… Moses would have given anything for that!
Why do we not take authority to do the work of Jesus? It’s good to volunteer in the church, but volunteering in the church should be the doorway to becoming a disciple-maker! We should have churches full of people who can preach the Gospel, tell an non-believer how to follow Jesus, and help a new believer do the same!!