TD Jakes - Worship In The Wilderness - Part 2
Moses leads the Israelites to the Red Sea where, gripped by fear, they foolishly complain about dying there instead of in Egypt, but God parts the waters to bring them to a divine encounter, teaching that deliverance from Pharaoh is for worship and reconciliation with Him, not just escape, urging us to stop running from past shadows and run toward God.
Moses is leading them forward, almost against their will, because while he is trying to get them out from under Pharaoh, when they heard Pharaoh's army coming up behind them, their emotions took over their intelligence. Have you ever had your emotions take over your intelligence?
So out of their emotions affecting their intelligence, their reasoning is so flawed that they start arguing over where they are going to die. Were there no graves in Egypt? Why did you bring us into the wilderness to die? This whole conversation is stupid.
Emotional Fear Over Logic
It is like saying, I do not want to die in the bedroom, I want to die in the living room. Why did you bring me in the living room? I wanted to die in the middle. Dead does not make any difference. It does not make any difference at all.
You do not get in the presence of God and talk stupid. God is intelligent. Moses immediately, they did not say anything about being afraid, they just gave a stupid conversation, and Moses said, be not afraid.
Discerning the Why Behind Words
Do we attack people that we ought to discern? Are we so focused on what they say that we do not think about why they said it? Moses does not wrestle with the what, because the what was ignorant. He goes right to the why. He says do not be afraid.
See, they are dealing with somebody they had seen commit atrocities, bury people alive, split them in two. Of course they were scared. They had not seen God's hand for 400 years. He had worked around them but He had not worked in them.
God's Purpose: Worship in the Wilderness
He said, "Let My people go that they may worship Me in the wilderness." So the word we call Tabernacle in the Hebrew is Ohel Moed, it is a tent of meeting. God said, "I am taking him on a date so they can find out who their husband is."
Everything else I did for them: the locusts, the lice, the boils, the water turning into blood, the afflictions attacking the animals, all the ten of the plagues I did for them. But having God doing things for you is different from having God doing things in you.
Shut Up and Stand Still
Now, here is where you are at, they have come down to the Red Sea and they think they are going to die. And Moses says, shut up. I am paraphrasing, I like shut up. I was raised off shut up. You just shut your mouth, you sound stupid.
See, we do not have the kind of faith today that can take an insult. That is why Pharaoh keeps eating you up, because until you can endure correction, you are not a son.
He says, "Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. For the Egyptians that you see today, you shall see them no more." He did not say they would not have to fight again, they had to fight all kinds of people, but what you worried about, you are not going to see him no more.
Fighting Images and Shadows
Settle this in your mind. In spite of the hoofprints that you hear through your senses coming up behind you and the snorting of the horse's hot breath and the images that have been in your head for 400 years.
It is like the image I had when I went down to the power company years ago and asked them to keep the power on and the woman said she was going to cut it off anyway. I saw an image of me pushing a Go Kart and me and my wife and my two kids was going to be homeless.
David said, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death." Anybody ever been up all night over an image? It has not even happened yet, but it is an image?
You Will Not Die Here
Anybody still running from a ghost, something somebody said about you in the first grade? This is why I want to speak to your spirit and to your soul. The Holy Ghost said, "You will not die here."
I want you to take that and make it yours, and I want you to hear your voice say, "I will not die here. This will not kill me. It may hurt me but it will not kill me." Look at somebody and say, "I will not."
They could not die at the Red Sea because they had a rendezvous scheduled with God, and God could not allow the Red Sea to restrict the meeting. He says, "Let My people go that they may worship Me in the wilderness."
True Reconciliation with God First
The Lord said to me stop worrying about reconciliation in between races, stop worrying about reconciliation between generations, stop worrying about reconciliation between genders. You will never be able to negotiate reconciliation in any of these areas.
The problem in the reconciliation is not between people or genders or generations, the problem is reconciliation with Me. If you reconcile with Me, then reconciliation with each other is not only possible, it is a necessity because I am only one God.
Your marriage would get better if both of y'all really got saved. What is wrong with your kids is not that they do not obey you, it is that they do not obey God.
Parting the Sea for Access
So in order to give you access to Him, He parted the Red Sea because the Red Sea was standing in between the people getting to Him. He could have killed Pharaoh and his army with a heart attack. He opened up a way.
He laid the foundation and opened up the way, what more could He do? When we got ready to chase a demon out of a room, "What more could He do?"
Your Unique Path
He brought them across on dry ground. And Pharaoh tried to follow them. Nobody can follow you through a way that God made for you. What God has for you is for you, and all of your imitators and spectators and the haters trying to get through the door that God opened up for you are going to drown.
They were trying to get away from Pharaoh more than they were trying to get to God. At what point do we stop running from and start running to?
Dying in the Wilderness
They said, "Were there no graves in Egypt? Why did you bring us out into the wilderness to die?" They did die in the wilderness. The question was not wrong. They did not die at the Red Sea, but they did die in the wilderness.
What about me needs to die for me to get to the promised land? Sometimes God puts you in the wilderness to kill the thing that is stopping you from getting to the promised land.
Running to God, Not from Shadows
The first generation died in the wilderness, not having faith mixed with the Word that they heard, because their motives were wrong. They were running from, not to.
God will kill your Pharaoh to check your motive. And once Pharaoh was dead, they wandered for 40 years because their motive was still running from and they did not ever transition to running to.
Encounter Over Everything Else
You cannot have a relationship until you have an encounter with God. None of your degrees, none of your education, none of your hooping, none of your changing keys mean nothing if it does not bring me into an encounter with God.
I do not want them to have an encounter with you. I do not want them to have an encounter with the band or the praise team or your education or your intellect. I am the one who brought you through.
I am a jealous God. I am jealous that I brought you out, and you fall in love with other people. I want you to miss Me, not deacon you, not elder you. I want you crawling to this altar, begging Me for My presence.