The Whitworthian

Issue date: 10/9/07 Last Updated: 10/12/07

In Thursday's chapel service in the Seeley G. Mudd Chapel, Pastor Peter Barnes of the First Presbyterian Church in Boulder, Colo. said God always chooses the least likely people for leadership. He based his sermon on Exodus 3:1-10 and 4:1-5, the story of Moses and the burning bush.

Barnes' three main points were what we have can be used by God, what we yield can be transformed by God and what we receive from God can truly work miracles.

"God does not need the impressive or the powerful stuff to do His work," Barnes said, "There are no throw-aways in God's economy."

Barnes talked about how God used Moses' ordinary, plain staff to do miracles: He told Moses to throw his staff down and it became a snake, then it turned back to a staff again when God told him to take it by the tail. From then on, God had Moses use the same staff to do all His miracles.

Barnes also talked about how many movies portray Moses as an intellect with an Elizabethan English accent, but more likely, he said, Moses would have talked with a hillbilly drawl. He said Moses was not necessarily an intelligent, high-class person.

Barnes quoted I Corinthians 1:27, "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong."

We may think we have nothing to give God, Barnes said, but what we have can be used by God.

Bringing up his second point, Barnes said God didn't transform Moses' staff until Moses yielded it to Him. If he did not yield it, he would not have experienced God's transformation of his staff, and in his life.

"God calls us to give up the stuff we cling to too much," Barnes said.

He said Moses' staff was important to him, because it was a symbol of who he was: namely, a shepherd.

"Some things get worse before they get better," Barnes said, referring to Moses' fear of the snake that his staff turned into. He said when God works in our lives, we have to trust God to make things better, even if they get worse at the beginning.

Barnes talked more about Moses' staff in his third point. He said that once Moses did what the Lord told him to, overcame his fear and grabbed the snake by the tail, "Moses' staff" became "God's rod," and God used it to do all His miracles, from turning the Nile into blood to parting the Red Sea.

He said when we yield to God we see the miracles He does in the world.

"It happened to Moses, it can happen to you," he said.

 

Contact Sam Gregory at sam.gregory@whitworthian.com.

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