Moses And His Mentor Jethro

For the next few Sundays I want to dip into the Old Testament teachings. There are individuals in the Old Testament that we can learn a lot of things about and from. One of those things is mentoring others.

Currently we have several individuals in our church who have volunteered to be mentors to students at the elementary and junior high schools at East Central. They have just gotten started and so I'm not sure how it is going but I am sure as time goes by that these children will remember things that these adults have taught them.

(Recognize our mentors)

You see, we have a choice in life. We can learn from our experiences, or we can learn from the experience of others. Learning from our own experiences can many times be painful, frustrating, and time consuming. Learning from others shortens that time frame and lessens that pain and frustration. If we were wise, we would let others go through the stress and learn from their experiences.

Basically, we need three types of people in our lives. We need friends, those who walk alongside us who we can mutually support and encourage. We need mentors, those who share their wisdom and life lessons and challenge us to grow and fulfill our potential. Thirdly, we need those that we mentor, those we support, invest in, and challenge to grow just as others have done for us.

One of the courses I had in seminary involved two years of sitting with a mentor for a few hours every other week. My mentor was brother Mark Briggs, the father of David Briggs. I learned a lot from him. However, he told my mom and dad he thought he was learning more from me.

But as we have been mentored, we can do the same for someone else. Everyone can profit from the wisdom and the experience of others. The message today looks at a brief incident of mentoring in the life of Moses. And without this mentoring that took place, Moses’ life could have been quite different. Let's see if we can learn some things about mentoring from God's word today. Prayer.

We are going to be using Exodus 18 from the Old testament today. Most of us know who Moses was. Especially after the Easter season and for some reason the television network ties in the Ten Commandments to Easter, which is not related to Easter at all. But Moses was the great Israelite leader of the exodus of God's people out of Egypt. Moses learned a lot from his mentoring relationship with his father-in-law, Jethro. He learned these lessons in the early years of the journey out of Egypt.

Moses first met Jethro in the second chapter of Exodus. Moses actually married one of Jethro's daughters, Zipporah. For the next 40 years, Moses tended the flocks of Jethro in the wilderness area of Midian. After Moses had an encounter with God at the burning bush, he decided to return to Egypt with his wife and family.

At some point, either during that journey back to Egypt or after arriving in Egypt, Moses sent Zipporah and his two sons back to Jethro. We still don't know exactly why he did this, but it might have been because Moses wanted to protect them from the wrath of Pharaoh during those months before the Exodus event began.

Exodus 18: 9-11 – “Jethro rejoiced over all the good things the Lord had done for Israel when he rescued them from the power of the Egyptians. 10 “Blessed be the Lord,” Jethro exclaimed, “who rescued you from the power of Egypt and from the power of Pharaoh. He has rescued the people from under the power of Egypt! 11 Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods, because he did wonders when the Egyptians acted arrogantly against Israel.”

When we get to the 18th chapter of Exodus, Moses and the children of Israel had seen the plagues in Egypt and experienced the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea. They had seen water come from a rock and quail and manna come from heaven in the wilderness. Hearing of all the ways God had acted on behalf of His people, Jethro acknowledged how great Yahweh was, and led the leaders of Israel in a joyous celebration of all that God had done for the nation to this point in time. All of this began a brief, yet critical period of mentoring between Jethro and Moses.

If we look below the surface of the verses that we just read, we can gain some valuable truths about mentoring from Moses and Jethro. For instance:

- a lot of times we have people in our own families that we can turn to for advice and direction. There's a lot that can be learned from family members. If you look closely within your own family, you can probably find someone to turn to for wisdom and counsel as a mentor. Moses was going to learn from his father-in-law Jethro. I learned from my dad about construction, electrical work, plumbing, etc.