3.099 A Leadership Lesson from Pharaoh

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to Him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as Savory Salt.

Hello, my friends. It's a new day with new opportunities. Choose ye this day whom you will serve.

How many of you consider yourselves a leader? If you're driving, don't raise your hand, but the rest of you, raise it up. We all have leader times in our lives.

They may come for short times or they may be kind of a constant in our lives. For example, If any of you are parents, you're leaders. Whether you've taken that title or not, you are leaders.

If you have a role, a calling in church, you are leading somebody, regardless of that calling. I think this view of leadership is going to come into play here as we have an opportunity to learn from Pharaoh in his leadership. Now you might say how can we learn from Pharaoh with leadership He had a hard heart and he refused to listen to the Lord That therein is a lesson for us all We are reading this week Exodus 7 and we continue with our story with Moses and Pharaoh going back and forth All of the plagues, all of the destruction, all of the challenges the people of Egypt dealt with because of the decisions of their leader, the Pharaoh.

Let's get into our verse for today and then see what it means for us as leaders in our own lives. Our verse is Exodus chapter 10 verse 28. We get to a point at which Pharaoh has experienced all of these different plagues and challenges and he threatens Moses to get out of his presence.

This is what he says in verse 28. And Pharaoh said unto him, Get thee from me, take heed to thyself, see my face no more, for in that day thou seest my face, thou shalt die. We get Pharaoh to an ultimate stage here of threatening the life of Moses with all the things that are going on.

This is kind of the end point for the Lord when it comes to the plagues and he has one more plague in his pocket that is truly, truly saddening. But here the leadership lesson that keeps sticking in my mind as we look at this How many people had to suffer because of the decisions as Pharaoh the leader You see Pharaoh wasn just making decisions that affected him He was making decisions that affected the entire nation My friends you and I sit in leadership positions like that regularly We may not have the influence over entire nations but we certainly have influence over our families We have influence over our church over our neighbors over our friends As leaders, we hold influence and sway with all of them. And I think it would behoove all of us to consider the decisions we make in our lives and how they affect others around us.

I can remember a time early on when I was a leader very quick in my career as a teacher. The second year that I taught, I was asked to lead my team. For me, as a developing leader and a developing teacher at the time, I was very comfortable having lessons prepared through the night.

I could do lessons all the way until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning and then be prepared for class the next day. And I realized a little bit too late that for some of my team members, having those lessons prepared and brought in the morning of the lesson was not acceptable to them. Names for the Bible Book of Mormon Doctrine and Covenants Pearl of Great Price Names for the Bible Book of Mormon Doctrine and Covenants Pastor L Oaks Henry B Eyring Dieter F Oaks Henry B Eyring Lecture from the Bible Reflect into your decisions and the effects that they have on those that you lead.

As a parent, your decisions affect your children. As children, your decisions affect your parents, as well as your friends, perhaps even those at school. Each one of us fills a role as a leader and as such the sooner we can realize that as leaders our decisions affect others the better leaders we can be as we go forward.

That's a great lesson we can take from Pharaoh at a time when we typically look and say I don't want to learn anything from that guy. That's all for today my friends. You and I have come here for such a time as this.

Step forward in faith and let's be savory salt. We will be here tomorrow and we hope you are too.