(Transcription of a message preached at Faith-Grace Vietnamese Baptist Church on September 28, 2015.)
This message is a follow up to one on “Biblical
Legacies.” In that message, I presented a series of Biblical characters whose
legacies were illustrated by titles they received from God and men. For
example, Abraham is referred to as “the
Friend of God” three times in scripture, twice by men and once by God (2
Chron. 20:7; Is. 41:8; Jas. 2:23). Conversely, someone like the Judean queen
Athaliah goes down for ever as “that
wicked woman” (2 Chron. 24:7).
In this message, I’d
like to look at a practice that, if it’s done right, can enable someone to
leave a good legacy in many lives,
and that’s the practice of mentoring.
It may not be called that in scripture, but it’s certainly there in practice. What
I’d like to focus on in this message is seven examples of mentoring in scripture and what we can learn from them.
This message should help you see some things to look for in a mentor and how to be
a good mentor.
DEFINITION
First, let’s establish a definition for mentoring.
What do we call things that have to do with our minds? Mental, right? Looks a
lot like the word “mentor,” doesn’t it? It certainly does, and I think that the
root is the same. A mentor is someone, usually someone older than you, who
shapes the way you think. They’re more than just a teacher. Some teachers just
provide information, like a driving instructor, but they’re not really a part
of your life. But a mentor is someone whose counsel or advice changes the way
that you think and likely how you act,
since thoughts are the seeds of our actions. So it’s very important who you choose as a mentor and, if you’d like to
mentor someone else, that you understand what makes a good mentor before you try to be one.
BIBLICAL EXAMPLES
Next, I’d like to discuss seven mentoring
relationships in scripture, in the order that they appear. Most of these are in
the old testament, which has so much to teach us about living, even though it
was written thousands of years ago. Never forget that the Bible is a book of
history and prophecy, teaching and practice. There are certain principles in
it, set up by God, that work for us no matter when we live. I think that
mentoring is one of these principles. Most people who take on leadership are
first trained by someone already in leadership; it’s not automatic. In the
gospels we read about a master, Jesus, and his disciples, a great example of
mentoring, just with a different name. Our last example will look more closely
at Jesus’ relationship with one of those disciples.
1. Moses and Joshua (text). The first time
we see Joshua, he’s fighting Amalek shortly after the Israelites leave Egypt
(Ex. 17). But you don’t learn about his special relationship with Moses until
Moses receives the law at Sinai. Joshua apparently climbs Sinai with him, at
least part of the way, since he speaks to Moses on the mount in Ex. 32:17,
after Moses receives the law from God. Joshua also accompanies Moses into the
tabernacle after Moses moves it outside the Israelites’ camp to their shame. Ex.
33:11: “…his [Moses’] servant Joshua,
the son of Nun, a young man…” Later, in our text passage, we see Moses
conferring leadership of the Israelites to Joshua before Moses’ death. So what
did Moses teach Joshua: (1) power of God (Ex. 17); (2) communion with God
(Moses’ trips up the mountain and their time in the tabernacle together; cf.
Ex. 33); (3) discernment (Ex. 32:17)—Joshua thought that there was fighting in
the camp, but Moses knew that it was a wicked party for false gods; (4)
holiness of God—Moses removed the tabernacle from the camp due to Israel’s sin;
(5) how to shepherd God’s people; in Num. 27:15-23, Moses prays for a
successor, one who will be a good spiritual shepherd for the Israelites, and
God shows him that Joshua, his servant, is the right man for that job. Moses
likely had a sense of that, to take Joshua up Sinai and into the tabernacle,
but here it was formalized by God himself. The servant would now become the
leader. That brings me to the final thing that Joshua learned from Moses: (6) You must serve before you can lead. At
first, you might think that Joshua is a humble servant, not a candidate to
replace Moses as leader of the Hebrew nation. But that’s who he was. His
service qualified him to lead, and that holds true for most leaders, including
Jesus. In Philippians 2:5-11, Paul speaks of how Christ, being in the form of
God and equal with God, took upon the form of servant and humbled himself
completely, dying the death of a criminal. For stooping so low, however, lower
than anyone could stoop, since he was God, his Father exalts him above everyone
in the universe. What a great encouragement to serve: it’s a blessing to
others, but God will also reward you for it, if you’ve trusted his Son as your
Saviour and his Spirit lives in you.
2. Samuel and Saul. Samuel was brought up
in the tabernacle by the high priest and judge of Israel, Eli (1 Sam. 1-4). But
since Eli was not close to God, he wasn’t really a mentor to Samuel. God
revealed himself to Samuel personally, since he couldn’t really speak to Samuel
through Eli. If you don’t have a good mentor in your life, don’t worry. God can
still speak to you through his word to help you keep growing. In those days God
did speak to men audibly, like he did to Samuel, but where that wasn’t
happening, there was still his written word (3:1). God begins a relationship
with Samuel that develops Samuel into a mighty prophet that brings the wayward
Israelites back to God gloriously
Over time,
though, the people go back to their old ways of copying the world, and they ask
for a human king instead of looking to God as their invisible king. God gives
them Saul, a tall and handsome man from Benjamin, but a man whose weak
character doesn’t come out until later and then goes from bad to worse, until
he ends up killing priests and consulting with a witch instead of God. Along
the way, though, Samuel tries to mentor Saul and encourage him to serve the
Lord. But Saul’s fatal flaws are that he does not take God’s word seriously,
nor does he ever really repent of his sins. He blames other, but he never takes
full responsibility for his actions nor makes things fully right when he sins.
So here’s an example of where the mentor does his best to be a good example and
give good advice, but the mentee has deep character flaws that even mentoring
can’t change, regretfully.
3. Elijah and Elisha. The prophet Elijah
bursts on the scene in Israel during the reign of wicked king Ahab and his even
more wicked queen, Jezebel (1 Kings 17). Elijah, along with Moses and Samuel,
is one of Israel’s greatest prophets, since he stands seemingly alone for God
in a very evil day. After this courage fails in the face of Jezebel’s threats,
he flees to Sinai where the Lord speaks to him and reveals his successor,
Elisha the son of Shaphat. Do you remember the touching scene where Elijah
calls Elisha into the prophetic ministry? He finds him hard at work plowing his
father’s land. God doesn’t call people sitting around doing nothing. He looks
for people being faithful to the duties right in front of them. Elisha leaves
everything behind to follow Elisha, but he doesn’t become a prophet on the
spot. A wise professor of mine at Georgia Tech told me not to think I was an
engineer when I graduated. I was ready to become one. It says that Elisha
ministered unto Elisha, even his basic physical needs. Look at 2 Kings 3:11.
The kings of Israel, Judah, and Edom go to war against Moab, and the king of
Judah asks for a prophet of the LORD. Elisha is introduced as one who “poured
water on the hands of Elijah.” What humility! He could have told his master
that washing his hands was beneath him, but it wasn’t, and that’s why God chose
him to be the spiritual leader of his country, the real strength of it despite
its wicked king.
Are you
starting to see a pattern in the good mentorships? The mentee must be willing
to serve, even in physical ways, to develop the character to lead others. I
can’t think of any great and good leader in the Bible that wasn’t humbled first
before he could really be of use. Your mentor should be aware of that and
encourage you toward humility, not pride, since pride, according to the Bible,
is a sure path to destruction (Prov. 16:18).
4. Elisha and Gehazi. After Elijah is gone
and some experience in ministry, Elisha has an opportunity to mentor someone
himself, Gehazi his servant. He seems to be Elisha’s apprentice, since Elisha
entrusts him with his staff to heal the Shunammite’s son (2 Kings 4:29-31). But
his true colors come out in the incident with Naaman, the Syrian general with
leprosy who comes to Elisha for healing. Upon healing Naaman, Elisha refuses
payment for his services, but Gehazi’s hidden greed comes out when he goes
after Naaman and falsely asks payment for Elisha. When Elisha confronts him
about it, he denies it, but God enables Elisha to see what happened behind his
back. In judgment for this sin, God strikes Gehazi and his descendants with
leprosy. What a price to pay for greed! Keep this in mind: if you find a godly
mentor and put yourself under them, there’s a higher price for ignoring their
counsel, I think, than that of a worldly mentor. The last time you see Gehazi
is not in a leper colony, but in the king’s presence as some sort of advisor.
So he doesn’t lose everything physically, but he does lose everything
spiritually, and “what shall if profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world
and lose his own soul?” Seems like it would be better not to attach yourself to
a godly mentor if you really don’t mean business and are just putting on show,
like Gehazi was, to cover up a bad heart with some religion. First things
first: get your heart right with God, then go from there. Until you’ve done
that, everything else is vain.
5.
Jehoiada and Joash (2 Chron. 24). Last time I
told you about wicked queen Athaliah, who seized the throne of Judah after her
son’s death. Well, her glory didn’t last long. God used a faithful high priest
named Jehoiada to preserve the true king, a boy named Joash, from Athaliah, and
eventually turn the tables on her and oust her from the throne. Jehoiada
becomes Joash’s mentor, and Joash does some great things under Jehoiada’s
supervision. Once Jehoiada dies, however, Joash turns away from God and even
kills Jehoiada’s son, who warns Joash of God’s judgment for his sin. This
mentorship ends very sadly, and the lesson I saw in it: your mentor can point you in the right direction, but ultimately you’ve
got to decide who you want to be. Anne Frank said that, Parents can only
give good advice and put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a
person’s character lies in their own hands.” Well said. Jehoiada certainly did
his best to lead Joash aright, but deep down Joash’s heart was divided between
God and the world, and eventually the world won out, to his destruction.
6. Jesus
and Peter. Jesus had numerous disciples on earth, and out of these he chose
twelve special ones whom he called apostles. They were his special messengers
in proclaiming his coming kingdom. The natural leader of this group was Simon,
the son of Jona, whom Jesus named Peter, or “rock.” When the Lord tells the
twelve that they will forsake him and that he will die, Peter confidently
boasts that he would never deny his Lord. The Lord reminds him that though his
spirit may be willing, his flesh is weak, and he shouldn’t have confidence in
it. Well, you know the rest of the story. Peter does indeed deny his Lord to
his shame, but unlike Judas, who takes his own life for betraying Christ, Peter
repents of his denial and is restored to his position as apostle. Our gracious
Lord even goes further and restores Peter to leadership over the twelve, but
this time he’s a changed man and acts in dependence on God rather than on
himself. What I see here is a man who truly wants to follow his mentor, hits a
snag, falls, then gets up and finishes his training. Peter was upset at Jesus
for not resisting the Jews. Remember he started fighting in the garden, but
Jesus told him to stop. This angers Peter, who was no coward, and he denies the
Lord out of anger, not out of fear, I think. Either way, the beautiful ending
of this story is that though Peter fails his mentor, the mentor graciously
restores him and helps him go on to be what God intended him to be. So look for
gracious men and women to be your mentors, ones that won’t give up on you when
you fall, but will help you up and onward. Your mentors, if they’re mature,
should be able to see your sincerity, despite your weaknesses, but it’s up to
you to go back to them if you fall, like Peter did, with blessed results.
7. Paul and Timothy. The last mentorship
I’d like to note is the one between Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, and
Timothy, whom he converted to Christ on his first missionary journey (Acts
13-14, 16). Paul has a special love for this man, who is much younger than him,
though very faithful in the Lord. In Phil. 2:22, he mentions he praises Timothy
for serving with him in the gospel “as a son with the father.” A good mentor
will not only father you spiritually, but impress upon you the importance of
reaching souls for Christ. A mentor who doesn’t love souls is not a good
mentor. The Bible says that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”
(1 Tim. 1:15), and if a mentor has the right spirit, s/he will have the same
objectives: to win the lost as well as build up the saints. That’s the balance
I see all through the apostle Paul’s life as a Christian. He loved the church
dearly, but he never stopped going after the lost, and neither should you, if
you want to be the right kind of mentor.
I hope that you’ve enjoyed this survey of some
important mentorships in the Bible. There’s a lot we can learn from these
relationships to help us choose the right mentors and be the right mentors.
What a huge, eternal difference it can make in our lives if we approach and
handle this relationship in the right way.
The first and foremost mentor you should have in
your life should be the Lord. But the Lord can’t be your mentor is you haven’t
first received him as your Saviour. He came into the world to save you by
paying for your sins on the cross and rising again from the grave. He now sits
at God’s right hand awaiting your decision to receive him or reject him. To
receive him is to have all of your sins forgiven, to become a member of his
family, and to live with him forever in heaven. To reject him is to pay for all
of your sins yourself in hell with the devil and his angels forever. The choice
is yours, and I pray that you’ll receive Christ before it’s too late.
