THE FIRE COMES FIRST
The next thing I want you to notice about this story. This encounter Moses had was the precursor to Moses being sent to Pharaoh, and once Moses went to Pharaoh the greatest story of God’s deliverance and God’s supernatural power that has been recorded, possibly in history, began to unfold. It all started right there at that burning bush; and I see a principle here that is enduring. Before God sends you to Pharaoh, before God sends you to your destiny, before God sends you to do that thing that you were made to do, He is first going to send you to the Fire.
The Fire comes first, that encounter with the presence of God comes first. When Jesus was about to go to heaven He looked down at His disciples and He said I want you to go to Jerusalem, and what? Wait. I want you to go and wait. Now, think about this for a moment. These 12 men were the most experienced and educated and qualified men in things pertaining to Jesus Christ of anybody that has ever walked the earth. Who else got to spend 3 ½ years, every day and every night with Jesus? These men had a PhD in the Jesus Christ school of ministry. If they were alive today, I am sure that every denomination in the world would give them honorary credentials and I’m pretty sure that every Christian University would give them an honorary Doctorate. If ever anybody was qualified to go and preach about Jesus, it was those men. Yet, Jesus looked them square in the eye and said you’re not ready, go to Jerusalem and wait.
What did He say to wait for? It was the promise of the Father. Do you know what the promise of the Father was? It was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Jesus knew that those men, if they were really going to be able to make a difference in the world, they were going to need the power of the Holy Ghost.
I’m convinced that when it comes to the infilling of the Holy Spirit, one of the main ingredients, if not the main ingredient is hunger. Just hunger! You can have what you want, you can have as much of God as you desire. Do you want Him today? Are you hungry for Him today?
LASTING FIRE OF THE SPIRIT
In Exodus 3:3 when Moses saw the bush he turned aside to see why the bush wasn’t burnt. I want you to notice that it was not the fact that there was a burning bush that impressed Moses so much. A lot of people don’t understand this, they think that it was some unusual sight, some unusual phenomenon and that was the reason Moses thought it was so interesting.
The Bible doesn’t say that Moses was interested because a bush was burning. In fact, there are indeed bushes in the wilderness that spontaneously combust. I’m sure that Moses had seen plenty of them, he had lived there for 40 years. He was interested because a bush kept on burning. I imagine it happened like this. Maybe one day Moses was walking through the wilderness with his sheep, following behind him and he passed this particular spot and looked over to his left side and there he saw the burning bush and he thought to himself, very interesting, one of those burning bushes and he kept going. On his way home that night with the sheep still following behind, he passed that spot and he looked and he saw it was still burning, he said wow, that is the toughest wilderness bush I have ever seen in my whole life and he kept walking.
The next week, Moses was on his way back on that trail again and when he came to that spot he looked and he said I could have sworn that was the same tree that was burning this time last week, but that’s impossible all these bushes look the same, and he kept walking. That night on his way home he saw it again and it was still burning. By this point Moses was starting to get curious, maybe he took some rocks piled them on the path and he said next week when I come back on this way I’m going to check that bush and see what’s happened to it. So he went home.
The next week as he was passing he saw that pile of rocks on the path, it reminded him. Oh yes, that bush was burning here and when he approached it he looked to his left side. Surprise, surprise, the bush was still burning. Maybe, it was at that point that Moses decided to turn aside to see what was going on with this bush.
I remember, when I was first filled with the Holy Spirit as a teenager. Well my friend, that was over 20 years ago now, and I have good news for you. I’m burning brighter today than I was back then and I believe 20 years from now, I will be burning brighter than I am today. The Fire of the Holy Ghost never goes out! Somebody said, ‘How do you keep the Fire burning?’ That’s the wrong way round, the Fire keeps me burning.
The Lord saw that Moses turned aside, that’s when the Lord spoke to him. People ask me all the time about how I hear God’s voice? Notice that the burning bush didn’t start shouting to Moses as he was walking by on the path taking care of his sheep.
The Holy Spirit is patient; He can wait for a long time. What is He waiting for? He’s waiting for you to turn aside and listen. People ask me, why is it that I don’t hear the voice of God? I think most of the time the answer is very simple, you are not listening. If you don’t believe me, let me ask you a question, a little diagnostic. When was the last time you sat in a room for 20 minutes quietly, without the television on, without the radio on, without praise and worship music on, without your mobile phone, without Facebook, without e-mail, you turned everything off and you sat there and said Holy Spirit I have no other agenda, I’m just here to listen, I’m not even here to talk, I’m not here to fill your ears with all of my needs, I’m just here to listen? When was the last time you did that?
DISTINGUISHED BY THE SPIRIT
So Moses turned aside and the Lord spoke to him. Now, I don’t know how many bushes there are in the wilderness, I assume there are a lot. One thing I do know is that there was only one bush in the wilderness that caught Moses’ attention. It was the one bush that was burning with the presence of the living God.
What is the world looking for? Are they looking for us to build nicer buildings? Are they looking for us to have more eloquent preachers? Are they looking for us to have better music? Or better marketing programmes? What is it they want? What we think is relevant to the world is completely irrelevant. We have just begun to become like them, sound like them and act like them, we never confront them, we never offend them, we think that we will win them by looking like them. The church has thought that we can convince the world that they need what we have, by looking, just like they look.
I tell you what we need, Elijah the Prophet discovered it thousands of years ago, when the people of Israel were serving their false God named Baal. Elijah stood up and he said today we have got to make a choice. I say it to you, we have got to make a choice. If Baal is god serve him, if money is your god then serve it, if popularity and acceptance is your god give your life to that, if partying and pleasure is god then live for that, but if Jehovah is God, Elijah said, then serve Him! This was the test, Elijah knew his God and he knew that the authentic God would be able to demonstrate His power.
Elijah said, ‘meet me on top of the mountain, bring all of your 700 prophets and I will stand there as one lonely man representing Jehovah, and we will find out whose God is the true God. The prophets of Baal began to dance and sing, try to call down the fire, Elijah was falling asleep. Not even a puff of smoke from Baal’s alter. After a while Elijah stood up, he said, ‘guys I hate to interrupt it looks like you’re having lots of fun. Don’t worry, maybe Baal is locked in the bathroom - it’s okay. I understand how it is, these gods are unpredictable. Maybe he’s gone on vacation.’ Then Elijah said, ‘Gentlemen before it gets too late, before the sun goes down let me pray. I don’t need a long time, I don’t need to scream and shout, I don’t need to cut myself, all I need to do is speak to God because He’s living.’
Elijah prayed, ‘Lord hear me, let these people know that you are God and that You’ve turned their hearts back to you in the fire.’ The Bible says fire fell from heaven, it consumed the sacrifice and the wood and the stones, it even lit up the water in the trench. Our God is a consuming fire! The world is not looking for pyrotechnics, they are not looking for Rock-n-Roll music, they are not looking for great entertainment. What they are looking for is the reality, the demonstration of the power of God and when they see it they will fall on their faces as the children of Israel did and begin to declare the Lord, He is God.
WHAT ARE YOU BURNING FOR?
This burns in me, we need revival in this nation. We have generations of people that don’t know what it means to experience the Holy Ghost, and it breaks my heart.
Some of us are way too dignified. Often caring too much about what people think or about how we look. If you care more about how you look than receiving the Holy Ghost then you are not hungry, that’s all I can say. A hungry man doesn’t give a flying leap what anybody else thinks. A hungry man has one agenda, to get that food and when you’re hungry for the Holy Ghost everything else in your life will come second to that. You will desire Him more than the air you breathe, you will desire Him more than the food you eat, you will desire Him more than your dignity, you will desire Him more than your reputation, you will desire Him more than your ministry, you will desire Him more than anything!
It is true that people will look at you and look down their nose and say it’s one of those crazy Pentecostals. Oh my friend, don’t worry, I’ll tell you what you do, let that unbelieving sceptic go to a football game. You follow that unbelieving mocker down to the stadium and watch as their team score the goal that wins the game in overtime. Then you will make a discovery, everybody burns! Some people burn for sports, some people burn for money, some people burn for popularity and power and sex and style and fashion. But everybody burns for something. The difference between us and them is that we burn for something that matters!
