TD Jakes - The Fight with Frustration
In this powerful message, the preacher explores Moses' intense frustration after decades of leading a complaining people through the wilderness, culminating in his disobedience at the rock in Numbers 20—where instead of speaking to it as God commanded, he struck it in anger. This act disrupted the biblical typology of Christ as the Rock who is smitten only once, showing that frustration from deep investment can lead even great leaders to misdirect their pain and miss God's promise.
If you ever had a moment in your life where you have measured yourself and come up short. If you ever poured yourself into a company, individual, place, or thing and didn't get the results you expected. If you've ever been good to somebody who wasn't good back, this message is for you.
If you've ever given your best to somebody and they acted like it wasn't anything at all, then I don't know about next week or the week after that. But this one is for you. I'm going to talk about the fight with frustration. The fight with frustration.
Moses: Drawn Out by God
Let me take a moment and digress, if you will, and help you understand—for those who might not know—this is Moses, the pastor of the Old Testament. Bad. One day I'm going to do a leadership book just on Moses alone. I learned more on leadership from Moses. Absolutely amazing.
His name means drawn out. He was called out of the water. Called out of the water and calls a nation out, drawing them out. There's always with God a drawing out. All those who are spiritual say ooh.
God draws things out of you. Things you didn't know you had in you. He's always drawing them out of you. They don't always appear instantaneously, but over time God uses life to draw things out of you that you didn't even know you had.
Moses is a product of life experiences. It took a while. It only took a moment to draw the baby out of the water, but it took a while to draw the leader out of the baby.
If I say nothing else, I've preached with that alone. It only takes a moment to draw the baby out of the cradle, but it takes a while to draw a woman out of the baby. The baby comes out of the woman much quicker than the woman comes out of the baby.
She's in labor. The water breaks, the baby comes. You bring the baby out of the woman, and you spend the next 40 years trying to bring the woman out of the baby.
I suggest to you all life is a delivery room, constantly drawing out of you things you didn't know you had in you. He was raised to think like an Egyptian, but he had the blood of a Hebrew, and the fighting he saw in the street was the fighting he had on the inside.
You know what it is to have a fight on the inside while you deal with fights on the outside. It is easier to stop the fight on the outside than it is the one on the inside.
He kills a man and stops the fight on the outside, and for 40 years the would-be prince is now an outlaw running from what could be his heir.
The Wilderness Encounter and Return
Now he runs into the wilderness, not as a slave but as a runaway convict hiding from justice. And there he has an encounter with God. And God says, go to the very place that you're running from and tell Pharaoh I said, let my people go.
This is an amazing moment. Not only because he goes back to the very place he's running from and has to face what he's afraid of, something all by himself. But it's an amazing moment because he gets to become the leader of the people that he's connected to but never got to bond with.
It's like getting your family back. It's like making your cultural connection.
Moses comes back to Egypt to lead his people out of Egypt. There's a personal investment here. Now he's connected with his brothers. God, it's such a great idea to be in the midst with my people. It's a great idea connected with your culture. It's a wonderful thing.
Feels good in theory. Amazing. We eat the same thing. We like the same colors. We dance, move the same. Cool hanging out with my folks, especially when you never had it.
But sometimes things are better in your head than they are in real life. So he comes to his own people and he starts leading them out, and he has God's power and God's hand and God's might, and he's trying to lead them out of something bad into something good.
You would think they would like you because you want to be liked, because you're back. And he's leading them out from slavery. And they're fighting the one who is leading them out.
Dealing with a Complaining Generation
Moses has been dealing with these nincompoops for 120 years. Did I call them nincompoops? I don't know how to spell nincompoops, but it felt good to say that. He has been through hell and high water.
The kind of stuff you go through that only life can teach you. Life is a university. Mom was absolutely right. It's absolutely a university. Whether you want to take the classes or not, you have to take them every day. Life will teach you some stuff.
He's been up and down. He's been around and around and around. They've been through famines and pestilences and attacked by the Amalekites and been through hell and high water. And he's been through all of it.
A whole generation of them died in the wilderness because of their hateful murmuring and complaining ways. Now, he's leading their kids, and the fathers had eaten sour grapes, and the teeth of the children are set on edge.
What does that mean? It means the kids are nasty because the parents are nasty. The children have unbelief because the parents have unbelief. I'm saying they have inherited the attributes of their parents. Just as hateful as their daddies were.
And he's dealing with a generation of hatred. And he's old.
Can I speak a word on behalf of the A.A.R.P.? Children are for young people. You need energy to give children what they really need—to laugh and run and frolic after you get home from work. You need to be 20-something.
When you get like 60-something, your laughter box breaks in three minutes. Your patience runs out real quick. What you thought was cute when you were 20... There's a reason why old women shouldn't get pregnant. Don't even write me. I'm not reading it.
Moses is in that stage, and the people are in this stage. The difference is, their fathers died in the wilderness. But this is the chosen generation that will go over into the Promised Land.
The Moment of Frustration at the Rock
So God said to Moses, we'll do that thing that we did before. Only this time I want you to speak to the rock.
The people have been murmuring and complaining, and Moses comes to God—they're doing the things the parents did. You know, when you have first-generation trouble, you got patience and faith. But when it keeps coming up again and again and again.
They're doing the things their parents did. Murmuring and complaining. God said we'll do what we did before but modify it a little bit. Instead of smiting the rock like you did, speak to the rock, and the rock will bring forth water.
Moses said, cool, cool, cool.
You must understand, for this one little offense, Moses is blocked from getting to the Promised Land. He freaks out on the people and he has a meltdown. He lets them have it.
This is probably a bridged version of what he said to them. He kind of, you know, how you do when you're talking to your folks and your folks got on your nerves. And there's a language that we all communicate. Whatever he said, it was good. It was kind of, I got that out of me.
It resulted in God saying to Moses, you cannot go to the Promised Land now because you did not obey me.
The Rock as a Type of Christ
I want you to understand some things. First of all, I want you to understand Moses didn't realize God was using his life as an example of what he would later do with Christ.
That the rock is a type of Jesus Christ. This rock is Jesus. He's the one. The rock is a type of Christ.
And the reason God wanted him to smite it the first time but not smite it the second time is: when he smote it the first time, it typified Christ being crucified. And he wanted the illustration, the shadow in the Old Testament, to be that Christ was crucified once—he would not be crucified again.
So when Moses smites the rock again, he shatters the typology and messes up the metaphor, and God judges him because he says something about the rock that's not true. He said the rock had to be smitten twice to bring forth water when Christ only had to be crucified once.
Woman, if you knew who I was, you would ask me for water. Christ is the rock. If you drink of the water I have, you'll never thirst again. If you drink of your water, you'll thirst again.
If you believe on me, as the scripture said, out of your bellies shall flow rivers of living water. Christ is the rock. And he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. With his stripes we are healed. One time is enough.
Moses smote the rock a second time and broke the type. Shattered it. God got upset.
You know, for God to block Moses, it had to be serious. God said other prophets I have spoken to through dreams and visions, but with my servant Moses I speak face-to-face. Moses is my boy.
I give them dreams and visions. When I want to talk to Moses, what's going on there? Face-to-face.
Moses had done all kinds of stuff. He murdered a man, and God still used him. When Miriam spoke against Moses, God struck her with leprosy. Moses is God's dude.
You get in trouble saying something about Moses. Moses had gotten in God's face and argued with him, and God put up with it. They were arguing, and God put up with that.
What was it about this that was so horrible God said, for this you can't go into the kingdom? He said something about Christ that wasn't true. His actions said the cross was not enough. You'll be crucified twice.
It shattered the gospel message to the chosen generation. The former generation it didn't matter. But to the chosen generation—these are the generations who enter into something for which they did not labor.
These are the generations of people that step into something that's so divine and so holy that now the water is just flowing through the word, and we are cleansed by the washing of water by the word.
The word is all you need to get the water. No more bruisings are necessary. Now through the word the water flows.
Speaking to the Rock Today
It's in the word. The water you need is in the word. The thirst you have is quenched in the word. The healing is in the word.
You don't have to go through changes. You don't have to go through crucifixions and bleed for it and work for it and sweat for it. All you have to do is hear the word, and the water is in the word.
And the word is in the water, and the water is in the word, and it's flowing.
The Bible says the word increased and the disciples multiplied. Whenever there is good word, you don't have to beg people to come. The word will draw the people.
And he sent his word and it healed them, and the word flowed. And it flowed.
That's why God said speak to the rock. The price was paid. Speak to the rock.
Moses was so frustrated that he couldn't obey a simpler solution.
I'll tell you why he's frustrated. They were murmuring again. They were murmuring and complaining again. They were threatening to kill Moses. Moses was afraid for his life and at his wits' end and had been through it before, and he was frustrated.
Number one, he's frustrated with the people. And when you are frustrated with the people you love, the conflict is overwhelming.
It's one thing to be angry at people you don't know. But when you are angry with people you're in covenant with, the confusion is overwhelming because one thing says love them, the other thing says I want to choke you.
Now if you haven't lived long enough to have that conflict, I won't get an amen out of you. If you've lived long enough to have a miracle inside and quarreling with myself.
You see, the people were frustrated with the leader. And now the leader is frustrated with the people.
The people are frustrated with the leader because you have led us into trouble. And people will follow you as long as there's no trouble.
You're a good husband. You're a good man. You're a good daddy. Such a good daddy—until we get evicted.
People love leadership that leads you to convenience, but when the leadership gets kind of bad, murky, goes black, gets dark, they start murmuring against it.
They were following as long as he was cool. But they got hungry and they got dry, and now they're frustrated with the leader, and Moses goes to God, and God says speak to the rock.
But Moses was mad. I can't speak to this rock. I need to speak to these people because frustration needs to express itself. Frustration always needs to express itself. It can only hide so long, and then it will express itself.
He should have spoken to the rock. But because he had unresolved issues with the people, it boiled over, and now he speaks to the people when he should have been speaking to the rock.
Are you speaking to the people instead of speaking to the rock? Are you, daddy, carrying your frustration to the people you love when you ought to be speaking to the rock and feeding the people you love?
If he got it right, it would all be over. Speak to the rock, feed the people. Simple. Speak to the rock, feed the people.
Carry it to God, not to her. Take it to Jesus, not your kid. Go to Jesus and let the Spirit itself make groanings and moanings and grunts and screams and hollers—not her. Not the kids. Not your husband.
You don't tell him. Tell the rock.
No wonder the marriage is in trouble. You're venting to him. He's got too much mouth in the marriage. You got to take it to that third party. When you take it to the third party, you got too much peace in the marriage.
Now, the frustration with the leader leads to frustration with the people, and all of a sudden Moses is in a dilemma, and he has a right to be frustrated because frustration is a sign of investment.
You don't get frustrated in things you're not invested in. The stock market crashes, and if you don't have anything invested in it, you don't care.
Sarah could tell Abraham, put out Hagar and her child. It was easy for her to say put that girl out because she didn't have anything invested.
Abraham is moaning and groaning because he has investment. Wherever there is investment, there's frustration because investment creates expectation.