Author Rod Reasen II
Jesus handpicked an ordinary team and commissioned them to an extraordinary mission. This series for leaders breaks down how we can view our stewardship responsibility in team building.
Two qualifications down. Able and Trustworthy.
Able asked whether a person can carry the load. The Hebrew chayil, strength and capacity, is paired immediately with span of control by placing men over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens.
Trustworthy, the Hebrew anshei emet, asked whether the load will still be standing when you come back. We found that the word conveys both truth and reliability in a single term. The bridge of competence and character. The same term God uses to describe His own character in Exodus 34:6.[^1]
We have experience measuring those two. We have interviews, references, work samples, and track records. Instruments pointed at capacity and dependability.
The next two are harder to see and impossible to fake, and they are the two that hold up everything the first two are standing on.
“Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens.”[^2]
The writer of Proverbs, likely the wisest man ever to walk the planet except Jesus Himself, reminds us in Proverbs 9:10 that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.[^3] Find me a leader without the fear of the Lord, and I will show you a self-absorbed, self-leading person whose goal is their own pleasure. Superficially, they may even look like a “good person,” have a good life, and a good family.
But oh, how we have even reduced our own standards of good these days. In Mark 10, the rich young ruler runs up to Jesus and calls Him good. Jesus responds, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”[^4] He does not immediately answer the man’s question about eternal life. He first addresses what the man believes about the One standing before him. Then, after the man says he has kept the commandments since he was a boy, Jesus tests where his security really lies by telling him to sell everything he has and follow Him.
Which raises a fair question that most of us have never actually stopped to answer. What does it mean to fear God?
The Hebrew word is yir’ah, and it comes from the verb yare’.[^5] The range inside it is wide. Terror, dread, awe, reverence, worshipful obedience, and all of it lives in the same word. Part of why we struggle with the phrase is that English forces us to choose between fearing someone and holding them in high regard. The Hebrew doesn’t.
The clearest place to watch it work is two chapters after Jethro’s conversation with Moses. The nation is at Sinai; the mountain is shaking; the thunder has not stopped; and the people are terrified. Moses says this to them. “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.”[^6]
Holy reverence for the creator brings a level of fear and respect that is only divine. His words spoke life into existence. His touch heals. His blood saved. And someday, His promised return and the wrath with it against the evil one and all who have not accepted will be final.
Here is how I try to wrap my finite mind around this infinite topic. The fear of God is living with a biblically centered view of who God is, what He has promised, what He has shown me in His word and through my life with how my decisions relate to Him. It’s not what would Jesus do, WWJD. It is what you should do knowing Him. Jethro is calling on Moses to find this type of leader.
In Paul Little’s book Know Why You Believe, the author examines the improbability of chance in light of the evidence for intelligent design and contrasts the two choices for the reader.[^7] Either you believe there is a Master Creator who architected life itself, or you believe everything is by chance. It is an argument that intellectuals, the elite, and ultimately all mankind will always wrestle with, and pondering it leads to a fork in the road that requires a choice from each of us.
If there is a Creator, then I must ask why He created me, and therefore who He is. In that case, my talents, my resources, and my very existence are spent as a steward pursuing what He wants for me. A higher purpose indeed.
Conversely, if all is by chance, then I only answer to myself, my culture, and my desires. My life takes an ownership posture. I am the center of my own universe, and what I do will always come back around to number one. Want to test the theory? Next time you are about to make even the simplest decision, ask, “Why am I doing this?”
Sadly, some might believe there is a third category. They ignore the fork in the road, denying it altogether. Some will even try to overanalyze the question, ignoring the very implications of delay. “Why am I here?” is not meant to be rhetorical, metaphysical, or some lifelong escape room. It has an answer, no different from asking why an architect designed a building the way he did.
Or worse, some quickly check the box that an intelligent designer must have been involved, and then leave it at that, never seeking to know what His purpose may be for them. That person has an opinion about God but lacks the fear of God. James clears this up in chapter 2, reminding the readers that “even the demons believe, and shudder.”[^8] It’s frightening to think that “good” people can have a demonic level of intellectual belief in God and not fully come to saving faith.
Jethro is telling Moses to appoint men who are already under authority before Moses gives them any. These leaders’ fear of God meant they were already answering to Someone before Moses ever appointed them.
This qualification does not stop at a person’s private devotional life. It is formed there, and then it shows up in whose voice they hear the loudest before they speak. The internal work of transformation results in an external work before others. That makes it one of the hardest qualities to identify in someone else, and one of the easiest decisions you could make for yourself today.
In our next devotional, we will get to Jethro’s fourth and final qualification, he calls “Not given to a bribe,” or as we all like to call this: Integrity.
Two questions to sit with.
Do you fear God as the demons do, yet have not submitted your life to Christ alone?
How often do you need to be reminded, leader, to resubmit to the One who put you here?
Stay on Mission
The Hebrew word is yirah, from the verb yare, and its range covers terror, dread, awe, reverence and worshipful obedience in a single term. English forces a choice between being afraid of someone and holding them in high regard, and Hebrew never had to make that choice. In practice it means living with a biblically centered view of who God is, what He has promised, and how your decisions relate to Him.
Yirah, Strong’s H3374, from the verb yare, Strong’s H3372. Related passages fill in the content. Proverbs 9:10 calls the fear of the LORD the beginning of wisdom, Proverbs 8:13 calls it a hatred of evil, and Deuteronomy 10:12 places it beside walking in God’s ways, loving Him and serving Him with the whole heart.
James 2:19 is making a point about faith and works. The demons hold correct theology about God and it saves none of them, which shows that intellectual agreement is not the same as saving faith. The sobering application is that a person can check the box that God exists, feel something real about it, and still never submit to Him.
Not in the sense of dreading punishment. 1 John 4:18 says perfect love casts out fear and specifies the fear that has to do with punishment. Isaiah 11:2-3 describes the Spirit resting on the coming Messiah as the Spirit of the fear of the LORD and says His delight will be in it, which means Jesus both possessed and enjoyed it. Whatever the phrase means, it cannot mean being frightened of the Father.
In Mark 10:17-18 the man runs up, calls Jesus good teacher, and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus does not answer the question first. He addresses what the man actually believes about the One in front of him, saying no one is good except God alone. Only afterward does He test where the man’s security really sits by telling him to sell everything he has.
Jethro tells Moses to look for able men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and to place them over the people as chiefs of thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. Able speaks to competence. Trustworthy, the Hebrew anshei emet, carries both truth and reliability. Fearing God and hating a bribe are matters of character, and they are the two hardest to see from the outside.
Not from an interview, since everyone speaks respectfully about faith and integrity when asked. The fear of God is formed in private and shows up in whose voice a person hears loudest before they speak. It surfaces in what someone did under pressure rather than what they say about pressure, usually years earlier, usually when telling the truth cost them something.
Footnotes
[^1]: Hebrew emet, Strong’s H571, from the root aman, Strong’s H539, to be firm, to support, to be reliable. The same term appears in God’s self-description in Exodus 34:6. All Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.
[^2]: Exodus 18:21 (ESV).
[^3]: Proverbs 9:10. Compare Proverbs 1:7, where the fear of the LORD is called the beginning of knowledge, and Psalm 111:10. On Solomon’s wisdom, see 1 Kings 3:12.
[^4]: Mark 10:17-18 (ESV). The account also appears in Matthew 19:16-22 and Luke 18:18-23. The familiar title rich young ruler is a composite, since Mark records his great possessions, Matthew calls him young, and Luke identifies him as a ruler.
[^5]: Hebrew yir’ah, Strong’s H3374, from the verb yare’, Strong’s H3372, carrying fear, dread, reverence and awe. On the content of the term, see Proverbs 8:13, where the fear of the LORD is called a hatred of evil, and Deuteronomy 10:12, where Moses sets it beside walking in God’s ways, loving Him, and serving Him with the whole heart.
[^6]: Exodus 20:20 (ESV).
[^7]: Paul E. Little, Know Why You Believe (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press). The improbability of chance and the argument from design are treated in the book’s opening chapters. The framing of the two choices above is my own summary, not a quotation from Little.
[^8]: James 2:19 (ESV). The King James Version reads “the devils also believe, and tremble.” The Greek phrisso carries the sense of bristling or shuddering.
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