September 24, 2023
Our Most Valuable Blessing
Exodus 18:13-21
Today we are going to examine a specific blessing God has given to all of us and how we are called to invest it and make it grow. The blessing is time. We don’t know how many days we will be given in life. If you are hearing this we have all at least been blessed with today (at least up to this point). Everyday has 24 hours, 1,440 minutes, or 86,000 seconds. No matter how you divide it up, it’s still a day and is still a blessing from God that He has entrusted to us. We cannot squander any of God’s blessings. We must invest them all properly and when it comes to our time here on earth it is no different. This morning I want to look at a passage of scripture in Exodus where Moses and his father-in-law are having an exchange about his time management and what that means for us today.
Moses’ Mission - Exodus 18:13
13 The next day, Moses took his seat to hear the people’s disputes against each other. They waited before him from morning till evening.
Moses' task was one that was very important to God, it was to bring justice (true justice) to the people of Israel. Throughout their time in Egypt the people were treated unjustly. We see God has slowly been revealing His ways, His truths, and His standards to Moses. God called Moses to be the one who brings those to His people. Moses invested his time in what God had tasked him to do. The problem was the time was not being invested wisely because the people were waiting for him from morning to night. Moses had no time for anything else. It’s very possible for us even today to be investing our time in the mission God has given us as His church and not doing it obediently. We saw last week that our mission was to use God’s blessings on our life to edify or strengthen the church (1 Cor. 14:12), and most importantly to share the Gospel with a lost and dying world. We are to make disciples of those who trust in Jesus as their Lord and Savior (Matthew 28:19-20). However when we invest our time in obedience to our mission, our investment can still struggle to return to us the same way we saw the investment return in the parable of the servants from last week's sermon. It’s not that we are being disobedient, we just aren’t being the best stewards of our time.
Jethro’s Important Questions - Exodus 18:14-16
14 When Moses’ father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he asked, “What are you really accomplishing here? Why are you trying to do all this alone while everyone stands around you from morning till evening?” 15 Moses replied, “Because the people come to me to get a ruling from God. 16 When a dispute arises, they come to me, and I am the one who settles the case between the quarreling parties. I inform the people of God’s decrees and give them his instructions.”
Jethro sees what’s going on and the toll it’s taking on Moses. He asks him a question to make sure that Moses understands where he is investing his time. “What are you really accomplishing here?” This is a fantastic question to help Moses look to see if his invested time is really achieving what he thought it would. It’s a question we need to ask ourselves as well. We need to ask it when we consider everywhere we invest our time. What exactly is our investment accomplishing and does that line up with scripture? Colossians 3:17 tells us that whatever we do in word or deed we are to do it unto the Lord. That means everywhere we invest our time it should be in a way that is bringing glory to God. We see that Moses was doing just that. He was making sure to carry out God’s call on his life, but when it came to this aspect he was doing it poorly. Thinking about our own blessing of time, how are we handling it? Last week we saw that we will have to give an account before God one day of how we handle the blessings we have been given. We must look to see how we are managing our time day in and day out. Are we investing that time in obedience? We need to look at each and every day and ask ourselves the question that Jethro asks Moses, “What are we really trying to accomplish?”. Is our investment of time worthwhile? Time is the one thing you can never get back once you invest it. However we can still have growth from this investment and we will see that shortly. Therefore we must be very wise with the time we have been blessed with. We can either invest it in obedience to God’s will that is revealed in the Bible, or we can invest it outside of the will of God. We have no other options, but as every second ticks by we are making our decisions on where our time should be spent and remember we will be accountable for it one day.
Once Jethro asks his first question, he follows up with another very important one, “Why are you doing it that way?”. For Moses it was a question of why he invested his time to serve his people in this way. We see that Moses’ answer to the first question was that of obedience. However he doesn’t really answer the question, instead he says something to the effect of “because this is just the way it is”. The second question was asking if this was the best way to invest that time and Moses really didn’t have a good answer for that. Any good manager in a business setting will stop from time to time and reevaluate what they are doing and how they are doing it to make sure they are using all their resources to the best of their ability for the best outcome. Since we are all managers of God’s blessings, we must do the same. We need to take a step back and evaluate what we are doing, why we are doing it, and ask if we are doing it the best way possible. These two very simple but powerful questions Jethro asks are ones that need to always be on the forefront of our mind as well when it comes to time God has blessed us with.
Moses’ Correction - Exodus 18:17-23
17 “This is not good!” Moses’ father-in-law exclaimed. 18 “You’re going to wear yourself out—and the people, too. This job is too heavy a burden for you to handle all by yourself. 19 Now listen to me, and let me give you a word of advice, and may God be with you. You should continue to be the people’s representative before God, bringing their disputes to him. 20 Teach them God’s decrees, and give them his instructions. Show them how to conduct their lives. 21 But select from all the people some capable, honest men who fear God and hate bribes. Appoint them as leaders over groups of one thousand, one hundred, fifty, and ten. 22 They should always be available to solve the people’s common disputes, but have them bring the major cases to you. Let the leaders decide the smaller matters themselves. They will help you carry the load, making the task easier for you. 23 If you follow this advice, and if God commands you to do so, then you will be able to endure the pressures, and all these people will go home in peace.”
The first thing we see is Jethro's response to Moses’ answer. Jethro says that “This is not good!” We need to understand this isn’t a response to the mission of Moses. We know that God had given Moses that mission and he was being obedient to his calling. Instead it was a comment about how Moses is going about accomplishing God’s mission in his life. Jethro makes this comment because he sees that if Moses keeps going in the same direction, he is and will continue to be burned out and he needs a new investment plan for his time. Then he encourages him to make sure to check with God about this advice and mentions that Moses must continue on the mission that God has given him. Leaving the mission is never a choice for a servant of God. How we carry out the mission might look different during different seasons in our lives, but it can never be forgotten. Jethro suggests he use the other resources God has blessed him with. It was a blessing that was literally standing all around him, - the Israeli people. He suggests a new way for Moses to invest his time in this mission in order to free up more time to be faithful in the other places that God had called for Moses’ obedience. Jethro gives him a plan to free up more time, but that time was not Moses’ own. It still belonged to God and must still be invested wisely as well.
Jethro tells him to invest that time back into the people. Invest the new freed up moments to teach them about God, to give them instruction that Moses had received from God, and to make them followers who can pass this knowledge on to others. You see, he was calling Moses to multiply his investment. We cannot grow our time in the sense we can grow other investments, but you can see growth from your invested time in other ways. You grow them by leaving a legacy and legacies are very important in our Christian walk. They are our testimonies that are passed from generation to generation. It’s how we still make our time work to accomplish our mission even when our time on earth is gone. We make disciples that make other disciples and will continue to go on and on until time itself is done.
The truth of the Scripture shows us that we all need to understand our mission just like we talked about last week. We need to ask ourselves the questions, “What are you really accomplishing here?” and “Is this the best way to accomplish that?” Once we do that we need to be honest and make adjustments, just like Moses, and then refocus our extra time we have. Moses didn’t have the entirety of God’s Word when it comes to how we invest our time. I want to share a couple more truths from Scripture to help us be better stewards of our time.
We need to be focused on the eternal. -
In Psalms 90:12 we see that Moses prays for us to understand the brevity in life in order to grow in wisdom. James says we need to understand that life is like a vapor in the wind. Life is short and why would keeping this in mind help us invest our time more wisely? Because we cannot procrastinate (Proverbs 27:1). We aren’t promised tomorrow. We need to move now with our eyes fixed on the one thing that matters and that is eternity. Is how we invest our time making an impact on eternity?
We must make time for God. -
If we are too busy for God, we are too busy. Making time for God always be our priority when it comes to investing the time God has blessed us with each day. We need to be in His Word and we need to be in prayer. This is what Jesus modeled when He was here on earth (Mark 1:35) and we are called to do all throughout scripture. We cannot live an obedient Christian life without daily time with God and in His Word (James 4:8, Jeremiah 29:13, Matthew 4:4, Romans 10:17).
We need to count the cost everyday. -
In Luke 14:28-29, Jesus makes a statement about counting the cost before you build a tower to make sure you have enough funds. We must do this with our time as well. Some of us tend to overcommit and we need to make it a habit to make sure we have enough time for the important things, before we pursue the lesser things. We need to make sure we don’t overcommit to the detriment of the most important things in our lives.
We must make time for rest. -
We are called to work hard for the Lord all throughout scripture and not to be lazy, but there is a balance and a need for rest. God rested after 6 days of creation. He established the sabbath day to let man rest and a sabbath year to let the land rest. Rest is an important part of our lives, but it must be in moderation and not lead to laziness or cut into other places we need to invest our time.
We could go on and on about time, but this is a great place for us to stop and reflect on if we are investing our time well. Are we on a mission? Are we accomplishing what we want when it comes to that mission? Is there a better, more efficient way of doing it? What changes can we make to free up more time? How can we invest that free time to make disciples and grow God’s kingdom? Those are some very basic questions, but can lead our lives to glorify God more and more because we have learned to invest our time God’s way.
