I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Numbers 11-13.

    Once more the people complain about their hardships and some of the people looked back on the good things they had had in Egypt (forgetting the bad that went with those good things). Moses complained to God about being unable to bear the burden on his own. God then tells Moses to appoint 70 elders from among the people to share the burden with him. This is not the first time that Moses was told that he needed to delegate more. In Exodus, his father-in-law had told him the same thing. On that occasion Moses had appointed men as judges for the people. Unfortunately, we see here that while Moses had appointed men to judge disputes among the people, he was still holding all of the leadership roles for himself.

    Moses’ problem here is one that many leaders face. They know how to accomplish their goals. They know how to inspire others to seek those same goals. However, they often fail to trust others to make the decisions necessary to get the things done which need to be done to realize those goals. They reserve all of the decision making to themselves. It is important for leaders to trust those who follow them to make good decisions. We can contrast what Moses did in leading the children of Israel out of Egypt with how Jesus carried out His ministry. Moses worked with Aaron and Miriam to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, but even there, Moses viewed Aaron and Miriam as carrying out the decisions which he made. Jesus, on the other hand, started His ministry by calling 12 Apostles. He then spent the next three years teaching them His thought processes. At the end of those three years He turned to job of building the Church over to those 12 men and left them to carry it out.