Derek Prince - The Word And The Spirit Always Go Together
This is excerpt from: The Power Of Proclamation
I want to take an example now from Moses when God called him to go back and be the deliverer of Israel out of Egypt. You remember God appeared to him in the burning bush. Then God said to him in Exodus 4, Now I'm sending you back to deliver Israel. And Moses had lost all his self confidence which he had at the age of 40. At the age of 80 he had no confidence in himself. He said, Why me, Lord? I can't do it, I've got nothing. What could I do it with? And the Lord said to him: What have you got in your hand? Moses looked down and said, It's a rod, just like every shepherd in the Middle East carries. He didn't think there was anything particularly important about his rod. But the Lord said: Throw it on the ground. And when he did it became a snake. And Moses ran from his own rod. In other words, there was a potential in that rod he had in his hand which he had never anticipated or imagined. Then the Lord said: Pick it up by the tail, and everybody who deals with snakes knows you never pick a snake up by the tail. But Moses did.
I think he was trembling as he did it. And, it became a rod in his hand. And God said to him in effect: Now go with your rod, that's all you'll need. You can do the whole job with that one rod. And if you analyze the rest of that part of the book of Exodus the entire deliverance of Israel out of Egypt was achieved by that rod. Every time Moses wanted God to intervene he stretched out his rod and God intervened. And the result was, in a sense, that Moses wrested the rulership of Egypt out of Pharaoh and had it in his hand in his rod. And the last scene was the passing through the waters of the Red Sea. When the waters needed to be divided, Moses stretched out his rod the waters were divided. When the Egyptians were in the water pursuing them, Moses stretched out his rod. The waters returned and destroyed the Egyptians. So, the only instrument he needed for the entire task which God had called him to was that one shepherd's rod which he didn't think had any significance when he first held it in his hand.
Now what I want to suggest to you if you're a Bible believing, committed Christian, you have a rod. Do you know what it is? It's your Bible. If you've got a Bible here I'd like you to hold it up. And I'd like you to say: This is my rod. Will you say that? My Bible is my rod. With it I can do everything God tells me to do. All right, you may put your Bible down. Now, the first thing that we need to realize from the Scriptures is the power of God's Word. We need to realize that this is a supernatural book. Just like Moses' rod, it contains power which isn't obvious when you first look at it. But when you begin to understand it, its power actually is limitless. I'll just give you a few Scriptures revealing the power of the Word of God. Psalm 33 verse 6: By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth. But the Hebrew word translated breath is the normal word for spirit. Ruach.
So all creation took place through two agents: the Word of God and the Spirit of God. Everything that exists or has ever existed or will ever exist owes its origin to just two forces: The Word and the Spirit of God working together. You see, the Word must work with the Spirit. I think that's maybe why the psalmist translated it breath and not spirit. Perhaps you've ever studied this. But I had to learn elementary phonetics when I was teaching English as a second language to African students. I discovered some interesting things about words. If you think of the tremendous power of words and yet how simple they are. How do you speak? You release breath out of your lungs, it passes through your mouth and your nose and the various things that it's subjected to in your mouth and nose determine the word that comes out. But the basic truth is you cannot speak without breathing. You have to breathe to speak. And this is a picture of God. Every time God speaks His breath goes with His word. His breath is His Spirit. So the Word and the Spirit of God always go together. The Word and the Spirit of God brought the universe into being. And they sustain the universe in being. There's a very powerful Scripture in 2 Peter 3 which tells us three things: That the Word creates, the Word maintains and the Word abolishes. 2 Peter chapter
3, beginning in verse 5: By the word of God the heavens were of old and the earth standing out of water and in the water by which word the world that then existed, perished being flooded with water. But the heavens and the earth which now exist are kept in store by the same word reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. So by the Word of God the heavens, the earth were brought into being. By the Word of God they are maintained in being. And by the Word of God when God's time comes, they will pass away. So the Word of God creates, maintains and abolishes. I think sometimes when I look at the mess that man is making of this planet I'm glad that the Word of God can abolish that mess one day. The Word of God brought it into being, the Word of God keeps it in being and the Word of God will cause it to pass out of being. All that God does by His Word.
Now a Scripture that Ruth and I quoted. We might as well quote it again. Isaiah 55:10-11 points this out which I've just explained - that the Word must come out of God's mouth. Otherwise, it's not effective. So there we are, how do we begin? For as the rain. Thank you. If I'm preaching I always find it hard to remember . For as the rain comes down and the snow from heaven and do not return there but water the earth and make it bring forth and bud that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater. So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish what I please and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. Amen. Now notice God says my word out of my mouth. In other words my word when it's propelled by my breath. Now in 2 Corinthians 3:6 Paul says: The letter kills. In other words, the bare word without the breath doesn't bring life. It has to be the Word and the Spirit together. So you can get some dry sermon which is all Scripture but has no breath in it and it doesn't give life, it gives death. See? The two must operate together. The Word and the Spirit.