Chain of Command

So Moses came and called the elders of the people, and set before them all these words which the LORD had commanded him.  Exodus 19:7  NASB

Set before them – Until the revolution of the “new,” no one wanted to embrace a way of life that did not have a long legacy of success.  In fact, our preoccupation with the latest and the greatest has never been a high priority in human history.  Most cultures embrace traditional ways of doing things because there is security and certainty in what has worked for a long time.  This was absolutely the case in the Roman first century.  A “new” religion could not survive because no one trusted an untested practice when the gods were concerned.  This is one of the reasons that Christianity needed to claim the Tanakh as its foundation.

As a result of the need for longevity, most religious systems employ some kind of chain of authority, something that passes the message from one generation to the next regardless of the requirement for subtle modifications.  There must be a chain of command if the religion is going to be more than someone’s new idea.  Judaism points to the chain established by Moses.  Moses calls the elders, the elders pass the message to the sages, the sages to the rabbis and today that chain of authorized interpretation is still resident in rabbinic teaching.  History births application through haggadah.

When Christianity was invented in the second century, it also needed to establish its legitimate heritage and authorized chain of command.  Therefore, the early Church fathers paralleled the line of Jewish authority.  From Jesus to the disciples, from the disciples to the bishops, from the bishops to the people.  Of course, Peter as the first pope added enormous support to this chain (Paul fits in there somewhere too).  After Constantine the hierarchy of religious authority was well established.  Judaism had its chain, so did Christianity.

Then came Luther.  Ah, you think Luther undid all this chain of authority nonsense?  Not a chance!  Any outside observer will notice that Jews, Catholics and Protestants all have chains of authority.  Those of us who thought we lived by the five solas are just as much foot soldiers in the Protestant chain of command as any Roman Catholic parishioner.  We just have different titles for our officers.  Now they come with Ph.D., Reverend, pastor, D. Min., or celebrity author, TV evangelist titles.  Some still call themselves “bishop.”  Our chain of authority begins with Luther or Calvin, extends through the famous missionaries of the church and arrives at our doorstep as the local pastor whose interpretation of Scripture usually goes unchecked.  Calvin’s Institutes are the oral Torah of Protestants.  Piper, Lucado and Montgomery are not far behind.  We believe what we are told, not what we learn ourselves.  In fact, I would venture to say that most Christians don’t read the Bible and really have no idea what it actually says.  But they know what the preacher says.  They know the latest book from Beth Moore.  We live in a world of three testaments:  the old, the new and the oral testament—the content of the last sermon we heard.  And the most important one is the oral one.  We don’t really need to study much of anything.  We just need to go to church and let the professionals tell us what the Bible says.  I can’t imagine how disturbing this is to Paul who commands us to study in order to be approved.

The passage in Exodus tells us that Moses set the mitzvot of YHWH before the elders.  The words are yasem lifnehem.  The verb, sum or sim, has at least six meanings, everything from putting something in place to assigning something to someone.  In this case, the meanings of appointing someone and assigning something to someone overlap.  Moses does not simply recite the commandments to the elders.  He assigns the commandments to the elders and appoints them to carry them out.  He designates the elders as teachers of the people.  He sets them aside for this purpose.  This is chain of command, something Moses learned from Jethro.

Does that mean we must all be under the authority of someone assigned by God?  I don’t think so.  Moses assigned these men to teach what God said, not to interpret or embellish, not to add to or take away from.  The authority always rests in the words of YHWH, not in the men who are assigned to disperse the message.  We are to listen to the author, not the messenger.  Not distinguishing the two causes chaos.  Worse yet, those who think they should be listened to because they have been authorized are missing the entire point of a chain of command.  The biblical chain of command is the obligation of a servant, not the right of a master. 

Topical Index:  chain of command, authority, haggadah, hierarchy, set before, sum, Exodus 19:7