The Rod of God

Trembling at the word, that’s the first thing that happened with Moses. He suddenly realized the power that was in his rod and he ran from it. He was overawed.

The second thing that he did was to take hold of the rod. By faith he gripped it and it became a rod again in his hand. So when we’ve trembled, then we need to take hold of God’s word. We need to take a firm grasp on the word of God. And there’s a scripture near the end of the book of Psalms which to me is really impressive. Psalm 149, the last few verses. Psalm 149, beginning at verse 5:

“Let the saints be joyful in glory; let them sing aloud on their beds.”

The saints, I believe, is all true dedicated believers. The word saint, Hebrew word hasid. How many of you have ever heard of Hasidic Judaism, very ultra Orthodox? It means somebody who trembles at the word of God, who’s totally committed to it.

“Let the saints be joyful in glory; let them sing aloud on their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand, to execute vengeance on the nations, and punishments on the peoples; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute on them the written judgment; this honor have all his saints.”

It’s an amazing series of statements if you can identify yourself as belonging to the saints. It says that we have to have the two-edged sword which is the word of God in our hands, the high praises of God in our mouth; and with it we can execute vengeance on the nations, punishment on the peoples—are you seeing yourself in this scenario? Do you realize that this is something God has for you? To bind their kings with chains, their nobles with fetters of iron. I do believe that means in part the satanic principalities that rule the nations but not exclusively.

And then it says in the closing verse to execute on the nations the judgment written. And it says this honor or this privilege have all his saints. Have you ever pondered on that? God has given us the privilege of executing judgment on the nations. You see, the prayer life of many of us would be different if we began to see ourselves in that light. It says to execute the judgment written, or the written judgment. Where is the judgment written, where do we find the written judgment? That’s right, hold it up. That’s right, it’s in here. We are not the ones to make the judgments. God has made the judgments but we have the privilege of executing the judgments on the nations, on their rulers. In other words, we have a unique and decisive part to play in history. See how important this is? And I’d have to say how far away many, many Christians are from even beginning to understand all that God has made available to us and all that God expects from us.

But I want to emphasize we don’t make the judgments. We find the judgments in the written word of God but we execute them. How do we execute God’s judgments? By what one word? Proclaiming, that’s right. We release the judgments of God that are already written in the Scripture. We proclaim them, we are the heralds. We stand in the marketplace of the world and we say, “O yea, O yea”, and then we announce the decree of God.

I think I’m going to try to be very practical and down to earth. We come to the next stage after he’d grasped the rod. What did he do next when he got back to Egypt? He stretched it out. He exercised the authority that was in the rod. I want to suggest to you that we need to do the same. We need to take the written word of God and we need to stretch it out in any situation where the authority of God is needed. And one of the ways—I’m not saying it’s the only way but I think in many ways it’s the most effective way to release the authority of God into a situation is by proclaiming in faith and under the anointing of the Holy Spirit—because remember, the word must go with the breath. But when the two go together, when the breath of God, the Spirit of God propels the word of God out of our mouths we can release it into a situation and it has all the authority of Almighty God in that situation.

See, God didn’t step down off the throne, take the rod out of Moses’ hand and say, “Moses, I’ll do it.” That’s what most of us, I think, expect to happen. God says, “You’ve got the rod. You do it.” But it is called the rod of God in the book of Exodus. It was God’s rod but Moses held it. Moses stretched it out. Moses and Aaron together. It didn’t make any difference whether it was Moses or Aaron. It was the rod that did the job.

So I’m going to take now a whole number of potential situations, beginning with those that are purely personal and going on to those that are national and international and I’m simply going to show you different ways that we can stretch out the rod. Now, I’m going to ask Ruth to come again and stand beside me. And all the proclamations that we’re going to make now are proclamations that we regularly make in our personal devotions. I tell you, our personal devotions are not always quiet times. Sometimes we shout. After all, to proclaim is to shout out. I don’t say there’s more power in shouting, it just depends on how the Holy Spirit prompts you. We probably have somewhere between one and two hundred proclamations that we make regularly. And when Ruth was fighting for her life this was our number one weapon. Some of these proclamations we have done thousands of times.

You see, if you’ve got a lot of negative thinking in your background and a lot of negative influences, just saying it once doesn’t change much, maybe. You’ve got to go on saying it until you think it. Until when any situation arises that’s the way you react.

I’m British by background, as most of you know. I tell my British people so I’m not afraid to say it to Americans, British people tend to be extremely negative. They’re pessimists by nature. I was a pessimist of the pessimists. God has been gradually revolutionizing me, it’s taken Him a long while. But one of my strange mental habits, I think it must go back to childhood, when I’m in a situation I automatically begin to think of all the trouble that could happen, all the problems that could arise. I get in a car to drive and I think now if there was an accident, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe some of you have the same problem. And I’ve been using the weapon of the word in many different ways but there’s a Scripture, I can’t give you the exact reference. It’s in Jeremiah 29 and the Lord is to speaking to Israel and He says:

“I know the plans that I have for you, plans of good and not of evil...”

Another translation says plans of prosperity and not of calamity.

“...to give you a future and a hope.”

So every time I find myself beginning to entertain some negative picture of some disaster, I say, “Lord, I thank you that I know the plans you have for me, plans of good and not of evil, plans of prosperity and not of calamity, to give me a future and a hope.” And I may have to say it several times. But at the end of that the negative has been dissipated. And I have a strong, confident, positive attitude. Ruth, I don’t think, has learned this one. Have you? No. So I’ll say it. It’s not one of our repertoire but it probably will be. The Lord says:

“I know the plans that I have for you. Plans of good and not of evil, plans of prosperity and not of calamity, to give you a future and a hope.”

You start to say that every time you step into your car. You’re going to have a good journey. You’re going to accomplish the things that you set out to do. Your attitude makes a lot of difference. It makes a difference the way people treat you. You walk into a store and you walk in with that positive attitude and they’ll do something for you. If you walk in expecting trouble or bad service or discourtesy, that’s probably what you’ll get. See?

Okay. That’s just by the way, but as I say to people, there’s no extra charge for that.

Now we’re going to take some pattern proclamations. But first of all, remember it must be the breath with the word. In other words, it has to be the Holy Spirit. And secondly, what we do—and I think it’s a very good thing to do—is we personalize it. So where the Bible says you, we say we. In other words, we’re saying this applies to us here and now.