This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Misc. OT Sermons” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, June 12, 1977.

There are two things I want to say to you this morning, and I hope that I am able to say them to you briefly, and yet to the point. This is going to be a two-point message, not the traditional three-point. As a matter of fact, I don’t know when I last preached a three-point message.

I want to look first of all at Moses, this great call of Moses, and secondly we want to look at the revelation of God himself in this passage. Now we’re a generation that’s been weaned on Cecil B. DeMille and the movie The Ten Commandments, and the impression that we get from that film is that the education and the training that Moses received in Egypt was indispensable to his later ability to lead the children of God through the wilderness. Now, I don’t know how much overlap there was, and I don’t think it is very important from the Bible’s standpoint. You get the impression from the way the story is told in the Bible that those first forty years of Moses’ life when he was living in the courts of Pharaoh, being educated and trained possibly for a position of rulership and authority in that land, are relatively unimportant. And it’s not a matter of taking those 40 years and adding them to the 40 years which Moses lived in the wilderness of Midian, and saying that that gave us the complete man. It seems to be the point in the scriptures that the second 40 years, those years spent in the wilderness, contrast all that Moses received in Egypt. It’s as if in those forty years, Moses has to unlearn everything that he learned in Egypt, rather than simply adding to the experience of training for the court, training alone in the wilderness while shepherding a bunch of dumb sheep. Now, you see, Ed Hardesty’s an educated man. He even went to the same college I went to.

That’s all to the good, I think. But you see, it isn’t that education that has prepared or equips and hardesty for ministry in this church. It may be that Ed, being a very capable young man, could step into a political office in this community and do a very, very good job. But it isn’t Ed’s ability to move well in circles of this community that equips him for office in this church. Ed’s a good dresser. He’s very neat. But it isn’t the fact that Ed dresses well or carries himself well, or seems to get on in this world very well, that equips him for office in this church.

Ed presently is taking courses at the University of Pittsburgh in preparation for management in industry. But it isn’t those courses in management that equipped Ed to manage in this church. You can compare all of that with the riches of Egypt. What is necessary for Ed and any leader in the Church of Jesus Christ is a confrontation with the living God in whom resides all power. The impression that one receives in reading the story of Moses and his call is that after all of these eighty years, Moses is convinced of one thing.

He’s a weakling. He doesn’t have any strength to do the Lord’s work. He’s ill-equipped, and if it’s to be done and done by him, it must be done by God through him. It’s not a matter of him bringing all of his worldly wisdom and everything that the world has prepared him in to the office and saying thereby, you must listen to me because I’ve got all these degrees. Or I set coffers on its seat for the first time in its entire existence. It isn’t that which prepares any man for office or enables him to fulfill that office. It’s the fact that he has met God at the end of his strength and realizes and is able to demonstrate in his life in a way that’s convinced us that God is the one in whom all power resides. This is equipment that doesn’t come from the courts of Pharaoh, it comes from heaven. It’s not something that arises out of the ground, it’s something that comes down from above. That’s what fits men for us.

But there’s something else in this passage, and it is the revelation of God himself in a bush burning yet not consumed. Now what in the world is that symbol all about? the bush burning, yet not consume God in the midst speaking out of it.” This burning bush is a picture of God in his relationship to his people. And I would say in our day, as in the day of Moses, what the Church of Jesus Christ is in need of, especially As it pertains to leadership are men who, through the mediation of the Word, have been to Mount Horeb and seen precisely the same thing, and walked away understanding what they’ve seen. That doesn’t tell us what it means yet.

God in the midst of his people, that’s what the burning bush is all about. The bush burning, yet not consumed. The bush is the symbol of God’s people on fire because of the persecution and opposition of this world, much like the children of Israel in the land of Egypt presently, under the gun, being attacked. their cry going out to God. Yet God, in his promise, since he is the God of the covenant, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the midst and thereby assuring the people of God that though they’re on fire, they will not be consumed.

Though it’s a bad day, though things aren’t working out well, Though the church seems to be in decline, overall they aren’t from the community beating your doors down to get in. All of those things are in some way related to what that burning bush is all about.

We ourselves belong to a church that has been victimized for forty years in this country. Interesting. Interesting that for forty years Moses should be in the wilderness. We have been under the gun, and what we need in elders and in pastors are not men that can point us once more to the riches of Egypt and seduce us by that. Not at all.

What we need are men that have been to the mountain and seen the bush and understand the people of God as those who are under fire, and yet, because of the fact that God is in the midst, are not consumed. We need men who in the depressing times descend upon us, come upon us as they do with avalanche regularity, can give a reason for the hope that is in them. When things look hopeless, we need men who stand before us and proclaim to us the genuineness and the stability of our hope in God. That’s what we need. I believe that we have such a man ordained into the office this morning, and God grant us more. who are learning continually to put to death that complaint that arises out of their heart that becomes the impetus to direct their eyes back to Egypt longingly.

Rather men who have seen that vision and understood it clearly, at the most depressing times, able to stand among us and to point us to the indestructible hope that is ours in God. Now that hope’s indestructibility has been demonstrated to us positively in Jesus Christ, because if there ever was one who came under the gun, it was He. And yet you see, Jesus Christ was not consumed. On the third day, he rose again. And that is the substance of our hope.

Men who firmly have that implanted in their heart will leave the church as it has never been led before, from the pew, not from the pulpit, from the pew. And we will see things in the Church that we have never witnessed in its history. You and I both long for days like that.

And days like that will come again in God’s refreshing times when he will grant to us again men who stand with Moses on a mountain and witness the glory of God as even in that day it was revealed and pointed to Jesus Christ himself. Our Father, we ask you that we might not consider the riches of Egypt as that which equip us, but rather choose the riches of Christ and the riches of the glory of the kingdom instead. We ask you, Father, that we might see the bush burning and understand that though the people of God are oppressed and seem to be without hope, yet it is true that our God is in our midst, speaking. And we are refreshed by what he says, pointed in the right direction, gained confidence, even as we know what was said there on the Mount of Horror was so perfectly and completely and finely said in Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray that Ed Hardesty might be a man cut from the tree of Moses, and that he might lead with leech shields and myself, humbly, these people according to the vision. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen. Please prepare.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.