T.E.A.M. Together Everyone Achieves More. And individually yielding to the Spirit is the secret.
In a book called Numbers, it shouldn’t surprise us to see some multiplication and division. Moses was exhausted. As he told the Lord, “I am not able to bear all these people alone, because the burden is too heavy for me” (Num 11:14). God’s solution was simple. If we multiply the workers, we will divide the burden. “Gather to Me seventy men of the elders of Israel” (v 16), said the Lord. Such qualified men should be obvious: “whom you know to be the elders of the people.” But for the work they were going to do, it wasn’t enough to be mature, capable, and recognizable. “I will take of the Spirit that is upon you and will put the same upon them” (v 17). This is similar to the Lord Jesus’ instructions to the disciples at the beginning of the Church Age: “And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father” (Acts 1:4). The One called “the Promise of the Father” was, of course, the Holy Spirit. These men were graduates of the best three-year Bible education in history, traveling with and learning from the One “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:3). But, said the Lord, don’t even think of leaving town without the Holy Spirit. Here we see the Lord’s wisdom in providing a plurality of leadership, both in Israel and the Church, but also providing unity through the work of the Spirit. God never intended one man to shoulder all the responsibilities of His people. Paul advised, “But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills. For…the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body” (1 Cor 12:11-12). Many members + one Spirit = one body!