The Glory of the Hard Place

The Glory of the Hard Place (by preachit.org)

Exodus 1:9-12 KJV

9 And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: 10 Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. 11 Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses. 12 But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel.

Verse 12 says, “But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.” I’d like for you to get the picture of what’s happening now.

Here’s the children of Israel:

• They went down into Egypt during the time of Joseph.
• Joseph had been sold into slavery and sold off into Egypt.
• There they are down in Egypt, and the famine comes to the land of Canaan.
• Joseph’s brethren finally have to go to Egypt in order to get food.
• They wind up living in Egypt.
• The years pass, and finally Joseph dies.

A new generation comes on, and then finally there’s a new Pharaoh over Egypt that didn’t know Joseph, didn’t remember the way God had used him to preserve that nation of Egypt during the time of the famine. So he said:

• “I’ll tell you what we’re going to have to do.”
• “These Israelites, there’s too many of them.”
• “If we get into some kind of a battle, it’s going to get rough because they’ll side in with the other armies, and we’ll be defeated, and they’ll get their liberty.”
• “They won’t have to serve us anymore. Let’s afflict them with heavy burdens.”

And the Bible said, “The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.”

I’d like to preach by the help of God this morning on the glory of the hard place.

• The glory of the hard place.
• Well, here they are, the children of Israel.
• They’re God’s people.
• They’re not just an ordinary people.
• That’s God’s people.
• And here they are now.
• They have worked the land, and they have produced, and everything should be going great for them.
• When Joseph died, they no longer became the children of Joseph, but they became the children of Israel again.
• They were outsiders.

They weren’t supposed to be in that place as far as the Egyptians considered. And so when Pharaoh came and he said, “Now, I don’t owe these people anything.” He said, “They’re mightier than we are, and we’re going to have to do something about it.”

• “Let’s work them from early in the morning until late at night.”
• “Let’s put such a load of burden upon them that they’ll be hard pressed.”
• “When nightfall comes, they’ll go home and eat their meal and fall in the bed.”
• “The next morning we’ll come and sound revelry, and we’ll get them out of that bed, and we’ll make them hit the fields and work and labor and toil, and we’ll keep them bowed down under a heavy burden.”

But you know what? The Bible said the more they afflicted them:

• The more of a load they placed on them
• The more responsibilities they gave them in the fields
• The harder they worked them
• The more lashes across their backs they got from the whip

The Bible said the more they multiplied and grew.

I want to tell you something about the church, friend. The church has never in its history prospered when everything was going well for the church. There has never been a day, not one moment, friend, when everything was going good for the church that the church really had a glorious revival.

It was when:

• They began to kill the Christians in Jerusalem
• They began to chop the heads off of the Apostles
• They began to persecute them and throw them into the dungeons without food and drink

That’s when the church began to spread. It never would have left Jerusalem if it had not been that some affliction came to the church. Hallelujah.

I don’t know about you, friend, but I’m willing to pay any price to see a real Holy Ghost revival with this great nation of ours. I want to see something happen to my generation.

I want to see something happen to kids that I grew up with and graduated with. I want to see my generation touched by the power of a Holy Ghost revival.

There hasn’t been a real revival. I’m talking about a real revival since back near the early 40s when:

• The Depression days came
• People didn’t have boats to ride in and airplanes to fly in and sports cars to wheel around in
• They didn’t have money jingling in their pockets
• When they got to a place they didn’t know where the next meal was coming from

You know where they turned, don’t you? They turned back to God, and they said, “We need help. We need food. Oh, somebody’s got to help us, and there’s nobody to help us but God.”

Oh, I do not want a Depression to come. There’s a lot of talk about it, you know. They’re talking about recession and depression and obsession and private possession and everything, you know.

I don’t think there’s going to be too much hope for our world economically. I don’t think it’s going to get too much better because the Bible talks too much about a world government and a world church and the world monetary system that’s already been set up and right now in Atlanta, Georgia and in various places right here in the United States they already are getting to the place where nobody carries money anymore. They just go in with a card and a number and that’s the end of it.

I don’t want to see the economy fall out from under us and for us to lose our homes and cars and all of that. But if that’s what it takes to give us a real spiritual touch of God in our lives I say, “Lord, give us what we need because I want to be saved. I want to make it all the way.”

Let the church say … I want to make it. The children of Israel, the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.

God knows what it takes to get us really in the place we ought to be. Universally, worldwide, as far as I can determine, I don’t believe the church is really ready for the rapture.

Now, there are people ready. There are people right here that are ready to go. I believe that with all my heart.

There are people probably in every church in America, practically every church, that love God and are sincere and they’re welcoming God and they’re ready to go. But when I consider the whole church and everybody that’s baptized in His name and filled with the Holy Ghost, I doubt if really the church is ready to meet the Lord.

Something’s going to have to happen. There’s too many people:

• Sitting on the perimeter
• Sitting on the outer circle
• Too many people that pretend to be serving God and they’re not serving God
• They sit on the outside and they criticize and they fight and they pick and they talk and they gossip and they slander…
• They fail to pay the tithes and they don’t give offerings and all that kind of thing.
• Too many people that are trying to hang on to an experience they received 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago.

What we need is for every church to be so on fire for God that it becomes a bomb every time a sinner walks in that place. They’re touched by the Spirit and the power of God. Oh, hallelujah. Oh, I’m telling you the truth.

I want this evangelist to be fired up for God. I’m tired of being ordinary. I want my soul set on fire.

I want to be a follower of the Holy Ghost. Oh, hallelujah. Praise God.

The Bible says that when the Lord comes back the bride hath made herself ready. Praise God.

The parable of the 10 virgins is effective in trying to figure out how many are going to make it, how many are not. I really don’t claim that that’s the way we ought to figure it. The Lord alone knows how many are going to make it and how many are not going to make it.

It might be surprising. I might not make it. You folks don’t know.

I want to make it. I’m trying to make it.

I’m doing everything I can to make it. But nobody knows our hearts like God knows our hearts.

If the parable of the 10 virgins really can be used as a type of the rapture of the church or the coming of the Lord, then there still is a long way to go for the bride to really be ready to go.

If it takes affliction, if it takes some kind of trouble coming to the church. Here again, I’m not asking for it, but I’m not predicting it.

If that’s what it takes to get me ready and get you ready. Oh friend, we have to pray. “Come on Lord, give us what we need. We want to go all the way. We want to make it.” Hallelujah.

Right?

I am convinced of one thing. I believe this with all my heart. I believe that before the Lord comes, I believe that there’s going to be a distinct line drawn between those that really love Him and those that don’t love Him.

All right. Now, somebody’s going to jump over to the parable of the wheat and the tares. And they’re going to say, let them along because the Lord is going to separate.

I believe that He is going to separate. Right. People that put on a phony facade and a false front, you know, and they look pious and they seem pious, but on the inside they’re ravening wolves.

There’s going to come a day, friend, when if you’re going to stand up for Jesus, you’re going to have to be pure. You’re going to have to be holy on the inside too. And you’re going to have to be doing the will of God from the heart.

That’s right!

If it takes it, let affliction come. Because the children of Israel had all their affliction. When:

• The heavy load was placed upon them
• While they worked at the mill
• While they drove the oxen in the fields
• While they cultivated
• While they picked crops and fresh wheat
• They worked and they built cities and hauled blocks that weighed ten tons apiece and stacked them one upon the other
• When they built the cities of Ramses and Pithom

I want to tell you something. Behind all of that, and underneath the groaning of the children of Israel, there was some glory that was going to be revealed. In that hard place in the history of Israel.

If you read on a few more chapters, you’ll find that the Lord spoke to a man by the name of Moses. And he said, “I have heard the cry and the groaning of my people in Egypt. And I have come down to deliver them.”

I just somehow can’t imagine how the rapture is going to take place whenever things go unruly for the church. I believe pressures are going to be brought into play. I believe there’s going to be a people saying, “Come on, Lord. Come and take us out of here. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.”

Oh, hallelujah. Thank you. I preached a message a while ago on the cry. And I talked about:

• The cry of Egypt, of Israel and Egypt
• The cry of Solomon and Gomorrah
• The cry of the blood of Abel that cried from the ground for vengeance

I’m convinced there’s also a cry going to come from the heart of God’s people. The cry that:

• Brought God down to avenge Abel
• Brought God down to destroy Sodom
• Brought him down to bring Israel out of Egypt

There’s also going to be a cry that’s going to bring him down to deliver us:

• Not to some kind of a temporary abode
• He’s coming back to take us into that city where the Lamb is the Light
• We’re going to eat the Marriage Supper of the Lamb

John said I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day. And I saw the Holy City. The New Jerusalem coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for a husband. I’m telling you, friend, we’re going to a city that knows no night. We’re going to a city that knows no ending.

Aren’t you glad for that blessed hope you have in Jesus? Glory. Praise God. Praise God.

There was glory to be revealed in the heartbreak.

Because in their hardest hour of affliction there came their greatest deliverance. Because it was from that bitter bondage that God was going to lead them out with the plagues.

He was going to lead them:

• Through the Red Sea that was to open up and roll backward far enough that three and a half million people could go through on dry ground
• He was going to take them out of that affliction and lead them into the wilderness where their leader would smite a rock and water would gush out of that rock enough to quench the thirst of three and a half million people plus all the animals
• He was going to lead them out of that affliction to the glory of waking up in the morning and looking around the ground and seeing little white stuff like coriander seed

There was miraculous bread out of Heaven that came down when the dew fell and melted when the sun came up. That has sustained the children of Israel throughout all their years of wandering in the wilderness.

Oh, let affliction come because if it comes we can be assured there’s going to be some glory to be revealed in the hard place.

I’m glad this gospel’s still living on. Hey man, the Word of God is quick it’s alive and it’s powerful. Hey, man It’s gonna live forever when everything else is gone and Heaven and Earth has burned up and rolled away… Hey, man, the Word of God’s gonna stand. That’s why we preach what we preach because it’s in this book friend, and it’s gonna stand. It’s gonna stand forever.

After they had been beaten, and their backs were bloody red, they were sitting there in a dungeon in Philippi, in that murky, dark, stinky jail. They sat there, and at midnight, when their greatest affliction had just happened to them—when they had just faced what a lot of us probably wouldn’t have been able to face—they took it all and never regretted, never grumbled.

But the Bible says, “At midnight, Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God.” Amen! While their backs were stripped, while their character had been ruined, and while they were in that place of deep humiliation and suffering, in the middle of all of that, something glorious happened!

Because while they began to worship God:

• The foundations of that jail began to shake—hallelujah!
• The old door creaked open, and they were set free
• As a result of that, they baptized the Philippian jailer who had the oversight of them. That’s wonderful!
• You know, somebody got baptized—thank God, they had a good service! But you know, what’s the big deal about just baptizing somebody?

Well, in a little while, his whole family got baptized! But what’s the big deal? What kind of revival was that? Did they really have something?

I want you to read a little further—pass over Acts, Romans, and Corinthians, and go over to Galatians and Ephesians. Then you’ll find a little book by the name of Philippians—The Epistle of Paul to the Philippians.

Where did the Philippian church come from? I’ll tell you where it came from:

• It came from backs beaten blood red.
• It came from a hard place in the lives of two people who suffered for the name of Jesus. Hallelujah! Amen!
• Because a jailer got baptized, a church was birthed in Philippi. That’s glory to be revealed in the hard place!

Friend, you might as well be assured of one thing:

• If you trust God in your hour of deepest affliction and suffering, somewhere down the road, your eyes are going to be opened
• You’re going to see the glory of God revealed in that hard place!

And in the book of Philippians, Paul said, “Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4). Do you know why he could say that? Because when he wrote to them:

• He was thinking about the hard place
• Then he looked down at his hand, saw the pen, and realized he was writing to a church that was born out of suffering.

Let’s stand to our feet and thank God for The Glory of the Hard Place.