TD Jakes - Worship In The Wilderness - Part 2
Moses is leading them forward, almost against their will, because while he's 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're going to die. Were there no graves in Egypt? Why did you bring us into the wilderness to die... this whole conversation is stupid. It's like saying, I don't wanna die in the bedroom, I wanna die in the living room.
Why did you bring me in the living room, I wanted to die in the middle, dead don't make no difference. It doesn't make any difference at all. You don't get in the presence of God and talk stupid. God is intelligent. Moses, immediately, they didn't say nothing about being afraid, they just gave a stupid conversation, and Moses said, be not afraid. Do we attack people that we ought to discern? Are we so focused on what they say, that we don't think about why they said it? Moses doesn't wrestle with the what, because the what was ignorant? He goes right to the why, he says don't be afraid. See, they're 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. 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'm 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. Now, here's where you're at, they have come down to the Red Sea and they think they're going to die. And Moses says, shut up, I'm paraphrasing, I like shut up. I was raised off shut up, y'all, my mother did not negotiate. If you, when as soon as you finish talking, "I would like to interject the thought," "You just shut your mouth, you sound stupid". And you know what I did? So what Moses is saying to them is shut up.
See, we don't have the kind of faith today that can take an insult. No, no, you will leave the church because somebody sat in your chair, you can't take a good "shut up". That's why Pharaoh keeps eating you up, because until you can endure correction, you're not a son, I don't care what your DNA says. 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 didn't say they wouldn't have to fight again, they had to fight all kinds of people, Philistines, Amalekites, all kinds of people, God, I wouldn't promise the Amanites, Hittites, Jebusites, but what you worried about, you ain't gonna never see him no more.
So settle this in your mind. I will not say this in a provocative way because it is too profound to be provocative, and because I want both your spirit and your soul to hear this. 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 of what Pharaoh can do to you and now he is after you, it's 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 gonna cut it off anyway. And I walked out of Appalachian Power Company crying, walking down the street because I saw an image of me pushing a Go Kart and me and my wife and my two kids was gonna be homeless. And sometimes it's an image you're fighting. I was crying and I couldn't stop. I was crying over an image.
David said, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the... there are... death has shadows". Anybody understand what I'm talking about? Anybody ever been up all night over an image? It hadn't even happened yet, but it's an image? Anybody in Elijah running from a threat from a Jezebel, that you ain't even seen, who said you would be dead in 24 hours, and the 24 hours has elapsed and you still running? Anybody still running from a ghost, something somebody said about you in the first grade, something your stepmother told you, something somebody said about something your big sister said about you and you still running from it?
This is why I wanna speak to your spirit and to your soul. And this is why you're logged on to this broadcast right now, this is why you cannot move because the Holy Ghost said, "You will not die here". Wait a minute, hold the music. I want you to take that and make it yours, and I want you to hear your voice say, "I will not die here. I will, I will not die here. I may die somewhere but I will not die here. This won't kill me. It may hurt me but it won't kill me. I will not..." look at somebody and say, "I will not". You ain't got enough fight in you, you ain't got enough. I want you to pull up that stuff you did when you found out your husband had a girlfriend and I want you to say it like you mean it, "I will not...die here..."
Now, I'm gonna show you this and I'm gonna close. They couldn't 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". The Lord said to me stop worrying about reconciliation in between races, stop worrying about that, stop worrying about that, stop worrying about that, 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. I said, Lord, I had all kind of reconciliation conferences, I did all kinds of stuff, I counseled couples for years, I did it, he said, "You'll never be able to reconcile it".
He said, "The problem in the reconciliation is not between people or genders or generations, the problem is reconciliation with me. If you reconcile the man and the woman, the young and the old, the black and the white, if they get reconciled with me, then reconciliation with each other is not only possible, it is a necessity because I am only one God. There's not a white god and a brown god and a black god and a female god and a male god and a young god and an old god, there's just one God. And if you're gonna get to me, you got to brush up against each other. Call them back to me".
Because if you call them back to me, they will bump into each other crawling after me. Watch this, your marriage would get better if both of y'all really got saved. What's wrong with your kids is not that they don't obey you, it's that they don't obey God. What's wrong with you is that you don't obey God. So how you gonna get them to obey God while they watch you not obey God? Oh, I'm coming for you, I'm coming for you, sit right there, sit right there, I'm coming for you. 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. All the horses could have dropped dead. He opened up a way.
You remember that song? He laid the foundation and opened up the way, what more could he do, they don't know what we talking about, but we know what we talking about. "If you our age, you know what more could he do? What more could he do? He laid the foundation, opened up the way. What more could he do? What more could he do? What more could he do? Church, he laid the foundation, opened up the way. What more could he do"? That's what we used to sing, y'all don't understand that. That's okay, that's okay. Y'all sing that other stuff, that's good, that's good. But when we got ready to chase a demon out of a room, "What more could he do"?
So, what are you doing? He laid the foundation and opened up the way and brought them across on dry ground. I ain't through yet. And Pharaoh tried to follow 'em. 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, that's trying to get through the door that God opened up for you, every last one of them gonna drown trying to be like you. They can wear your clothes, they can go to your barber, they can wear your tie, but they can't get through your way. When God has a way for you to go through, it's your way, and once you get through, he gonna shut it down. Watch this, he shut it down.
And here's the question and here's the problem. 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? The will was, or is currently, a time in your life that you gave your all, stepped out on faith, forsook the familiar, offered up the right sacrifices, and didn't see the reward you anticipated. The job that downsized, the marriage that failed, the child that died, the business that capsized, the church that just won't grow. No matter how successful we may be in many years, we are never exempt from the reflective reminiscent idea, what was that all about?
See, this is what started me with this text. See, they said, "Were there no graves in Egypt? Why did you bring us out into the wilderness to die"? What started me with the whole text was they did die in the wilderness. The question wasn't wrong. They didn't die at the Red Sea, but they did die in the wilderness. Wonder why God delivers us in one place and let's us die in another, that's one question, second question is "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's stopping you from getting to the promised land. New Testament reflection on it is the first generation died in the wilderness, not having faith, mixed with the Word that they heard, they died in the wilderness because their motives were wrong. They were running from, not to.
So God raises up another generation in the wilderness who has no Pharaoh to run from, because what God wants from us... help me, Jesus. What God wants from us and what God has challenged me to do is to create thirst in this room for him. I'm glad you go to this church, I'm glad you come out here, I'm glad you come out here when it's hot, when it's raining, when it's cold. I'm glad, I'm glad you're streaming online, I'm glad we got... normally, I don't know what the numbers are today, but somewhere between 70,000 and 80,000 people watching right now on stream, all over the world, I'm so glad. Stay tuned, glad to have you, good for you to be here, welcome to The Potter's House, that's wonderful.
But why are you watching? If you are just running from Pharaoh, 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, and they were so busy running from whatever horror that brought you to church, whatever nightmare, whatever atrocity, whatever abuse, whatever misfortune, whatever agony, whatever crisis that brought you to church, thank God, God used it to bring you here, but you can't spend your entire life running from a shadow.
What God wants for this church, it's for us to bring you into an encounter. You can't even have a relationship until you have an encounter with God. Then you can have a relationship, you can't have a relationship with somebody that you don't have an encounter with, and you're having an encounter with church and music and singing and dancing and preaching and hooping and hollering and jumping and information and intellect and education and all that's good and all that's wonderful, and we don't have to stop none of that, but none of that means a hill of beans... none of your degrees, none of your education, none of your hooping, none of your changing keys, none of your riffs, none of your runs mean nothing. They don't mean nothing.
Beyonce can riff, Aretha can riff, Michael Jackson can riff, I don't care about your riffing. If it doesn't bring me into an encounter with God, you're wasting your breath! You can teach me Hebrew, you can teach me Greek, you can teach me Swahili, but if you don't bring me to Jesus, why am I here? And God says:
I don't want them to have an encounter with you. I don't want them to have an encounter with the band. I don't want them to have an encounter with the praise team or the praise dancers. I don't just want them to have an encounter with your education, your intellect, your ability, or your decisiveness, or your revelations, or none of that, if it does not bring them into an encounter with me. I'm the one who sent the boils and the lice and the frogs to bring to your Pharaoh and make him turn you loose. I'm the one who laid the foundation and opened up a way and made it possible for you to get out of jail, for you to escape your turmoil, for your body to be healed, for you to survive breast cancer, I'm the one that brought you through the flood and the fire and the food stamps and the crisis and the trauma in your life. I'm the one that brought you from crack and cocaine, and drugs and addiction, I'm the one!
And I am a jealous God. I'm jealous that I brought you out, and you fall in love with other people. I'm jealous that I spent all my resources to deliver you and you still don't put me above everybody else. I'm jealous that I still play second fiddle around your false idols and your fake gods, and I want you to miss me. I want you to miss me, not deacon you, not elder you, not evangelist you, not bishop you. I want you, Freddie, on your knees crawling to this altar, begging me for my presence and my glory and my anointing, and I will meet you in your wilderness, and I will meet you in your despair, and I will meet you in your agony, and I will meet you in your loneliness, and I will meet you in your pain, and I will meet you in your confusion, when you stop entertaining and start begging me for me.
And I am a jealous God. I'm jealous that I brought you out, and you fall in love with other people. I'm jealous that I spent all my resources to deliver you and you still don't put me above everybody else. I'm jealous that I still play second fiddle around your false idols and your fake gods, and I want you to miss me. I want you to miss me, not deacon you, not elder you, not evangelist you, not bishop you. I want you, Freddie, on your knees crawling to this altar, begging me for my presence and my glory and my anointing, and I will meet you in your wilderness, and I will meet you in your despair, and I will meet you in your agony, and I will meet you in your loneliness, and I will meet you in your pain, and I will meet you in your confusion, when you stop entertaining and start begging me for me.