With deep gratitude for the Passover preparation the Lord has worked in our hearts, let us read a number of Scriptures about the Passover.
Now it came about in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died. And the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage rose up to God. So God heard their groaning; and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And God saw the sons of Israel, and God took notice of them. Exodus 2:23–25.
Then Pharaoh called to Moses and said, “Go, serve the Lord; only let your flocks and your herds be detained. Even your little ones may go with you.” But Moses said, “You must also let us have sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may sacrifice them to the Lord our God. Therefore, our livestock, too, will go with us; not a hoof will be left behind, for we shall take some of them to serve the Lord our God. And until we arrive there, we ourselves do not know with what we shall serve the Lord” Exodus 10:24–26.
Now you shall eat in this manner: with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your stuff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste—it is the Lord’s Passover. For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the first born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments—I am the Lord. And the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as a permanent ordinance. Exodus 12:11–14.
Now the time that the sons of Israel lived in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years. And it came about at the end of four hundred and thirty years, to the very day, that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. It is a night to be observed for the Lord for having brought them out from the land of Egypt; this night is for the Lord, to be observed by all the sons of Israel throughout their generations. Exodus 12:40–42.
There are times in your walk in which you sense the liberty that you have in Christ; and yet, as a paradox, you seem to feel the oppression: the pressure of circumstances, the desire to move into a new day, of wanting things to change in your life and in your whole way of thinking. You want change above everything else.
Your cries for change seem to come up like the cries of the children of Israel. You are not as afraid of the Pharaoh of this earth as you are of the old Pharaoh of self within. You are weary of the bondage and slavery of the carnal, self-centeredness in your life and you yearn to be loosed. You yearn to be free; something within you seems to cry, “Loose me.”
Your walk is joyful, yet you cry a great deal, feeling the presence of the Lord. But sometimes you feel tremendous pressure, created by lying circumstances.” Your groaning comes up to the Lord. Yet honestly, you would not walk away from Him for anything in the world. Something within you is crying out to please God and to go the way the Lord wants you to go.
We need to be realistic. Paul lived in a time of great persecution; we need to take a Look back to Paul’s evaluation of what it means to be a Christian. If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most miserable (pitiable)- Corinthians 15:19.
A true disciple has forsaken all to follow Jesus, if there is no promise of a glorious future, if there is no dawning of a new day, then of all men we are most miserable.
We have abandoned everything in order to leave Babylon, to leave frustrations behind, even the seeming success of the religious world.
We have moved out into the place where we cry, as did Moses, “If Thou go not up with us, then carry us not hence” (Exodus 33:15). “O God, if You are not going to take us through, don’t even start this thing in us. We are ready to leave all, but if we cannot walk in your fullness, with your glory radiating out of us, then of all men we are the most miserable.”
Day unto day we practice the way of the cross. Day unto day we walk the way of sacrifice. We are in your word, prayer, worship, and waiting on you Lord day and night. If your glory is not going to fill the earth, we are of all most miserable; we are missing out on our natural life. We should be out some place making all the money we can, grabbing it while we can, for who knows what tomorrow will bring.
Something is happening in our spirits and we just are not content to live the conventional life style. A nice comfortable home and impressive car are just not enough. We have so much more, we have a relationship with God, that makes this life on earth just a passing scene.
We have joined that sighing and groaning multitude that is saying, “O God, loose us, and set us free from being earth bound. By the blood of the Lamb, enable us to rise, not just to dwell on the outskirts of Egypt, but O God, give us strength to march on into Zion.
Give us the grace to be that people that your word has prophesied about, that people who have seen the heavenly vision that sustains us through the gross darkness coming upon this earth.
We have left the old ranks of the religious system. We are moving out with one thing burning in our hearts. We are crying, “O God, O God, meet us.”
I know that by all human reasoning I should be satisfied with the place where I am now. I should look at the ministry of the word that God has entrusted me with and say, “Yes, it will be successful.”
But I cannot, because I am still too much earth bound. I am still too much restricted. It is not enough that we have come this far; we must keep this Passover with a faith in our heart—a faith that we are going to move out of all earthly restrictions. We eat the lamb with a staff in our hand, with our loins girded, with your sandals on our feet. We are getting ready to march. the blood has given us protection from judgment. You draw strength of the Lord to go, but we do not know where. We do not even know with what we shall serve the Lord when we get there. We do not know how we are going to suffer. We do not know what we will encounter. We do not know how many enemies will rise up against us in the way.
Like Samson going down to Timnath, we do not know how a lion may roar against us on the way.
We have no idea, except we do know there has never been a man or woman who has heard a word from God and started out to walk with God who was not hindered and resisted, discouraged, oppressed, and harassed by everything the enemy could bring against them.
We will gather together, singing our songs of joy and rejoicing, but let us keep in mind that what we really want is to move on in God. We really want a walk with God! We want to see that pillar of fire and we want to follow it. We want to walk under that cloud when the blazing sun would blister our skin. We want to wake to that morning gathering of manna. We want to walk, we want to walk, we want to walk, and leave this bondage behind. We want to move on into the next step, but what is the next step? Which way do we go now? We have experienced Pentecost but we are still not in the Promised land.
I cannot just settle down, this world means nothing to me now. I cannot become satisfied just enough that the edge will be taken off my hunger for God. I cannot lose that pilgrim spirit. I do not want this ministry to become just another movement.
I am troubled with the spiritual state of the church on earth the souls of men and women who are passive and self-satisfied. They have become lukewarm, saying in Laodicean language, “I am rich and increased in goods and have need of nothing.” If that is all we have, then we have indeed become the most miserable of all men.
Is there any greater tragedy than a little child being born into this world without sight? He may grow up and never know what he has missed. He learns to live with his other senses. But it seems a greater tragedy when someone has seen the sunrise and the sunsets and the love light in a loved one’s eyes, and then has his sight taken away. There is no tragedy so great as to set before a person the prophecies and the revelation and let them catch a glimpse of the return of the glory of God upon the house of the Lord, and then lose that vision and say it will never happen.
Let this be a Passover that initiates some action, that starts us moving on with God and searching our hearts to see if we have settled down, if we have become so passive that we are refusing to contend earnestly for the faith that was once delivered to the saints, if there is something that just hangs on until the passing scene is satisfying us. As the prophet said, “He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul” (Isaiah 44:20).
O God, loose us from this. Bring a new hunger and thirst; bring a new vision, as though we were starting all over again.
Pastors, let me ask you: Are things going so well for you that you are losing the hunger? Maybe you are not leading the people to seek God so they might reach into the new level. We have only started in this walk with God, it is a journey that has a destination. We have just begun to know the Lord. Then shall we know if we walk on to follow the Lord. He shall come unto us as the rain.
Maybe we need to see what the Feast of Passover really means. It is the feast of enablement, where people arise and do things they were not able to do before. They leave Egypt behind and move out. It is a feast of promise, a feast of enrichment. It was at the Feast of Passover that the slaves borrowed all the jewels of the Egyptians, and the Word says that not even a dog would bark against them (Exodus 11:7).
When they went out, they were not a bunch of slaves going along singing some Spiritual song. When they went out, it was to the accompaniment of the greatest cry that ever was heard in the land of Egypt, for there was not a house where there was not death (Exodus 12:30). There was loud wailing and mourning, but they went dressed in finery and jewels. After they were out of Egypt, they rebelled against God and made the golden calf. Where did they get all that gold? The laver in the tabernacle, the large brass bowl where the priests washed, was made from the highly polished brass mirrors of the women. All of these marvelous things were part of the loot they took from Egypt. They went out of Egypt rich.
This can be the feast of enrichment for us too. Instead of just barely making it, we can really make it. It can be the feast of new doors opening unto us, of new experiences, of a new level of life and a new spiritual position. It can be a feast of taking action in new realms that we have never been in before. It can be a feast of rejuvenation, a feast of freedom. Where we are slaves, we can be set free. It can be a feast of new beginnings, of a new way of life.
This is also the feast of rebellion—the right kind of rebellion. Rebel against that smug old rut you are in. Rebel against the place you have in God now that you know is inadequate. You know you need something more than you have. If I did not believe we could move into this, I would be most miserable. I am not going to do anything else but groan before God, with the faith that I am going to leave behind the limitations that I have lived under. I am going to walk out of them. I do not know how, but I am going to move out of them. I am going to be delivered.
Deliverance is where we start in this walk with God, but deliverance is relative. Many of us have been delivered from so much, but it is all in vain unless we get into the next level, the next step in God.
I came into this walk, to have a walk with God, like the men of old. I did not come into this to become a minister. Actually, I never wanted to teach the Bible because of the accountability.
The church wants to stay where they are, but I cannot stay there. The wilderness road of passing God’s tests is a lonely road. There will be times when you walk all alone. We cannot be limited. We cannot say, “I will go this far with the Lord and no further.” We must be determined to go the whole way, even when we do not know how. We will not stop at the half-way mark.
When Abraham came out of Ur of Chaldees, he went as far as Haran and there he stayed for a while. (Years later Isaac’s bride, Rebekah, was chosen from there.) But one day God said to Abraham, “It is not enough to stop at Haran, the half-way point. Keep on going until you get to the land of promise. Keep on moving and I will tell you when you get there.”
By faith Abraham, not knew where he was going, went. He did know that he had a promise from God and he had to go. I do not know how we are going to go, but let us believe to break into something more. We are going on to the next step and then the next and the next and the next. Let us have it determined in our hearts that we are not going to stop here. It is not organization or promotion that will do it; it is that hunger for God.
We cannot settle into something that would be popular, but only an extension of Pentecostalism and another step into soulishness. We must move on into this realm of spirit, and we do not even know what we are going to do.
It could be said of us as it was said in the book of Joshua, “We have not passed this way before.” No one has been this way before. There are no freeways like those that have been built for the Pentecostal movement or the Charismatic movement. We have nothing before us but rocks and mountains and wilderness—and a pillar of fire leading us.
There is a promised land out there, but I do not know how to get there. There is more for me, but I do not know how to get it. There is a walk with God, but I do not know the first thing about getting into the next step. But that is what the Feast of Passover is all about. We sit and feed on the lamb. We pick up the staff and gird our loins, determined that as the lamb is within us, we are going to move on.
What about the problems? We will walk away from them. We cannot solve them anyway. All those bricks I was supposed to make without straw next week—I shall walk away from them. Even if I had seniority in the slaves’ union, or could look forward to being sent to the old ministers’ home one day, I have to move on.
If someone asks what you believe and what you have experienced, just say, “I don’t know, because up to this point I have had revealed to me only about ten percent of the truths that I am going to believe. I have embraced wonderful things of walking with God and I don’t know what more I am going to experience.”
There is a great sea of people out there without faces. We have never seen them, but they are waiting for the Word, for the gospel of the Kingdom. They are waiting for someone to bring the message of the Lord—not a dead doctrine, but something real and alive.
That was the way it was at the hour of prayer when Peter and John came to a lame man and said, “Look on us. Silver and gold have we none, but such as we have we give you. In the name of Jesus, get up and walk.” They spoke a living word that God confirmed with signs and wonders Leaping and jumping, the man went into the temple. Thousands of people found the Lord, because there were two men who could introduce the Lord to them.
We must have more of Christ in our lives. We have to walk on into something deeper. We rejoice with you if you have talked in tongues, if you have prophesied and received revelation. But now let us go a little further. Let us go into the deep experiencing of His cross, being made conformable to His death, entering into His resurrection life.
Let us not just talk about it; let us get into it some way. Let us find ourselves submitting to Him to the end, saying, “Lord, here I am. I stand in this place because You brought me this far. I would never have consented to come this far if this were the end of the line.”
We say with Moses, “If Thou go not with us, then carry us not hence. Don’t start something that You cannot finish. We intend for You to save us to the uttermost, Lord. We intend to get into the whole thing, not part of it.”
Something must happen to open up that next step, that next level. There is something more and God is going to give it to us. I do not even know what it is, except that it is coming. We are going to meet God and find His perfect will.
Forget your problems and start seeking the Lord. Instead of using ministry like a pacifier, ask the elders to pray with you and loose your spirit. Get out of your ruts and ask God to give you a greater hunger.
If we are not careful, we will be busy starting churches instead of walking with God. When churches start springing up, we could become occupied with organization and promotion which has no part of a walk with God. This is a happening in God. Let the churches happen but let us not miss the one thing that it is all about—a walk with God.