TD Jakes - Praising God Produces Power
Now you must understand that Egypt was the America of its day; it was the superpower of its era. It stood head and shoulders above any other kingdom of its time and has gone down in history as the preeminent government power of its age. We are still worshiping, taking pictures, studying, and observing the magnitude of the brilliance of the Kingdom of Ede. We’re still studying their pyramids, which are still standing thousands of years later. Their architectural designs are still being examined; their craftsmanship was renowned throughout the earth.
Egypt was the superpower of its era. Pharaoh was the kind of leader that you could not have an international summit without including the Pharaoh of Egypt, for Egypt was a superpower. You must understand that these people were not dealing with some jack-leg upstart, Johnny-come-lately individual who was an egotistical maniac. Pharaoh was a force to be reckoned with; he decided whether men lived or died. He made a decision, and you couldn’t catch your breath—he made a decision, and armies were destroyed, women were violated. He made a decision, and entire villages were set on fire; he was not to be trifled with. That is why Moses ran and spent 40 years in exile, for Pharaoh was not to be fooled. It is that kind of power that was chasing a group of slaves to the riverbank.
Can you imagine the kind of fear they felt when they heard Pharaoh’s hoofbeats coming behind them? He didn’t just use any chariots; he selected 600 chosen chariots, the fastest in his fleet, the mightiest of his army, the most skilled warriors. He had 600 men chasing a bunch of farmers down to the Red Sea, and if God didn’t create a way, they would have been totally destroyed. I feel the Holy Spirit saying right now that there is someone watching me who is in a predicament where, if God doesn’t make a way, you are going to be completely destroyed. Man can’t help you, friends can’t help you, neighbors can’t help you, and your uncles can’t help you. You are in a crisis-mode situation, and whatever it is that is approaching from behind you threatens to annihilate you completely.
That is why God has you watching this message right now because if God is for you, He is more than the world against you, and He is about to pull you out. If you miss the rest of the message, this is your jump-off point; you could dance right here because God is about to snatch you out of your worst nightmare, your deepest fear, your worst anxiety. God is about to pull you out! Yes, when God gets ready to move, He will move anything out of the way. I know you hear the hoofprints, and I know you feel the threat because the enemy always threatens before he destroys; he’s a terrorist. He wants you to be fearful, frightened, and afraid. It’s not as if this was a sneak attack; they could hear trouble coming to terrorize them. Their emotions were frozen; their will was paralyzed.
They were so distraught that they started murmuring and complaining against God and Moses. They wanted to go back into Egypt, back into bondage, back into rape, back into slavery. Anytime you want bad to be better than good, you’re afraid. I want to talk to people who are so afraid that you chose bad over good. You chose wrong over right; you chose to stay in a house full of violence rather than get out on your own. But this is the day of your liberation. This is the day of your emancipation. This is the day that you are set free. And the Bible says that God used what was in His hand against what Pharaoh had in his hand. Pharaoh had 600 chosen chariots, skilled warriors; God had water and wind.
The Bible said He spoke to the wind, and the wind blew the water back for miles and miles. Then He told Moses, «Not only will I bring you out, but I will bring you out comfortably.» See, the Red Sea experience is where God teaches Israel about separation. So point one is God will separate you at the Red Sea. He says, «I am going to teach you separation. I am the God of separation. I separated day from night; I separated light from dark; I separated water from ground. I separated the firmaments that were above the water from those beneath the water. I am the God of separation. So you don’t have to be afraid of what’s trying to overtake you because I’m the God of separation. I will put a barrier between you and it, and I will set you apart because you’re mine. I am the God of separation.»
Somebody right now needs to hear that God is the God of separation. God uses water to teach His people that He will separate you by the water. The Bible says that they stepped down into the dry seabed of the Red Sea, and there they walked through on dry ground. Because when God brings you out, He’ll place you in an environment so good that you don’t even have to get muddy. Later on, in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul will exegete this text and tell us that what we call a Red Sea deliverance, God calls baptism, for he said, «Did God not lead the children of Israel through Moses in the cloud and in the sea?» I didn’t realize I was at a baptism service; I thought I was coming out of a fire escape. But God says, «No, this is not just an escape. This is a baptism.»
I had to baptize them because they went into the water as slaves and came out of the water as sons. I had to baptize them to draw a line of demarcation between how they defined themselves then and how they define themselves now, which is what baptism is for. For as many of us as have been baptized into Jesus Christ have been baptized into His death, that likewise, we may also be in the likeness of His resurrection. We went down into His death; we come up into His life. They went down so that who they were—the ones the enemy was chasing—could be pronounced dead. We died in the Red Sea.
All of your oppressors died in the Red Sea; nothing came out of the water but sons. But when Pharaoh got ready to step into the way that God had made for His people, instead of it being a path for the wicked to walk through as well, when the wicked stepped down into the water, God told the wind to go back, and the waves collapsed, drowning them. I know He is the master of the winds and the waves because, in the New Testament, when the disciples were crossing over on a ship, they woke Jesus up with sleep in His eyes. He stood on the bow of the ship and spoke to the same elements. He said, «Peace, be still,» and the Bible notes that the winds and waves obeyed Him. That is the same wind and waves that obeyed Him in the book of Exodus when He spoke to the wind and said, «No more.»
It stopped blowing back, the waves came in, and Pharaoh drowned. Now see this with me, if you will: 600 horse-drawn chariots are drowning in the Red Sea; the animals, the chariots, the swords, and the shields are floating in the water. Josephus, the historian, says that bodies were littered all along the banks of the Red Sea, rising up out of the water, dead. When the women started dancing, they were dancing on the dead! Ah, hallelujah! Who would have thought that God would deliver you so well that you would dance upon what was once oppressing you? I know it sounds foolish, but that is why I’m encouraging you to dance in the desert! That is why I’m urging you to dance in the desert, because while you’re dancing, your devils are dying; while you’re dancing, your diseases are dying; while you’re dancing, your fears are dying.
When Miriam grabbed her tambourine, she did not just do it out of joy; she did it as an act of warfare. When you praise God, He is magnified, and the more you praise Him, the more He will work for you. So when you see God bringing you out, don’t just stand there looking at Him; grab your tambourine and start dancing! If you praise Him in your house, if you praise Him in your living room. There they were dancing in the desert, little did they know that when those women started praising God, they would set off a catastrophic series of events with water. Remember when God told the woman, «If you believe on Me as the Scriptures have said, out of your belly will flow rivers of living water?»
Some things aren’t going to happen until you praise Him. Some things aren’t going to happen until you speak up. Some things are going to happen when you grab your tambourine in the middle of your desert and say, «I refuse to be depressed; I refuse to cry; I refuse to walk around this house looking sad. I’m going to grab my tambourine, and devil, I’m going to dance on top of your head! I’m going to dance!»
Give me some old-time Holy Ghost joy! I’m going to—I’m going to—I’m hands-fans-fantastic! Hold Him! Dance on Him! Plan for Him! Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance! And they all went down; not one of them escaped. The death count was 100; not one man lived to tell what happened because when God says, «I will destroy your enemy,» He means, «I will totally annihilate your enemy.» And I don’t care how big he is; God says, «I will bring him down.» And the Red Sea closed in—not just to destroy Pharaoh; it also closed in so that none of the lesser troops could follow in pursuit. That’s point number two. Point number three: it closed in so that when the children of Israel got into the middle of the desert, they could not go back. «Hey, tell your neighbor, I can’t go back; I’m too far in I can’t go back!»