Being Ready Instruments; Moses and the Burning Bush

So you want whenever you go to work on something that you have the right instruments, and we try to have our instruments right and sharp, and in the place they belong. We have people that leave the instruments where they don’t belong, so when we go in that hook or that nail or that place, then they aren’t there. Andrew the other night, he hadn’t started to look for something yet, but he found a hammer was left in the place where clothes are kept. And we don’t know how that hammer got there, because it wasn’t supposed to be there. But someone didn’t put it back. And that’s how accurate and that’s how clean, and that’s how sharp and that’s how careful you have to be to leave the things where they belong so that the next one goes for that hammer, he knows where it is. We have that all right along, that people leave the things.

But we can take that in the things of God and the workmanship of the Lord, that we have to have the instruments, that they have to be sharp. If it turns out they are not sharp, they are either sharpened, or you have to get rid of them. They are no good. And if you have something that doesn’t fill the bill, you can’t use it anymore, you have to get rid of it. And there’s no need for it at all, because it doesn’t fill the bill, it doesn’t fill the need.

I was thinking, my mind went back to the basement where we do have, that Frank set it up, as he is bound to do wherever he is, with the setting up of the instruments in order. And I could say – I’m not saying Frank is a perfect one – but I can say that most of the time he has had that ability and he has had that within him that sets up that shop in perfect order so that you know. And down in South America, we started with a very small workshop. Now we have it transferred out, and I haven’t seen it since it’s been transferred to the bigger place. But it was a pleasure, that is, after it was cleaned up and straight, it was a pleasure always, it was one of the things that I have within me. I might not have expressed it very much, but I’ve had that within me a long time, well, to have things in order and placed, but the thing, to have a workshop. We don’t have all that many things, but still it’s a marvel the things that we have. And there they are, on the wall in their place, everything. So that when they go to do the work, and we haven’t had that great a work now, we’re more and more worked up at our place, and we don’t have as many instruments here as far as I know as we would down there, is that right? Different kinds of instruments. But it is of such a joy to go in there and see how we have these things that at the right moment that can just go there and pick that up and use it. Or go get the saw and say well, did you see that and that?

It just applies so to the things of God, that we as His workmen, we as His instruments, have to be in place and in our compartment, in the place where He can readily take us. We have to be sharp, we have to be usable. And if we’re off in some other place, how can He use us? So you say, I just got to the place where I have to take a trip. Well, you take the trip, but where are you in the Body of Christ? Or, I just got to the place where I have to see downtown somewhere, I have to look around, I have to take this time out to do. Well, you are that time out, but where are you if God would need you at that moment? So there it is.

The hammer—this was just last week—the hammer was up in the clothes closet, linen closet, anyhow it doesn’t make too much difference, is it: what is this hammer doing here? Well, you’d have to go around and say, most of the time you can never find out who did it, because I suppose it would be that they wouldn’t want to tell me, that’s in it, but they didn’t remember, because they didn’t know what they were doing when they left it there. So they wouldn’t remember. So if you say, “Oh no, I didn’t put the thing there, I couldn’t think of it.” But they had it, and they don’t remember anything about it.

But in the things in the Body of Christ that you have to be an instrument. And there are instruments that are finer than other instruments. You can take a hammer and you can make a mistake, you can knock your thumb. Poor Lee here has a big black thumb. But there are some that are so finely strung that you couldn’t…. You say with a musical instrument. You start to tune them and you knew the minute that it is off, or a person that knows. I don’t know the minute it is off all the time. But a person that knows knows that that is not hitting right.

And you have to be so fine and so usable that if there is any of the strain in the flesh, it is such a blatant thing, it’s such an off something that it just goes against those that would be there. There are not too many that are in that key and know where it is. But if you are there, you do know that it is not the thing at that moment. It’s just like somebody hands you the wrong instrument, you need a saw, and somebody hands you a hammer. Or what are you going to do with the hammer when you need a saw? You don’t just need the saw. You might be a wonderful saw, you might be the best kind of a saw and saw right through it, maybe a sharp saw, right saw, good saw, but you need a hammer. And vice versa.

And you might have the finest kind of a voice or the greatest way of knowing how to trill or thrill with something. It isn’t that it’s right at that time. So you have to know much more, much more, much more. Because you could say, “Don’t give me this saw, I need the hammer” or whatever it is. And it’s over.

But when you’re moving in the Lord, it knocks, knocks, knocks. And you have the knocks, say, in a car, and you have the thing. Well, you have to go and see what is knocking in that car or else the transmission can fall out. And you have to know in time because if you take it in time, and you have to know that you have to get it right. Because everything else is ruined. Well, say, Hannah, I saw you. Say, you say, well, he handed me a saw, and I needed a hammer. But I’ll go ahead and saw with it just for the sake of using it.

We have to use these instruments and keep them going. So you saw instead of hammering, that’s the one we have. That’s convenient, we have to use these instruments and keep them going. So you saw instead of hammer. That’s the one you have just for the sake of keeping going. I have a saw, so I must keep it in work, so I’ll saw right through this beam here. And you only needed to put a nail in it to get it up there, but you’re going to saw through it. We’re going to put some beams up there now. We have some, and we’re going to have them just well by the help of the Lord, we don’t boast in ourselves, but we’re going to have those beams, just, they’re real beams. And we’re going to make them look like real beams, and we’re going to elaborate on them, so that we can show off that they are beams. But suppose somebody goes in and says, it was so needed that we saw at this time. So [sound of sawing], when you need bang bang bang. Somebody who can hear that would run and say, “What are you doing? You’re sawing! We need to hear the banging now! But all I hear is [sawing sound].” “Oh, I just thought I’d use this saw, I just got a little electric saw and we have to use it. So what have you got? So somebody says, [sawing sound], “I’ve got this, I’ll saw on it or I’ll work on it,” and it’s not the right thing.

Well, how much more in the things of the Lord. I don’t know if it does you any good or not. But it does me good as I say it. Because like before, the detection, the discretion or the discernment, it’s, well, I’ll come in here, and I’ll do this. And it takes away from the carefulness. You can’t make a mistake. If you do make a mistake, it drags it down. You can’t do it naturally. And if you can’t do it naturally, how much more spiritually, that you have to know that you are treading on holy territory.

One time Moses, after living out there 40 years watching his father-in-law Jethro’s sheep, and being so faithful 40 years, and he had passed by that territory every day – just think, he passed by it every day. It came to the time when he saw that bush burning and he kept on, but he said, “I will now turn aside to see why this bush keeps burning and is never consumed.”

So as he stepped that day aside, then it was just like that was blocked off. He was within the bounds of holy territory. The minute he stepped over the fringes or the border into the territory where God had the bush burning, he stepped on holy ground. God spoke to him and said, “Take off your shoes.” Literal shoes he took off. What’s that got to do with “holy territory”? Well, there is the awe and the reverence of God that you know when you come to holy territory that you cannot keep on shuffling or scuffling or in awkwardness, just keep right on for the sake of keeping on, for doggedness. Because I don’t know what would have happened to him if he hadn’t taken off his shoes. He took them off, praise God.

And as we step over the border on to holy ground, there should be the awesomeness which the Word of God says, “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.” Fear – well, just to say the word “fear” – you get the Scripture and it says, “Perfect love casts out fear,” so what are you going to do with that? But the fear is the awesomeness, the fear that you will displease Him, that’s the fear of God – that you will displease Him and that you will walk on something where you don’t belong. Or you will do something that you are not supposed to do. It’s not intimidation, it’s getting to assurance. Because then you can get intimidated and say, “Oh, I’ll never do anything,” as happens with so many people, they get their pride hurt and they never get over that pride that is so hurt that they were told or they were called down or were told to be cautious or they were warned to be careful, so they just get that knocked out and they’re no good for anything. Here again, as with everything else, there has to be the happy medium. Because you can get into the place that you never want to bother again – your pride has been hurt and you have been stuck on that, so you can get stuck on that for 10 years, 10 months, 10 days, 10 minutes – or however long you let it go, that’s how long you are stuck on it.

So then the carefulness of getting onto that ground, so you know, well you’ve been lifted. As I have explained it before, you cannot get above the clouds unless you get into the plane. You take the plane and then you are lifted. The plane is lifted and you are lifted. So you are lifted in the spirit and then when you are there, now to come out with something that is of the same – now you have brought that up with you, so you think that will do you some good, but it doesn’t work. You are above the atmospheric conditions, you are in a new realm, you cannot get out, you have to sit there. You are in the flesh, you have to sit there, you cannot do a thing about getting out and waving to the pilot from outside or say, “Make it a little this,” you are there and you are subject to what the controls are, what is going on. So as you move out in the spirit, then you yourself – that’s where the deadness comes in – that’s where the dying to Christ comes in. That’s what it means to have died here to thus, thus and thus, so that when you get there you are not fought with thus, thus and thus – you haven’t got it out there to start to work with and say, “Just a minute, all this comes in.” So you are out there and you are free – you are supposed to be! – as a bird. In the Lord, you are moving.

With Moses it happened right on earth. He didn’t get lifted up in an airplane. He stepped over the boundary. Then the Lord says, “Moses, take off your shoes.” Why? “This is holy ground.” So he must have been very precautious. He must have been very careful as he stepped on that. There was a fire going and it was burning and burning and the bush was never consumed. Of course, as the explanation is, he was seeing Israel that is always being in the fires of whatever they were to go through and still will go through, but they are never burnt up, they never were finished with. The Jews as a nation, as a people, as a remnant, will never be finished. And as he saw these fires burning and burning – “I will now stop and see why this is never consumed.” He was not figuring the Lord had anything to do with it. “I just want to see.” It was a natural looking thing to him. It wasn’t natural – it was naturally burning, but supernaturally burning, because it was burning by God’s fire and the bush never finished. And as he stepped aside and said, “I will now see,” the Lord spoke to him. It was the same Lord that had spoken to him before. He got in the connection again. He got in the line again. Forty years is a long time, I don’t know just what communion he had with the Lord but surely it was not supernatural as he was not in the place yet where he could be put into the supernatural, and the Lord spoke to him there in the burning bush:

“Moreover, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” So the Lord not only introduces Himself but reestablishes himself, “Look, I am the same One, and I am the same One that you know and the same One that your first father knew, the father of faith, Abraham – Isaac and Jacob. Those words are just beautiful! He is not only just introducing Himself after 40 years say, I don’t know just what Moses had, but “I am the same God.” There was some sort of a cutoff. “I am the same God not only you know and have known, but I am the same God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

“And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God,” there it was, he was afraid, he was afraid to look upon God. “And the Lord said, ‘I have surely seen the afflictions of my people which are in Egypt and have heard their cries by reason of the taskmasters.” Still the people, His people. You could cry, couldn’t you, He is listening to their cries, because of what was happening to them. Why had Moses fled? Because he had to flee. Why did he have to flee? Because he was moved with compassion at seeing strength his people being persecuted and he rose in his own strength to do something and could not do it so he had to flee. But “I am still that God, that same God, and I still am interested and wanting My people to be freed.

“For I know their sorrows and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them back out of that land unto a good land and a large…. I know their affliction. You know how much God is concerned and how much He is connected with suffering, with hardship, and with the tortures and with all they were going through, and here it is all this time. Of course, it is a very long time in the life of a man, the life of a person, or say it’s something in the life of a nation, not too much, considering man, but all this time had been going on while he was out of the picture entirely – but let’s renew it now – that was why he left. He always had it, Moses, but now “let’s renew it now and I have come down to help them – to deliver them.” Praise God, surety.

What did Moses do then? “Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?” Then remembering how he had flown in the past to do something and couldn’t do it because it was in his flesh, he had not the carefulness or the precision that he needed.

I often think of little Henry or one little boy in my Sunday School class. I had asked them the next week, “What did we learn now about Moses? Why did Moses take off his shoes?” And the little boy said, “So his feet would fit in those holes.” I said, “What holes?” He said, “Didn’t you say it was holey ground?” But it still has the lesson.

He took off his shoes so he would fit into the plan of God. Because if he hadn’t taken off his shoes, he could never have fit. But in those 40 years those feet were being made ready to fit in those holes, you could say. Because now he is saying, “Who am I” and he is a different Moses. He tried and then he realized so he hid. Now he is not out slaying anybody and trying to do it in his own strength. So his feet, he was ready for the position and ready for the place to fit in and he was fitting in it, God was getting him ready to fit in it. Praise God, so “Take off your shoes, Moses,” and he was fitting right into the supernatural after 40 years of just plugging it along.

Now it is going to be supernatural, because the miracles are going. The water is going to turn into blood. The lice are coming upon the land. The frogs are coming upon the land, and the different things. One thing, as you know, the miracles that happened after that. How many were there? Ten times the miracles until the death of the firstborn of the Egyptians or anybody that would not do put the blood on the lintel posts. Also the evil angels came.

From then on, he was no more Moses of the natural, he was Moses of the supernatural, and his walk and his works were not only preordained by God but stepping here what God had up there, he stepped right, not just this little ground, it was supernatural. It didn’t mean that he had to carry that little piece, that little box of what he stepped on – like people do, they do over to the different places or Montserrate or where, and take a little piece of the ground, or chip off a piece of the cross, if I could only have a locket of it around me, if the Pope would only bless this. You have a little thing on the wall, the Pope is there, he blessed that, he gave it – this carrying around wouldn’t have done anything. That was supernatural and blessed ground. We don’t know where it is and who cares! Thank the Lord we don’t know where it is, that piece of ground. But he stepped into the supernatural, praise God, there he was moving in the supernatural. All that he did after that was – naturally he was walking on the ground, naturally he was running toward Pharaoh, naturally he was speaking to Pharaoh – but it was all supernatural.

“Let My people go,” the supernatural. “Let My people go,” saith the Lord. The arguments, the arguments – well, let it go.

You see Moses back off the scene and say, “Well, if you don’t want to do that, goodbye.”

“No come back, please, get these plagues off my people, come back again, I will do this and do that.” The awful time they had there until he let them go and then retreated and then recanted and said I’ll have to go, “Get all the horsemen, get all the carriages, get all the coaches and let’s chase them and race them to the Red Sea,” and when he got there, what happened? He plunged into the depths into the darkness of hell forever. Never any hope. Because the supernatural had gotten the piece of ground right through the Red Sea, praise God.

None of the supernatural brought death but brought life to the right people, always to the right people, the supernatural. Here a piece of ground you could walk on. The Sea is all around. There was nothing but a sea and Pharaoh there in the back of them and the sea in the front of them. He said, “Lord, what must I do now?”

He said, “Use what you have in your hand.”

“Lord, you have brought me to this place.”

“Use what you have in your hand,” and when the rod went down the dry land appeared. So wonderful.

Oh, I like that so much, “And the wind blew all night long,” and the wind blew all night long and what happened – the sea was congealed and they went through to the other side.

Well, rush down there, “Let’s go in, they did it, we can do it.” It doesn’t work for you. Blood and frogs and lice and flies and all hell, death – all that worked until the final death of the whole thing.

But the supernatural Moses got hold of that day and he got into it and he was moving in the supernatural, he was not moving in the natural. And it had to be supernatural. Nothing else could have done it. Who could have freed those poor people from Egypt – Egypt, the mighty nation? The Pharaoh, the mightiest one of the day. Who could free them? All the chariots and all the horses and all the gold and all the silver everything was in the hands of the other party. But, praise God, power and glory and light and strength and deliverance, freedom, everything – was in the hands of the servant of God because he was connected. He was so connected with the supernatural that he could make the way in the darkness. The light was right there as he spoke and went forth. Praise God, the supernatural of God. And all the digging and donging and going forth in the natural what does it do if we can’t get above it.

There is where we have to be and there is where we have to be careful, because the least little thing can knock it out. It is just that fine. It is an instrument that fine, the supernatural, that anything in you or me or anybody can knock it all out. It is that delicate an operation that it can be knocked out. One thing of your will or your way or your going on in what you have done or want to do or something – it all falls down over your head and you are just in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong way.

Praise God. Oh, that is so beautiful to me that he could step that day. And he stepped and forever and ever and ever. There it was. God’s will was done on earth as it was done in heaven. He wanted those Hebrews to be free. Whatever they did afterwards was up to them, but they got free, the whole company.

Pharaoh said, “Just go out there for three days and then come back.” “We go forever, we will not leave a hoof, we take everything and are never coming back.” Praise God, they could say and speak or Moses could say and speak what he knew would be coming to pass, he would never be back, and they never went back. Praise God. Right out of Egypt. My God, for the Jews, we pray thee. “Let My people go” saith the Lord.

Of course, that takes in more than the Jews, it takes in the remnant, the Body of Christ – “Let my people go,” saith the Lord. There have to be those that can stand and shout the victory, and go on to victory that the multitude of however many will follow. Death to some, life to others. Bondage for some. What happened to the nation after that, do you know Mark?

(Mark: It is all sort of cloudy at that point. Whenever a nation loses a battle they try to cover it up so you never hear anything more about it.) That is a very good point, a very good answer. Especially when the victory is the Lords, then you never hear anything about it. Of course, we have a silence on that in the Word of God, too, but we know they dropped in. I always think of them as bloated bodies floating on the water, that was the end of being against God.