Sid Roth

JOHN:  Yes, he led Egypt out of the audience, that’s what we’re doing right now! (laughter) I got a, when Moses led Israel out of Egypt where was their destination. Everybody say it really loud.

AUDIENCE:                 The Promised Land!

JOHN:  The Promised Land. No. What did Moses say to Pharaoh, what did Moses say to Pharaoh over and over again. “Thus saith the Lord: Let my people go that they might worship me in the desert.” Why do you want to bring them out of Egypt into the Promised Land without first bringing them to the “Promiser? Okay, if you bring the children of Israel out of Egypt into the Promised Land without first bringing them to the Promiser, you’re going to, you’re going to get a bunch of people that are going to make the Promised Land into a place of idolatry.

AUDIENCE:                 Wow, that’s good.

JOHN:  Okay? This is what we did in the 80’s and the 90’s in the church. We preached more of what Jesus would do for us rather than who He is. So we spawned disciples that started seeking God for what He can do for me not who He is, right, and that’s like a woman who marrying a man because he’s got a lot of money. She marries him out of love but for the wrong reasons. You see I find something so amazing. I look at Israel. Israel is abused by Egypt. Correct? They live in the slums, they eat the worst, wear the worst, they’re working all their lives to build somebody else’s inheritance. Their children are put to death by the Egyptians. They come out of Egypt and they’re constantly saying: “Let’s go back to Egypt, it was better for us.” But then I look at Moses. Now think about Moses. He’s raised in the most beautiful home on the planet “cause his grandfather Pharaoh is the wealthiest man in the whole planet. So that means he’s got a Maserati, he’s probably got a Lamborghini, he’s probably got a Porsche, he’s probably got an Audi, the top of the line Audi, he’s probably got every Harley in the collections, he’s got every “I-” this and “ I-” that. He’s got assistants. He can have any woman he wants in the whole nation and can even ask for other nations because he’s a prince. But he comes out of Egypt and he never once says “I want to go back to Egypt, it’s better for me back in Egypt.” And what’s the difference? He had one encounter with God face-to-face at that bush. Israel had a chance when he came down on the mountain. You see you have to remember, the burning bush was at Mount Sinai. So what Moses wants to do is he wants to bring these people straight to the One that he met at the bush. Because getting in to the presence of God, that took away his appetite from the world forever! He never, ever said “I want to go back to Egypt.” Now remember Egypt is a “type” [symbol] of the world. His appetite for the world was gone, because he had one encounter with God. You see we’re always trying to get people to pray a formula “sinner’s prayer” at churches. And don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to make a movement of people saying “well, you know that’s not what we’re going to do.” But what one thing I’m saying is that we should add on to that is why don’t we give the Holy Spirit time to minister in the presence of God to them so that now all of a sudden they’ve tasted the heavenly gift? Okay? Moses tasted, he saw, he tasted at the burning bush. He said I’ve gotta bring these people out there. So he brings them out to that mountain. God says, all right, Moses, you tell them the whole reason I brought you out of Egypt was to bring you to myself. Go look it up in Exodus 19, it’s amazing. The whole reason I brought them out of Egypt was to bring them to myself. It’s in there. Read it. It’s amazing. So He says I’m so excited I’m going to come down there and introduce myself to ‘em on the third day. So get ‘em ready the next two days and the third day I’m going to come down, which is prophetic, and I’m not going to go into that. So Moses gets them all ready, they wash their clothes, God comes down on the mountain and what do they do? They all run away, and they say Moses, we can’t handle God. You talk to God, tell us whatever he says, we’re going to hear and do it. And that’s amazing to me, right? And so Moses is heart-broken. And so his response to the people is Exodus 20:20, where He says, “Do not fear,” now look at me, do not fear because God’s come to test you. What’s the test? To see if His fear is in you so that you may not sin. Wait a minute. Do not fear, because God’s come to test you to see if His fear is in you so that you may not sin. He’s not contradicting himself, he’s differentiating between being scared of God and the fear of the Lord. As I said earlier, the person who fears God, well the person who’s scared of God, I should say it this way, has something to hide. That’s why Adam hides from the presence of the Lord. Okay? But the person who fears God has nothing to hide. Okay? They’re scared to be away from God. So the first definition of the fear of the Lord is to be terrified of being away from Him. You know I’ll never forget, back in the 1990’s, it was 1994, Jim Bakker had read a book that I had written called “Victory in the Wilderness,” it was the first book I had ever written. He read it in prison. He had been in prison for 4 years. When he read it he contacted his assistant from prison and he said    could you please find this author and ask him to come visit me in prison. So I remember I agree to do it. And I walked into the prison and he comes out in his prison garb and grabs me and he holds me and he hugs me and he won’t let me go. Finally he grabs my shoulders and he said “Did you write it or a ghost writer?” I said, “No sir, I wrote it. I’ve gone through a wilderness but not near what you’ve gone through.” He said “We have so much to talk about. Sit down.” And I remember he looked at me and he said this prison was not God’s judgment on my life, it was his mercy on my life. He said because John, honestly, if I would have kept living the way I was living I would have ended up in hell forever. When he said that to me I thought, okay, you have my attention, complete, total attention. So after about 20 minutes I felt very, very comfortable with him and I thought I’m going to ask him some questions. My first question was “Jim, when did you fall out of love with Jesus?” At what point did you stop loving Jesus? Because You have to understand as a little boy I grew up in Whitehall Michigan which was 15 minutes away from where he pastored in Muskegon Michigan. So I said, “When did you stop loving Jesus, how’d it happen?”  And he looked at me and he said “I didn’t.” What? What do you mean you didn’t fall out of love with Jesus? I said, Jim, you committed adultery with Jessica Hahn, you did all this mail fraud, all this stuff you’re in jail for. What do you mean you didn’t fall out of love with Jesus? And I’m perplexed and he sees I’m perplexed. And he looked right at me and he said, “I didn’t fear God.” And he said, “There’s millions of Americans just like me. They love Jesus, but they don’t fear God.” You see, you have to understand the New Testament teaches that He is Abba, Daddy. But the same New Testament says He’s the consuming fire. Okay? So you have to understand something. If you don’t have the love of God and you don’t have the fear of God you’re going to end up in a rut. How many of you know that Jesus said the road to life is a narrow road? Right? How many of you know that every road’s got two ditches on both sides? Right? So the first ditch is called “legalism.” Now the church in the 1960’s was in a legalistic ditch. Now I wasn’t a Christian back in the 60’s, I didn’t saved until “79. But let me tell you something, I saw the remnants of this legalistic move. Because women would wear their hair up in a bun remember, they didn’t cut their hair and wore it up in a big bun, and they didn’t wear any make-up, and they had dresses down to their ankles. You know you can have a dress down to your ankles, you can have your hair up in a bun, you can have no make-up but still have a seducing spirit up to your eyeballs. Okay? That’s not holiness. Okay? So it was all about an outward form to try to hide a deficiency that was in our hearts and we were in legalism. Right? So what happened in the 60’s? God brings a revelation to the church. You know what the revelation was, he used one man to do it. God is a good God, and something good can happen to you. The man was Oral Roberts, right? And then the Charismatic move began. Right? And we found out our Daddy loved us. What did the love of God do? It delivered us from the ditch of legalism. But you know what we did? We said I went so far from that ditch I’ll never fall in again and we went to the other side of the road and fell into that other ditch. And the other ditch is called lawlessness or lasciviousness, which is an excessive, fleshly, worldly, disobedient lifestyle. And God’s given us a force that keeps us, keeps us out of that ditch. It’s called the fear of the Lord. So you see it takes the love of God and the fear of God to keep us healthy. Okay? It’s like two sides of a coin, you got heads and tails, if you don’t have tails you don’t have a coin, you need ‘em both. And so when we understand that God is Abba, Daddy, but He’s also the King, He’s also the consuming fire we understand that yes, we can jump in His lap, there are times for that but then there’s other times, let me tell you, I didn’t feel it was the time to jump in His lap when He came into Brazil like He did. You understand what I’m talking about.   When I was in Malaysia and those girls, those women were getting baptized in fire. That’s just not a time you’re jumping in his lap. And so there is a right way to understand that God is so much greater and more complex than our simple little, well He’s Daddy and here’s grace and it doesn’t matter how you live you’re going to get to heaven. That is a complete lack of the fear of the Lord. And you see if you’ve got the fear of the Lord, Paul says, it will perfect holiness. We work out our salvation, in the New Testament it says, with fear and trembling. If you look at the church in the earlyÖ in the Book of Acts, you know what? They were all drunk on the Day of Pentecost. I mean they were experiencing Daddy’s love, so they got a little too familiar, they got a little bit loose, and so now this couple who’s in good standing, they’re members of the Church of Jerusalem bring up an offering and it’s a big offering, it’s a big chunk of the land they just sold, and they lay it at Peter’s feet, and the next thing you know they’re dead. And if you read in Acts, chapter 5, verse 11, it says “So great fear came upon the church.” Not upon the city. Yes, it said somewhere else great fear came upon all those who heard these things. Great fear came upon the CHURCH! So what is the fear of the Lord? So first of all it is to be terrified to be away from Him. The person who fears God doesn’t say how close can I get to the line of sin and not fall in. The person who fears God says I want to be so far away, so close to Dad, so close to my Daddy, that I’m so close to Him I can’t even see that line of sin. Okay? That’s the attitude they have. You understand what I’m saying, they’re not saying how close can I get and not, and not fall in. What is it to fear God? It is to venerate Him. That’s a big word which means to honor, to respect, to esteem, to value, to reverence, to stand in awe of Him more than anything or anyone else. We firmly embrace God’s heart so we love what He loves, we hate what He hates, what is important to Him becomes important to us, what is not so important to Him is not so important to us. Remember Jesus said there are weightier matters. Are you with me? What is the evidence that somebody truly has the fear of God in their life? Okay? Now remember, the Holy Spirit, one of His manifestations is the fear of the Lord. Remember He’s the Spirit of wisdom, the Spirit of counsel, the Spirit of might, the Spirit of understanding, the Spirit of knowledge, and the Spirit of the dear of the Lord and Jesus delighted in the fear of the Lord. What is the evidence that somebody truly has the fear of the Lord in their life? Okay? Well, number one, they reverence His presence. I talked about that in Brazil. But the second thing that you see in their life is they tremble at His Word. Do you know how the Bible talks about trembling at His word? What does it means to tremble at His word. Number one it means that you’ll obey Him instantly. Okay? Huh? I, I still see some looks and I want to make sure you’re really clear, [and] you who are watching this video. When I say what is the evidence of the fear of the Lord, let’s put it to you like this way: let’s say I’ve got an outlet and I want to know is there, is that outlet is it live or is it dead? Well if I put a brand new blow dryer in and it’s a working blow dryer in that outlet and I turn the switch on and hot air starts blowing, that’s evidence that that is a good outlet. Correct?

AUDIENCE:                 Yes. That’s right.