In Hebrews 11:23–29, we read, By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his parents, because they saw he was a goodly child; and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment. By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. In this Scripture we see the spirit of protest against restrictions and limitations that were not divinely imposed: “… they were not afraid … he refused …” They were not afraid of the king’s commandment because it was not of God.
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to share ill treatment with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt: for he looked unto the recompence of reward. Everything you do has something that comes as a recompence of reward. Respect it. The rebellious are going to get that recompence of reward; the obedient and submissive will receive the recompence of reward. We see Moses, suffering under harassment, battle, spiritual warfare and everything that it involved—for what reason? There is a day of reckoning; there’s a recompence of reward.
By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible. By faith he kept (the Greek reads “he instituted”) the passover (Moses told them what to do; God backed it up and ordered the slaughter), and the sprinkling of blood, that the destroyer of the firstborn should not touch them. By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land: which the Egyptians assaying to do were swallowed up. This reference in the great roll call of faith is talking about Moses’ great faith: the way he kept the Passover. He instituted it; he started it with faith.
There is something you have to see in Moses—a slave, a fugitive, a runaway, rising up as a rebel against Egypt, refusing to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, refusing all the things that seemed to be good for him. Something within him lived in rebellion and protest. In this day, we are protesting against conformity to this age: rebelling against the things that hold us back. We will be just as blessed as we dare to be, as we will to be. If you want change and are willing to take the necessary steps to change, you will have it! The changes will come because God will lead you into them, but they won’t come automatically.
There is a truth—a picture of our lives that you can see in the children of Israel. Four hundred and thirty years they had been in the land of Egypt. They came into the country innocently, during a time of famine under Joseph. Pharaohs then arose that knew not Joseph, and the Israelites found themselves as slaves, serving the Egyptians with rigor. Straw was taken away so there was nothing to create adhesion in the bricks they made; but they still had to produce the same number of bricks. Because of the increasing number of Israelites, when the Hebrew women were bearing their children, the midwives were instructed to kill all the male children as they came forth from the womb. (When you are under such bondage, though you may groan and cry under it, you can’t protest.) Ten devastating plagues swept through Egypt because the entire economy was based upon the free labor of slaves, and they were not about to let them go.
There is a truth in this that we face on a spiritual level. There are many forms of slavery. The money that we spend could easily buy items that would last much longer—clothes could be made to wear longer, cars could last longer. Instead of dealing with obsolescence, the manufacturers could deal in efficiency. But it is more profitable for them to prolong payments. It was profitable to keep the Israelites as slaves. How were they ever going to break loose? The minute they began to protest, the whip came down still harder until they begged Moses, “Leave us alone. It was better for us before you ever came down here to talk about freedom.” People who feel oppression and the need of deliverance are those that have had a little oppression. Then Satan tries to put the pressure on to hold them down a little more. The pressure is always the greatest just before breaking through to the greatest victory.
Back in the land of Egypt, there came that weird midnight hour. The city was dark. A few little oil lamps were flickering in the homes. You could hear the shuffle of feet, the bellowing of the cattle. Everyone was moving. Little children were filled with wonder, for something like this had never happened before. Three million people, with all their cattle and herds, were moving out of Egypt during the night. Everything in the world had been set to keep them there. How reluctant the Egyptians had been to let them go, until God brought such an act of judgment that they literally thrust them out, saying, “Make haste and leave us; we’re dead men.” There was not one house in Egypt where there was not a dead person. The pitiful crying and wails of those who mourned was an eerie thing. The funeral processions must have been almost beyond count.
The dead weren’t buried before Pharaoh and the wise men were taking counsel, “This breaks down the economy. Let’s get them back.” Ten great national disasters had struck and still they were going out to bring them back and make them serve as slaves again. Then came the loud noise of chariots and horses going after the Israelites. God gives a Passover and delivers His people, but how reluctantly does Satan let them go. And yet, the reluctance of Satan plays into the hand of God. The persistence of his oppression leads to his own judgment. It wasn’t very long until Pharaoh’s host was bogged down in the Red Sea, while the children of Israel had escaped to the other side. One of the greatest armies of the ancient world was destroyed irrevocably. Not only the economy, but also the military power was broken. Egypt never rose again.
By faith Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He wouldn’t compromise. There is something in my spirit that is refusing to be conformed to this passing parade, to this age. It is saying, “I can be delivered completely in my mind and spirit.” Was it Dwight L. Moody who said, “It remains to be seen what God can do in this world through one man who is really surrendered and yielded to Him”? It is not only necessary to be yielded, but it is necessary in your thinking to be completely disentangled from the thought patterns of this age: to be free, to think freedom, to be able to respond with faith to what God is saying and doing.
Where are the Egyptians? Where is Pharaoh’s host? They are the restrictions that come to our thinking, that make us face a problem, and reason how to solve it on a human plane. It is that which tries to hold us down and keep us moving as human beings instead of sons of God. It is that which keeps us from breaking through to walk and breathe and live in the supernatural and in the miraculous. These are the chains that keep us down so we’ll accept disease and pain, restriction and limitation, and be satisfied with the flesh-pots, with a few crumbs—with just enough blessing to keep us from losing out. Do we come to church and thank God for this move of God’s Spirit, because we worshiped a few minutes and it was glorious; we heard the anointed Word and it was wonderful; and we go home and say, “Thank You, Lord, for that crumb”?
I don’t want those kind of chains on my thinking any more. I would like to breathe and think in terms of the impossible, to walk under a pillar of fire, to gather my food every morning as God rains it out of heaven. I would like my nights illuminated by the pillar of fire and my days shaded by the cloud, to walk through the burning desert sands and find that my feet don’t swell, to be immune from the serpent and the viper and walk before the Lord without my clothes wearing out. In the dry spell I would like to see that river follow me from the smitten rock for my thirst. I would like the miraculous existence that is to follow the Passover deliverance. God forbid that I be a murmurer like the Israelites were. I would like to know that I’m really well off by just trusting God. Can it be done for us today? How much have we appropriated so far? In the plan of God and the outpouring of the Spirit are we closer today to living in the miraculous than we have ever been before?
Lord, we protest against the limitations and the restrictions under which we are living. We protest the restrictions and the limitations upon our thinking. We protest the fact that we have accepted so little, actually almost been satisfied with so little. Stir our hearts to be possessors of the double portion.
What are you looking for now? What do you want? Have you put it into words yet? Can you put it in terms of the restrictions and limitations that are upon you at the present time? Have you been able to refuse in your spirit, as Moses did when he refused to be the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, to not be part of the world? I’m looking for the deliverance that liberates us in the abundance and fulness of what the Lord is going to do for us.
By faith, Moses endured as seeing Him who is invisible. My greatest restrictions are my fears. Are they yours? Fear limits my horizons. My eyes become blurred and I can’t see all the things God wants me to see because fear has distorted my vision. It has distorted yours. I don’t want to look at the circumstances and be impelled with fear. I don’t want to look at the needs and say, “O God, I am in great need, I’m desperate.” I want to look at the circumstances, but just in passing. I want to see Him who is invisible. Like Moses, I want to endure, to say good-bye to Egypt, good-bye to my own restrictions and limitations, to stand and do the impossible. That is what Moses did. He faced the wise men and magicians of Egypt and out-maneuvered them. He stood before Pharaoh, a man of slow speech. Some authorities say he stammered and stuttered. There are not many leaders who stammer. Moses didn’t have self-confidence and poise—he was a man meek above every man on the face of the earth. So a lot of people misunderstood that and began to murmur and criticize him, thinking they could do better. The earth opened up and swallowed some of them, too. God was saying, “Let him alone. I put him there to lead you.”
Moses had a record—he killed a man, buried him in the sand and then fled for forty years. Everything was against him. But God chose him to go down and lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Moses said to God, “We don’t even know who You are. What is Your name? Who will I say sent me?” “Just go and tell Pharaoh to let all of those three million people go.”
“You know he isn’t really going to listen to me, don’t you? Who will I say sent me? All I’m hearing now is a voice out of a burning bush.” “Tell them I Am sent you. I Am that I Am.” “They will never listen to me.” “Put your hand in your coat jacket—now pull it out.” It was white with leprosy. “Put it back, Moses.” It was healed. “Don’t forget I can kill a man and make him live.”
Many times God asked that, “Say, little boy down by the brook, what do you have—a sling shot and five stones, that’s all? That’s enough with the name of the Lord.” “What do you have there, lady—just a little bit of oil and flour? That will do it.” “Son, what do you have—five loaves and two small fish? That will be enough; there are only five thousand men here besides the women and children; that will do it.”
“What do you have in your hand, Moses? We are going down to have the Passover. We are going to shake up the whole country and My people are going to come out by My mighty hand. I will bear them on eagle’s wings out of Egypt. I will show you how it is done. Moses, what do you have in your hand that we can do it with?” “Just my shepherd’s staff, a stick I have been using to herd the sheep.” “Throw it down.” Moses threw it down; it turned into a serpent and Moses ran from it. “Go back and catch it, Moses; take hold of it.” Moses slipped up and grabbed that serpent by the tail and it turned back into a stick. God is saying, “See what I can do?”
I would assume that Moses knew his snakes, for he had been on the backside of the desert for forty years. And I suppose that God made one an impressive side-winder, don’t you? Moses took off anyway, and I’m sure he wasn’t running from a garter snake. “I can take that which is dead and I can make it live. I can make it into a vicious instrument of death like a snake. Moses, you are to free My people from their limitations, restrictions and their bondages. You will get them out where they can worship Me.” When Pharaoh finally let them go, he said, “All right, Moses, take all your herds, all your flocks, your children, your wives, everything out in the wilderness to worship your God and when you get out there, will you pray for me?” He needed prayer; he knew he had been fighting God.
Get the people out there where they can lose their limitations, their restrictions, their fears; where they can become God’s free people and adjust to the responsibility of being God’s free people; where they can assume the yoke of responsibility toward the ministry and destiny that God’s people have to fulfill; where they can hear God’s promises and be stirred in faith to go and possess them. We will get them loose so that they can start growing, expanding, reaching out. Nothing short of drastic judgment will do it. Pray for it. Pray for God to drown the Pharaoh and his hosts that are in your own heart, in your own thinking; the things that hold you chained and restricted. Begin to think toward the bigness and the greatness of what God wants to do. He will do it.
The Lamb of God, the Passover Lamb, was the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the first announcements in the New Testament was the announcement of John the Baptist, “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world,” as he pointed toward Jesus, who was coming down to the Jordan River to be baptized by him. One of the last great announcements in the Bible is in the book of Revelation where Jesus is pictured in this manner: The great scroll that represented the destiny and the welfare of all God’s people was sealed with seven seals. Only the Lion of the tribe of Judah was worthy to open the seals of the book and loose man into all of his freedom and liberty as a son of God. When they turned to look at the Lion of the tribe of Judah, John said he saw a Lamb as it had been slain. The judgments that were to follow in rapid succession as the seals were opened is the picture of judgment falling, and finally the liberation of God’s people in the glorious Kingdom. The Passover Lamb was pictured in the book of Revelation—the One who opens the seals for the judgments in the last day.
This Passover Lamb that we are exalting and worshiping, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the One who is protecting us, giving us immunity and delivering our spirits from disaster. He is also the Lamb that is ready to pour wrath and indignation upon all the nations of the world. We believe in the judgment that is coming. I don’t think anyone can read the Word of God without being aware of the predictions of the Lord concerning the time of trouble and tribulation and judgment that is to come upon the earth in the end time. Once again the earth will know a Passover. The judgment will only pass over those where the blood is found. “Lord Jesus, I want You to be my Passover Lamb. I want the blood to cover me.”
PROPHECY
Thou shalt not say in thine heart, Behold, this is audacious, this is beyond what I have even the nerve to claim. Shall He not bid thee to ask of Him largely that thy joy might be full? Yea, hath He any greater delight than that thy joy shall be full because thou hast appropriated the measure of blessing that hath made thy cup run over? Is it not the delight of the Lord to bless thee? Is it not the Lord that hath made a provision for thee? Shall He be pleased with thee when He hath provided all things that pertain to life and godliness, that thou shalt walk in a great restriction and limitation of those things?
Yea, groan not in heaviness for thou art not slaves, but thou art God’s free people. Arise and shake off thy bondage from thee. Loose thyself, loose thyself, O daughter of Zion. Rise out of the dust and sit upon thy throne. Behold, thou hast reason to believe the Lord shall crown thee with glory, if thou shalt but have faith to take thy place before the Lord God. Humble thy heart and repent and let the blood be upon thee, the blood of the Lamb. Open thy heart wide to the blessings that are ordained of the Lord, for it is not a day of restriction that He speaketh of in His Holy Word.
The prophets have not spoken of the day that shall come when there shall not be a fountain opened up in Zion; but rather they have spoken about the day in which He shall pour out His spirit upon all flesh. He hath spoken of the day in which the sons and daughters shall prophesy, when the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. And the people shall eat in abundance and be satisfied, and shall praise the name of the Lord their God that hath dealt with them so bountifully. So it shall be that thy heart shall glorify the Lord. And ye shall praise the Lord in this hour.
Yea, open thy heart to believe for the greater blessings that He hath for thee. Yea, canst thou believe for signs and wonders and exploits, for the mighty deeds of the Lord that shall be in the earth, for the fear of the Lord that shall come in the midst of judgments, for the deliverance that shall come to whomsoever shall call on the name of the Lord because of the deliverance that is found in the Remnant of the Lord God? Open your heart and believe to be an instrument of thy God. Open your heart to believe that first He shall make thee a partaker of the blessing and then thou shalt be able to free the others.
O thou that dost mourn in Zion, be confident. O thou heavy in heart, lift up thy hands and worship the Lord. O ye thirsty, drink; for the fountain floweth. O thou lame, take the portion for there’s a balm in Gilead. O thou ones that do limp in the way, shall not the Lord make thee to leap as the hart and make sure thy steps?
Arise and possess the high places, ye children of the Lord. And let there not be within thee that which shall lag in spirit or hold back in zeal. For the Lord knoweth thy heart and He bringeth thee days that thou shalt mourn and turn away from evil; for thou shalt look to the Lord with expectancy and thy faces shall be radiant in the reflecting of His glory. Thou shalt feast upon His goodness and know that thy God reigneth, O Zion. Amen.
EXHORTATION
Repentance seems to be synonymous with the Feast of Passover. Some of you would like to find an answer for what God is doing deep in your own spirit. The Lord made something real to my own heart in which I believe that apostolic absolution is going to be restored in a very real experience to many people.
After the Lord had risen from the dead, He came in the evening of His resurrection day and commissioned the apostles, “Whosoever sins you remit they are remitted unto them; whosoever sins you retain, they are retained.” I am going to start looking for that deep remission, a blotting out, a complete taking away of the root and the response of everything that has ever oppressed us. I think it will become a very real experience as we are seeking, repenting and ministering, and in our worship and praise we will move into something great.
The Feast of Passover was always followed by action. It initiated many things, always opening the door to something new. The first Feast of Passover opened the door for the people to leave Egypt. They began to journey and everything was changed for them. The Feast of Passover can make a change for you and open the door to new levels of experience; it can mean that you start on the march in ways that you have not known before.
Christ had a great desire to keep that last Passover because He knew it would trigger off the events in rapid succession to open the doors of grace. It was followed immediately by the crucifixion, and everything we know in the saving grace of God came out of it. We take Communion together, because that is what Christ brought out of the Passover for us—Christ, our Passover, crucified for us. Those of you who are looking for changes, for blessings, for release, for some new spiritual level, are expecting the right thing. God will open the door for you to receive it. This can be a precious time, a time of changing of ideas. The Passover can be everything you want to believe it to be. It is the feast of judgment, of deliverance, of immunity, of enrichment. It’s the pilgrims’ meal, so they can begin their march. It’s the feast of freedom. It’s the feast of substitution. It’s the feast of transference, when things are transferred from you in your guiltiness to the Lamb. It’s the feast of appropriation, where you draw His strength and His righteousness.
The Passover was basically a feast of judgment. It was the culmination of the wrath of God upon Egypt. It was God’s persuader upon a world that had too many bonds and chains upon His people, chains that had to be broken. We want to be free, and though the initiative is ours to a great extent, there is something more than our initiative involved. You can determine to be free but when you are a slave in Egypt you can’t be. The will is there but the performance is impossible. That is why God begins to minister judgment.
PRAYER
Lord, judge the prince of this world and all of the restraints he lays upon us as children of God. We are not under his domain; we are under the Kingdom of God’s dear Son. We are translated into another jurisdiction. We are out of the jurisdiction of Satan, and by the blood of Jesus Christ we come into the judgment of that which usurps a hold that is not right. These two things are not reconcilable: that we view ourselves as God’s bond-servants, blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 1:3), and also find anything within us serving sin or any bondage or restraint.
Let the blood be upon our hearts that Thou mightest judge, O Lord. Break the bands asunder that come against Thy people. How can we be God’s new creatures and still be servants of the old nature? We mortify it, we put it to death. How can we say we’re new creatures and not rise in that newness of life? O, Father, we are citizens of Canaan; we’re not citizens of Egypt; we’re not citizens of Babylon. Though we might temporarily be in the wilderness, we are not citizens of the wilderness either. We are citizens of the land flowing with milk and honey.
Master, we accept what You are and what You will be to us and what You will do for our lives. We do not accept confusion and conflict that is unceasing and unrelenting. We are willing to accept testing at Thy hand, O Lord, and the trial of our faith that is more precious than gold which perishes. But Lord, our way of life is a way of victory. Our iniquities were laid upon Thee; and any openness that we have to oppression we reject absolutely and completely. Lord, we want all of our responses to be to Thee: nothing of our old nature responding to cause us defeat in any way. We are claiming that our hearts will be enlightened, and we’ll press in with all that is within us and see Your hand of deliverance in every respect. It’s a lamb for a household, so we include our brothers and sisters, for You gave immunity to the people that were within those doors. Let the blood be applied, O Lord, to Thy house.
Whatever, Lord, seems to restrain or hinder us, Thou art able to make a parting in the sea. You are able, Lord, to loose the bonds of Your people and even change the hardest heart of Pharaoh and make a provision for Your people to come ahead. As we lift our hearts to Thee we protest against restriction and limitation which You have not authorized. We protest against ourselves, for our own minds have accepted it. We protest against it when it’s been imposed upon us by satanic cunning. We refuse limitation, restriction, any type of bondage. We are believing for liberty, victory, to be more than conquerors, and to be liberated in the mighty hand of God. We curse the restrictions and limitations upon our physical bodies. For Satan to have access to them is a thing we must not accept; for by His stripes we are healed. In the name of the Lord Jesus we are rejecting the restrictions upon our understanding and discerning the will of God. We protest against the days of groping in semi-darkness; we want to walk by a plain path, led by the Spirit of the Lord, by a pillar of fire, by that which God has ordained. This is a day of protest, a day of rising up against the things that have been chains to us, against the things that have been restrictions in our spiritual walk.
O Father, we know that You sent Your Son to open us a door of fellowship and communion with You. We protest where our worship and awareness toward You is restricted and limited, and where we have wrong opennesses and are vulnerable. We want to move without restrictions on the ministry God has given us—not out of a personal ambition, but because there is a work that You want done. O Lord, it must be done!
Whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith (I John 5:4).