The eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee.
Men may make a channel for the stream, but they cannot make the stream. Water-power is a grand natural agency; but it is by means of human agency that it may be applied to the best advantage. So also in other matters; power comes from God; the way to use and economise power it is left for man to discover and to act upon. Consider here:—
I. THE DIVINE POWER. "God shall be with thee," said Jethro. The history shows how God had been with him already, how he was with him all through his life. Especially we may notice—
1. His relation to Pharaoh. The shepherd facing the king. Whence his boldness? He had shrunk beforehand at the mere prospect; when the hour came Pharaoh quailed before him. It was not Moses, it was the power which manifested itself through Moses, that humbled Pharaoh. Moses was but the visible rod in the outstretched hand of the invisible Jehovah.
2. His relation to the people. Harder to face a fickle multitude than to face an obstinate and Powerful monarch. Here too the Divine Power was manifested; the glory of Jehovah was, as it were, reflected from the face of his servant. It was the radiancy of the reflected glory which again and again cowed the rebels to submission. As with Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:4-8), Zerubbabel (Zed. Jeremiah 4:6), St. Paul (2 Corinthians 12:9, 2 Corinthians 12:10), so also with Moses; human weakness the more evidently testified to Divine power.
II. THE HUMAN COUNSEL. Notice:—
1. The need of it. Men are so weak that they are soon unhinged by a great trust reposed in them. Their attention is so fixed upon the one thing, that other things are seen out of perspective. Moses was so filled with the consciousness of a Divine power working through him, that he failed at first to realise the fact that he was unequal to the friction necessitated by such a power. He realised the effect of the power in prospect more accurately than he could do after it possessed him (cf. Jeremiah 4:1-31.). As the mediator between God and Israel, had it not been for Jethro's counsel, he must soon have been worn out through forgetting the necessities of his own nature. Lives are still wasted and shortened through a like oversight. The man who feels that he is the channel of Divine power is, for the time, so God-intoxicated, that it does not occur to him to share his responsibilities. He must be both head and hands in everything, and the head in consequence soon grows heavy, and the hands hang down. Under the force of inspiration, common-sense is in abeyance; all the more need for wise counsel from those who occupy a neutral stand-point.
2. The wisdom of it. Jethro saw that the great thing was not that Moses should do all the work, but that all the work should be done. The power to do it, was no doubt lodged with Moses (cf. water-power lodged with keeper of sluice gates). The work, however, might be best done by a distribution of the power through selected agents. Moses need not to be head and hands; he might choose other hands, making them responsible to himself as head. Moses showed his wisdom by accepting the wise counsels of Jethro; many men would have shown their folly by setting them aside as the suggestions of ignorance.
Concluding considerations. Inspiration is a grand thing; but it may be best utilised by common-sense. God's power enables for action; but that power is best applied when the counsels of Jethro are attended to. All men have not the same gifts; and those who have what seem to be the higher gifts, are apt to set too small a value upon advice given by those less gifted. Even the gift of faith, however, needs the gift of wisdom to direct it. Moses was able to do more than he otherwise could have done because he was wise enough to hearken to the voice of Jethro, his father-in-law. ― G.