Moses' 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 to heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone. Now listen to me and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you."

Exodus 18:17-19, NIV 

The setting for this conversation is this: Moses has led the Israelites out of Egypt by the mighty hand of God. Now they are in the wilderness and the people have the everyday problems that all people have that need to be sorted out. Since Moses is the leader and is in direct communication with God, they naturally come to him for finding out what God's will is for handling their questions. The only problem is that there are well over a million Israelites and only one Moses.

Enter Jethro, the father-in-law to Moses. He sees this long line of people waiting to have their disputes and problems judged and he instantly realizes that it is simply too much for both Moses and the people. So he gives Moses some advice, but it is with this condition: If God so commands. And apparently God did, because we are told that Moses listened to his father-in-law and implemented a system wherein righteous leaders were found who could serve as judges for the people - and the problem was solved!

What can we learn from this situation? For one thing, we can see that wise men do give wise advice and that this wise advice often works. We know that it was wise because Jethro put the stipulation on Moses' acceptance of this advice that it be something that God approved. I believe that there are many such times in our lives when we are also "over our heads" and in danger of wearing ourselves out. Sometimes the solution to our problems is available, but only if we are willing to listen to advice and then compare it to the Word of God to see if it is sound or not.

There is one other point that might be useful for us to consider: It would have been easy for Moses to have been offended at his father-in-law for being presumptuous enough to give he - Moses, the leader of the Israelites - any advice at all. But Moses was not a proud or petty man. And since he was willing to listen to advice and then make sure that it was consistent with God's will before implementing it, he was able to have a huge burden lifted. I believe that we have the same blessings available to us whenever we are willing to "condescend" to heeding the good advice of others.

"If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all of these people will go home satisfied."

Moses listened to his father-in-law and did everything he said.

Exodus 18:23-24, NIV

Today is the 17th day of the 30 day challenge to study through the books of Moses, with Exodus 17-20 being the text for today. May God richly bless you as you seek to apply sound, godly advice to all of the challenges that life may bring!