Why The Fire

So let's get our bibles out and wave them around, like we do around here, and make the devil mad and Jesus glad.

Let's say this together Say heavenly father, I am hungry for more, more of the word, more revelation, more illumination, so that I can know what is my purpose, that I can know the plan and the exact steps that I need to take, and I'll give you all the glory for the success when I overcome every difficulty in Jesus name.

And that's exactly what God wants.

He wants you to overcome.

I turn your bibles, please, tonight, to Exodus, chapter three.

I want to read some verses here involving Moses, and we'll start with verse one.

Now, moses kept the flock of Jethro, his father in law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the backside of the desert and he came to the mountain of God, even to Horab, and the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bush.

And he looked and behold, the bush burned with fire.

And yet the bush was not consumed.

And Moses said I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.

And when the Lord saw that, he turned aside to see, god called unto him out of the midst of the bush and said Moses, moses.

And he said here am I.

And he said draw not neither, but put off the shoes from your feet, for the place where on our stand is holy ground.

Moreover, he said I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.

And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.

And the Lord said I have surely seen the affliction of my people, which are in Egypt and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey, under the place of the Canaanite, the Hittites, the Amorites, the parasites, the high vites and the Jebusites.

And now, therefore, behold, the cry of the children is coming.

Now, therefore, behold, the cry of the children has come unto me, so he's repeating it.

And behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come unto me.

And I've seen the oppressors where with the Egyptians oppressed them.

So he doubled it doubled down on on what he had heard.

Verse 10,.

Come now, therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children out of Israel, out of Egypt.

And Moses said unto God, who am I, that I should go into Pharaoh and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?

And he said, certainly, I will be with thee and this shall be a token under thee that I have sent thee.

When thou has brought forth the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God upon this mountain.

And Moses said unto God behold, when I come into the children of Israel and shall say unto them the God of your fathers has sent me unto you, and they shall say to me what is his name, what shall I say unto them?

And God said unto Moses I am, that I am.

And he said Thou shalt say unto the children of Israel I am hath sent me unto you.

And God said, moreover, unto Moses, thou shalt thus say unto the children of Israel the Lord, god of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you and this is my name forever and this is my memorial unto all generations.

And so we see here that Moses turned aside to see the burning bush, and not that the burning bush alone was so unusual.

They had bushes that just would have combustible, they would have spontaneous combustion out in the desert.

But this bush was different.

It was not being consumed.

So he turned aside to see the fire.

That wouldn't consume the bush, the fire was burning.

And so tonight I wanted to just share a message, a simple message entitled and it's a question, why the fire?

Why the fire?

And of course, you know, moses is an awesome prophet, moses is a type of Christ, he's the head of the church in the wilderness.

Remember, in Acts, chapter seven, stephen said that the children of Israel were the church in the wilderness.

So here, the head of the church in the wilderness, type of Christ, and he was called from the backside of the desert.

And it took him, you know, and he's almost 40 years there, keeping the you know, the sheep of Jethro, his father-in-law.

And why was he called?

He was called because of the cries of Israel.

God said I've come down, I've heard their cries, I've seen their sorrows and I've come down to deliver them and you're going to be the instrument of deliverance.

And actually we see from the Bible that when Moses was 40 years old it came into his heart that he was the deliverer of Israel.

So you know it was a long delay been 40 years old, 80 years old.

You see, god, the gifts and callings of God are without repentance.

God doesn't forget when he calls.

Sometimes we're called when we're children and we don't really know what we're called for.

And you know this message has a lot to do with that.

Why the fire?

And so so Moses first responded to the fire and in the fire he found the why.

And you know, today we're seeing suffering, sin, crying, dying humanity.

They're crying out.

They don't even know what they want, they don't even know who they need, they don't even know God, they don't even know what God is, the one.

That's that God shaped vacuum on the inside of them.

People lost in sin, lost in all kind of depravity, lost in all kinds of mess, and they're crying and they need answers.

You know we have to respond.

And so why the fire?

You know Bible says in Romans 20, 27 that the spirit of man is the candle of Lord and it lights all the inward parts of the belly.

So you know, we have the Holy Ghost, which is which is a fire, the fire of God.

When we got born again, we've got the fire of God living on the inside of us.

In 2 Timothy 1, 6, paul encouraged Timothy.

He said you know, stir up the gift of God that's in you.

You know, and you read in the Amplified.

It says you know, stir the embers, fan the flames.

If there's ever a chance or a time when the church needs to burn with the fire of God, it's right now.

We need to let the fire of God illuminate us to some things in this generation.

It's been a long time it's been 2,000 years since the Savior came and he executed the plan of redemption and yet some people just almost seem like it's too late.

They think, oh, it's just too bad, it's too evil, there's nothing I can do.

I'm sure that a lot of doubts went through Moses' mind.

He goes on and says a lot of his doubts to God.

God just wouldn't be denied.

God, out of the fire, gave him the why, why the fire?

And so we've got three things.

He was illuminated and in the fire Moses understood three things.

He understood his purpose, he understood the plan that God had for him and he understood the God's power that he was going to wield in his name.

You see, god gave him power of attorney to use his power and use his name, and so we have much the same today.

So let's look at it here.

And I know it's Wednesday night, I won't keep you a long time, but I want to seed you with this, because the church needs to rise up.

The church needs to wake up, the church needs to be on fire, and so the first thing that I see in the fire, moses understood his purpose.

And what was that?

To deliver Israel from Egypt and into the promised land.

Now, you know, shepherding jet-throwed sheep.

That was not part of the plan.

That's what he'd been doing for a long, long time He'd been doing.

He'd been taking care of the sheep 40 years.

He knew how to talk sheep, he knew how to talk goats.

He couldn't hardly talk to people because he did wasn't around people.

He's stammered and stuttered, and you got to think about this man.

He was a man of letters.

He was a highly educated man in science and the arts.

I mean, he, that's how he was brought up.

He was brought up as part of the Pharaoh's royal family and, and yet he had lost a lot of these things.

But you know, god started up.

God, you know God illuminated him and it was so illuminated that that Moses from this point I Kept on through failure, through disappointment.

You know he didn't make all the right decisions, he didn't do everything just right, but he went on through failure, through disappointment, even betrayal.

Nothing stopped Moses, nothing should stop us.

And what's our purpose?

Well, our purpose is to preach the gospel to every creature.

And Somebody said, oh, I'm not called to preach what we're all called to share truth.

And preach means to declare.

It doesn't mean necessarily a pulpit, it doesn't mean, you know, opening a Bible and having a message.

It just means sharing truth with people declaring the truth.

Some people just need the truth declared under them, they don't need it debated, you know.

You just need to tell people the truth.

They're listening to lies day and night right now.

And so you know the church.

If we're members individually of the church, the church is the.

The purpose of the church is to preach the gospel to every creature.

And, and you know, I think about that fire.

Let's hold our place in Exodus.

Go back to Acts 26.

This is when Paul Was held prisoner and he was sharing his testimony with a grippa, king of grippa, and he was talking about how he had had an encounter with Jesus.

And he said here In verse 15, and I said who art thou, lord?

And he said I'm Jesus, whom thou persecuted.

See, he's talking about when he got saved, but rise and stand upon your feet and thrive appeared under thee for this purpose To make you a minister and a witness.

Both of these things which you have seen in those things in which I will appear under the Delivering thee from the people and from the Gentiles unto whom I now send thee to open their eyes and to turn them from darkness To light and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among them, which are sanctified by faith that is in me.

So what?

What was this?

What was this?

A result of a blinding light, brighter than the Sun, and and physically, saul or Paul lost his sight temporarily until, you know, somebody came and prayed for him a couple of days later, and so you know, we, we've had this encounter.

Whether you've had an encounter that blinded you or not, the Holy Ghost has come to you.

He's come as a fire and he's revealing his purpose and the same fire that opened our eyes and turned us from darkness to light, from power of Satan unto God.

The same fire can do that for Other people when we start speaking to them.

You know I think about on the road to Emmaus.

Jesus was sharing with the two men on that road, and they were.

And he started expounding about himself and starting with the, the law and the law and the prophets.

And they said later, when he disappeared from from their sight, they said did not our hearts burn within us when he shared with us?

By the way, see, I've had people say man, you know, my heart's on fire because of what you're saying.

See, the fire of God is on every believer and we just need to open our mouth and let that fire burn for other people and that fires an illumination as things that they're gonna see that they never would see without the fire.

Praise God, all right.

The second thing that he saw after his purpose and you know this is the thing he already knew his purpose, he just wasn't doing it, so that fire kind of got him reestablished in that.

Hey, it doesn't do any good.

You know I'm not gonna let you get by with doing this sheep thing.

You've done that for too long.

This is what I want you to do right now, starting right now.

There's a need right now, and if there's not a need right now, I don't know when there ever will be a need.

Right now in America, you know, I'm glad for foreign missions.

We're very big in that.

But God a few years ago said I want you to turn your attention on your nation, america.

Its hair is on fire.

He told me that in 2016.

Your nation's hair is on fire.

That's how he put it to me.

And so I did.

I started paying a whole lot more attention to things here.

I always had paid a lot of attention to politics and the things like that, but boy, I've doubled down on it, and we need to share truth with people.

All right.

The second thing that the fire of God did is it illuminated his plan.

God had a plan specifically for Moses and he said this is how you're gonna do it.

Who am I?

How am I gonna do this?

He said just tell the elders of Israel, tell Pharaoh, let him go, and he'll say no, and I'll smite Egypt until he does.

Let him go, and you tell.

And when you're, and when the elders of Israel.

Doubt you, just say I am sent me and so he just didn't pay much attention to all of his protestations and he wants us to have something to say.

The devil wants to stop speaking.

The Democrat party wants you to stop speaking.

It doesn't want you to go to the school board meetings and raise any objections.

It doesn't want you to say anything.

It doesn't want you to talk about Jesus.

It doesn't want you listen.

They want to steal the freedom of speech and they only want one kind of speech.

They're kind of disgusting.

That's all they want.

Are you with me now?

No, we have something to say.

God sent us, god gave us a message, amen, and we need to preach it.

When I say preach again, I'm not trying to be kind of make you into a preacher per se, but one who declares things.

We need to declare things.

Rise up and tell what the truth is.

I like to put it this way we need to be participators in the kingdom, not just observers, not just somebody comes to church oh yeah, they're doing that.

Oh yeah, no, it's a participation deal, we're all participating.

You know, I think about the guy that was at JFK back in the 60s, came to NASA and he was the one that kind of got started with NASA and declared that man was going to be on the moon in that decade.

And sure enough it was.

This was 1961 or two and by 1969 we had a man on the moon.

He set the course, he set the thing in motion and it's a big, big project.

You've got all these engineers, you've got all these scientists, you've got astronauts, you've got all these people, you've got contractors, you've got all of these things.

And he's there at NASA.

And so he points out the janitor.

He said that janitor, right there, sir, come on up.

What do you do around here?

Well, I sweep the floors.

You've got just as much to do with our success as anybody in this room.

You see, we all have a part in the plan, no matter how tiny it is.

I mean, you know, I remember when I first started serving God, I'd just gotten saved and I started.

I had two places.

I went, I went to Lakewood Church and sat under Brother Osteen and I just won a thousand.

You know, one man glad sitting back there and just two dots and a big, massive sanctuary of 5,000 people.

I mean, nobody knew me, nobody knew who I was.

God knew me, but that was it.

I wasn't even involved, I just went to church there.

But the second place I went was full gospel businessmen's fellowship international how do you like that a lot?

Big, long name FGM, fgbmfi.

And so they had Saturday night meetings, testimony meetings in Conroe.

So I started going once a month and after I'd been two or three times, the president of the chapter said John, would you mind helping me?

You know, put this sign up on the wall.

I said, well, sure, that's no problem, mind getting up on the ladder, hold it up here and I get on this ladder.

And so the two of us would get up there.

We had little pins and we pinned it into the top of the ceiling, you know.

So it would a banner full gospel businessmen's fellowship.

I mean, that's where I started and I had my own business.

I owned my own business, I was a businessman and I wasn't too big, you know, to do some simple task.

You know I started at the beginning.

Sometimes that's where we start.

Look at Moses.

He started at the.

He spent 40 years doing much of nothing, but God selected him.

Are you with me now?

So we're going to proclaim the truth and leave the results to God.

He's the one that's going to back us up, he's the one that's going to perform.

We do the believing, he does the performing.

So we discover, or we're illuminated with our purpose and our and the plan.

Each one of us has a unique plan.

It's very similar, one is similar to another, but many times there's, there's, you're, we're all individuals and he, he has us flow together.

And then the last thing that he had to be illuminated on was the power, god's power, that was actually going to be released through Moses.

Now, that was something that he had to wrap his head around, and and so he said look, they're not going to believe me when I say I am sent me.

I mean, you're going to have to give me something more than that.

And he said what's that in your hand?

He said, well, it's a rod.

He said throw it down.

And it became a snake.

He said pick it up.

And at first he ran and he said no, pick it up.

And he picked it up and it became a rod again, and he said if they don't believe that, he said put your hand in your clothing, in your vest, like this.

He said draw it out.

And it was white as leprosy, white as snow, and he said I'll put it in again and bring it out.

And it was healed, he said.

And if they don't believe that, he said, touch the water with your rod and you can turn the water into blood.

So we gave him three supernatural signs to undergird his authority, to let people know that he was sent from God, that he had God's authority.

And whatever God, whatever Moses did, god backed him up.

I mean, just think about the Red Sea.

He said stretch out your rod.

And he stretched out that rod and God sent a wind that parted the Red Sea overnight.

I think about the time that he, you know, he told the children of Israel were complaining about no water and God told them to strike the rock.

And they still had the place where that rock was struck and the water.

You can see where the erosion happened and the rocks were worn because there was enough water coming out of an old, dry rock to water three million people and their animals.

That's a lot of water.

You ought to see the water mains in Houston.

I mean, they're like 10 foot in diameter, huge things, and every now and then they break because they're so old and decrepit.

They need to.

You know, houston's got all this money that they're throwing at parks and bicycle lanes oh, give me a break, bicycle lanes when we get.

We need infrastructure, we need the water fixed, we need, we need a reliable source of water that'll leak every summer Crazy, anyway.

So then, the second time that happened, god said okay, this time don't strike the rock, just speak to the rock.

Well, moses got so angry at the children of Israel because they're murmuring that he struck the rock and disobedience.

Guess what.

The water came anyway.

God backed up Moses, even when Moses was wrong and Moses was punished he didn't get to go into the Promised Land as he's punishment.

And God said because you struck the rock instead of speaking to the rock.

And so we don't have time to teach all about that.

But the bottom line is that God backed up Moses.

So you know, years ago I had to settle that when I speak under the anointing, god backs me up.

He's given me his power.

He's given you his power.

He's given you the power of attorney to use the name of Jesus, because in that name is wrapped up all the Word of God.

We talk about power.

There's no greater power than that.

Plus the fact that we have the greater one living on the inside of us who sees to it that when we are speaking for the Lord, that he backs us up and confirms the word that we speak, with signs following.

I think about the time that he had those three people Corra, dathan and Abiram rise up against him and tried to stir up rebellion in the camp and said oh, we're just as anointed as he is.

Who does he think he is?

We can offer fire to the Lord.

We've got sensors.

We can offer fire, we can do the duties of the priest.

And Moses, you know they all came to the tent door and God appeared and he said separate those three.

And he just told Moses you know you're going to have to execute a judgment.

And he said well, you know what, if you just get, if you die a normal death, then God hadn't spoken my be.

But if the earth opens up and swallows you up alive, you, your entire family and all of your stuff, then you'll know that there is a prophet in Israel and the earth opened up and swallowed those three men and their families and everything they owned.

It went down into the pit just like that.

So you know it's kind of woo.

You know God is serious about the power he's given the church and I think it's time the church quit Dilley, dallying around and being afraid of men, being afraid of government, being afraid of letter agencies, being afraid of people that really ought to be working for us, and if they're not working for us, they ought to be fired.

So let's wake up, let's realize that we've got the fire.

It's time for the fire to be stirred up.

You know, he told, he told Timothy, he said you know it's time to quit being afraid and crying, all this kind of weeping, everything like you've been doing.

It's time for you to stir up the gift of God that's on the inside.

I say the same thing let's stir up the fire of God and let the fire of God back us up when we're talking and let other people see that fire and turn them the power of Satan under God, the power of darkness under light.

And we can make demands on sickness and disease.

We can make demands on demons and power, demon powers.

We can make demands on mountains and on lack and poverty.

We can make demands in the name of Jesus, as I've been preaching lately, but we need to stir up the fire of God and keep it burning.

Amen.

Why the fire?

Well, the fire is the key.

Come on, lift your hands and receive Hallelujah.

Thank you, lord Whoo Amen.