Pray the Word with David Platt is a resource from radical.net.

Exodus chapter 18, verse 23.

If you do this, God will direct you.

You will be able to endure.

And all this people also will go to their place in peace.

This is an incredible summary statement at the end of this chapter that basically

talks about how Moses was presiding as judge over all the people of Israel. But what was

happening is because there were so many people, there was a backlog of all these cases,

all these people needing to see Moses. So his father-in-law, Jethro, comes and says,

what you're doing is not good.

You need to raise up other leaders among the people,

men who fear God, who are trustworthy,

and place them as leaders over thousands of people

and hundreds of peoples and 50s and tens so that

everybody gets the care they need.

And then you can handle certain cases, but not all of these things.

And here in Exodus chapter 18, there's so many lessons we learn, truths we see in this chapter, but one of them is the value

of a plurality of leadership among God's people.

So obviously, Moses had a unique role here in the people of God.

The problem was the whole community was focused on him instead of all kinds of men who could

lead in certain ways among God's people. So when you get to the New Testament and you see God's

design for the church, you see pastors, elders, overseers. Those three terms are interchangeable

...