Preached on Father’s Day 2008. The meat of the sermon is about the most famous father-in-law in scripture, Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses.
Exodus 18:12 – 19:1
This is Father’s Day. Just this week Rosemary Hege told me about an event that recently took place in the life of her father. Mr. and Mrs. Hege were out for a drive, and decided to drop by the Original Lexington Barbecue for lunch. I don’t blame them. If you can’t get barbecue from Joey Transou, then Lexington Barbecue is a great substitute. Anyway, when the Heges arrived at the restaurant, they were told they could get take-out, but would not be able to eat in the dinning room because a private party was expected. The Heges said, “O.K.”, ordered a couple of sandwiches, then went outside to eat them on the tailgate of Mr. Hege’s truck. As they ate, an entourage of long black cars and SUVs entered the parking lot of the restaurant. A crowd of people quickly pressed inside. The Heges moved to an outside door to see just who it was that had arrived. Peering into the restaurant from outside, Mr. Hege saw former President Bill Clinton. Just as importantly, Mr. Clinton saw him. What former president Clinton saw was an 85 year old man in a ball cap proclaiming that he was a World War II Veteran. When the former president saw Mr. Hege in his cap, he pressed-by his secret service escort, went over to Mr. Hege, took his hand, shook it with enthusiasm, and thanked him for what he had done.
Whether or not you like the former president, you have got to admit that he did something that many of us would like to do. Many of us would like to reach out and thank the men the World War II generation. Many of us know one of these men as our father. We would like to thank-them for all they have done to make our lives better. Not only did they feed us, clothe us, and put a roof over our heads. They waged war, and worked for the peace. They built a great nation, and did everything else they had to do to preserve our world, and to make this country a better palace for all of us who are indeed their children.
Now I wish all of you could say a word about your fathers. You can’t, so let me say a word about my father. As I speak of my father, think of your own. I have always been proud of my daddy. (“Daddy” is southern for “Dad.”)
He was always my hero, but I will never forget the day that, when I was 8 or 9, that he became great beyond all measure, at least in my eyes. On just that one day he: 1) Hit a golf ball all the way across the narrow neck of High Rock Lake where my grandmother had her cabin. 2) Swam across the lake, and back. 3) And when my cousin Robert and I discovered a snake curled around our raft that was tied to the pier, he came out, charmed it, and then killed it with only a 9-iron. He did that while my Aunt Anoree had gone to fetch the .22 rifle. It was like he had completed the labors of Hercules! I was smitten.
It gets better. When I was 11 or 12, we studied about the 2nd World War in school. One day in late spring, the ice cream truck came down our street. I asked my dad for ice cream money, and he told me to get it out of his sock drawer. It was a rare opportunity. I was never allowed in that drawer. When I looked in, I found a little black case. It contained a medal, a Bronze Star. I asked dad what it was for. He laughed, and said he got it for setting up a medical tent under combat conditions. He told me that he had made the Normandy invasion, landing at Utah Beach on D plus One. He said that the men at Omaha Beach had it much, much harder. He almost never speaks of the war; but on that day, I knew he was personally involved.
Of course, when I was in Junior High School, I was proud of my dad for other reasons. I was proud that my dad because he cared enough about me and my friends to carry us anywhere and everywhere we wanted to go. After school, he took us to ball games in neighboring cities. At night, he took us to the Red Shield Boy’s Club. On weekends, he took us to the movies, though he himself never attended. He took us a hundred different places, and he never once complained even though gasoline had crept up to more than 25 cents a gallon!
Now that I have been a father for more than thirty year, and a grandfather for 18 months, I am more proud of my father than ever before. When I grow up I want to be like him. At the age of 67 he was asked to retire by the church he was serving. He became the fulltime chaplain of Salemtown, the Moravian Retirement Community. He worked there for 15 years. The first five years he did not take a salary. At the age of 82, he finally left Salemtown, but served two churches, one Moravian, and one United Church of Christ. Now at the age of 86 he serves only one church. He preaches every Sunday, and witnesses to his faith at every opportunity. For his sake, I hope that when he dies, it will be in the pulpit, and when I grow-up I want to be like him.
That does not mean that I am not blind to his faults, nor he to mine! I have not always found it easy to get along with my dad. He, too, is a strong-willed man, and we disagree about a lot of things. My estimation of him has little to do with whether he is right, or wrong. It has everything to do with the fact that I know he loves me, whether I am right or wrong.
At the age of 58 years and 11 months, I count myself blessed, to still have my father.
They’re many varieties of the men we call “father.” There are fathers, and grandfathers, and great-grandfathers. Then there are stepfathers, and step-grandfathers, and step-great-grandfathers. Stepfathers choose their children. There are other people we think of as fathers. I am a Godfather, and have five Godchildren! St. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth saying, “You have many guides, but only one father in Christ.” There is no evidence that Paul ever married. He claimed the gift of singleness and chastity. Yet he was proud that he had many spiritual children.
In my lifetime, I have had a number of spiritual fathers and mentors, men who shaped my life in some powerful way. The proverb says, “Your friend, and your father’s friend, do not forsake.” I have been lucky. Many of my father’s friends have reversed that proverb saying, “Your friend, and the son of your friend, do not forsake.” Many of my mentors have become my mentors for the love of my father.
Those of us who marry get another kind of father: we call them father’s-in-law. I had a very special father-in-law. His name was J. R. Durham. He did a great job or raising my wife, when I was just 26 years old, then he died. He was a good man of business, and a savvy investor, and had he lived, I am sure life would have been very different for my wife and me. I have missed, and she has missed him even more.
In his honor, I turned the scriptures to discover what they have to say about father’s-in-law. Jesus did not have a father-in-law, for Jesus never married. The gospels mention Peter’s mother-in-law, but never his father-in-law. To our knowledge, Paul never married, and thus never had a father-in-law. The most famous father-in-law in scripture is the father-in-law of Moses. Moses needed a good father-in-law, because it appears that he lost his father at an early age. According to Exodus chapter two, Moses’ father was a Levite, and he took a daughter of Levi to be his wife. That is the last we hear of him.
We hear next of Moses’ mother. Many of you will remember how she placed him in a basket on the river, and then watched as the daughter of Pharaoh found him. Then she volunteered to be her own son’s nurse, and helped to raise him.
Moses’ father disappears from the pages of scripture, but we hear a several times about his father-in-law, Reuel, also known as Jethro.
Do you know how they Moses met Jethro? After Moses killed the overseer and fled Egypt, he went to the land of Midian, and sat down by a well. The seven daughters of a priest named Reuel (also Jethro) came to draw water, but two shepherds drove them away. Moses came to their rescue. He “stood-up”—probably to the bullies, and helped them to water their flock. When they went home to their father, they told their father about Moses. Reuel asked, “And where is he? Why have you left him? Go back and call him so that he can eat bread with us.”
They called Moses, and Moses came to supper, and he was content to stay with Reuel. And Reuel—also called Jethro, gave Moses his daughter, Zipporah, to be his wife, and Zipporah bore Moses a son.
Moses worked for Jethro as a shepherd, but God had other plans for Moses. “I AM WHO I AM” appeared to Moses in a bush that burned with fire, but was not consumed. The LORD told Moses that he had heard the cries of his people, and he sent Moses to Pharaoh saying, “Go to Pharaoh and tell him, ‘Let my people go!’”
Moses asked permission of his father-in-law to return to Egypt to check on his people to see if they were still alive. And Jethro gave it him to him saying, “God in peace.” (Gen. 4:18)
Moses then left the land of his father-in-law, and he went down to Egypt. There he confronted Pharaoh in the name of the Lord. You know the rest of that story. You know about the ten plagues, and how the Pharaoh finally let the people go, then hardened his heart once more and sent his army after the Hebrew children, hoping to bring them back. And you know how that part of the story ends, too. How the people were between a rock and a hard place, with the Yom Suph before them, and the armies of Egypt behind them. And you know that a strong east wind blew through the night, and the waters of the Yom Suph stood in a heap, and the people of Israel crossed over, as on dry ground, and when the Egyptian chariots and horses and riders tried to follow, the water rushed in upon them, destroying them.
The next time Moses meets with his father-in-law, it is after the incident of the destruction of the Egyptian army. This story is recorded in Exodus 18. The people are on the march. They have escaped the Egyptians, but they still have their problems, and most of them are with each other. The story of Exodus 18 goes like this. Jethro went to the camp of Israel, taking with him Zipporah his daughter and the two children of Moses—for now there were two. And the two men, Jethro and Moses, greeted one another, and kissed, and exchanged pleasantries. Then Moses invited Jethro into his tent and told him all that the Lord had done for the people of Israel. And the scripture says:
And Jethro rejoiced for all the good, which the LORD had done to Israel, in that he had delivered them out of the hand of the Egyptians. And Jethro said, “Blessed be the LORD, who has delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of Pharaoh. Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods, because he delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians, when they dealt arrogantly with them And Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, offered a burnt offering and sacrifices to God; and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses’ father-in-law before God.
Then something remarkable happened. Jethro, watched as Moses sat down to judge between the people. Moses sat from morning until evening, hearing complaint after complaint, until he is blue in the face from all the bickering. Then Jethro, who had watched patiently, gave Moses some good advice. Jethro told Moses that he what he was doing was not good. He said it would wear both him and the people out. Then Jethro told Moses to appoint able men to rule over the people as leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. Moses immediately did what Jethro suggested. In military terms Moses divided the people into battalions, and companies, and platoons, and squads, and appointed leaders for each. According to the text, after that, the leaders brought only “the hard cases” to Moses, but any small matter they decided themselves. And when he saw how everything worked out, Jethro left. According to the text, Moses gave his father-in-law leave to depart, and Jethro journeyed back to his own country.
Now what can we say about Jethro? At least this:
Jethro was a religious man, but probably not a Jew. Moses father-in-law was probably a gentile, though it is interesting that the name Reuel appears in the list of Hebrew names both before we meet Reuel aka Jethro in Genesis 35, and again after we meet Reuel aka Jethro, both in Numbers and in 1st Chronicles. Jethro was probably not a Jew, nevertheless, he listened to Moses’ witness about the mighty acts of the LORD, confessed the LORD was greater than all the gods, and sacrificed to him.
My father in law was not a Moravian, he was a Baptist, but he raised my wife right. He never got up on Sunday morning and asked his family if they wanted to go to church, he just took them. When I married my wife, Elayne, she had almost twenty years of perfect Sunday school attendance, but she never wanted to be a preacher’s wife. When I told her I was going into the ministry, she said, “O.K., but just remember, I did not marry a preacher, I married a Marine.” Yet, she has made a good preacher wife, because her father trained her what to do on a Sunday Morning.
Second, Jethro loved and respected Moses as the husband of his daughter, and he never came between them. In the absence of Moses he cared for his daughter, and for her two sons, his grandsons. I am sure Jethro loved all three of them, but as soon as he heard Moses had made it safely out of Egypt, he restored his daughter to her husband. It was the right thing to do.
I used to think that I could never give my daughter up. I told her she could not date until she was thirty. At the age of twenty-five she brought home her future husband. For all my bias, I LIKED HIM! I knew immediately that he was a man to whom I could trust one of my greatest treasures. Like Jethro, I have not been disappointed. Nor have I been disappointed with my son’s choice of his wife, and I pray the same is true of her father, re my son!
Third, Jethro was concerned for Moses’ well being (and for the well being of the people of Israel—what was good for Moses was good for Israel). I once heard a man describe his father-in-law as his father-in-love. He said he loved him as his own father, and that his father-in-law loved him as his own son. That is the way it should be. That is the way it was with Moses and Jethro. Moses did not have a father, but he had Jethro, and Jethro was a good man to have around when he was needed. Jethro was a stand-up stand-in!
Fourth, Jethro was a great advisor. He knew when to keep silent and when to speak up. He heard Moses try a hundred cases, but he did not second-guess him even once. Instead, he saw through to Moses’ one real problem, and offered one piece of advice, but it was the most important piece of advice he could have given. I well remember going to my father-in-law over a small matter. He refused to given an opinion. Like Jethro, he was more concerned with the structure of my life than with the details. When we have something to say about everything, people pretty soon ignore what we have to say about the important things, even when those people are family.
Finally, when it was time for Jethro to leave, Jethro left. There were two leave takings between Moses and Jethro. When Moses left Jethro for Egypt, he asked permission to go. The lesser-asked permission of the greater, and the greater gave the lesser his peace.. When Jethro left Moses, there is no record that he asked the permission of Moses to go. Yet Moses gave him leave, because Moses had become the greater man. Jethro had lost none of his own greatness, but Moses had gained greatness of his own, the greatness of being an agent of God.
Now all fathers and men, who stand in a father’s stead, want their sons and daughters to be great. When my son was born, I was awed by my dad on the one hand, and awed by the potential of my son on the other, and I selfishly prayed not to be an Isaac. Do you remember Isaac? He was the son of Abraham, a great father; and he was the father of Jacob, a great son. The most exciting thing Isaac ever did was to pitch a tent, though he was smart enough to pitch his tent in God’s camp. Well, I did not want to be an Isaac. I wanted to do more on my own. I am not sure that I ever have or every will, but now that I am older, and hopefully wiser, I am very happy to be an Isaac. I want my children, and my Godchildren, and all my surrogate children, whom I try to mentor, to far exceed me. I will be very happy to be an Isaac, thank-you very much. It is enough to live in a tent that has been pitched in God’s camp. There is no greater blessing.
So, this is Father’s day, and on it, we salute fathers, and all those stand-up stand-in’s who spend their lives making our world a better place. Moses did not have a father, but he had a father-in-law, and his father-in-law, made him a better man.
Finis
Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.
EverydayCounselor©
New Philadelphia Moravian Church
4440 Country Club Road
Winston-Salem, N.C. 27104