Your Time of Freedom Has Come

Now, it had been hundreds of years that the people of God of that time, in Moses' time, had been in captivity. The estimates range, but safe to say it was a long, long time. It was in the hundreds of years that they were in captivity in one of the most powerful nations in the known world at that time, who were intent on making them slaves to their purposes, and intent on never letting them go because it was a source of cheap labor for them.

Pharaohs could build monuments to their own egos, and they had this captivated workforce that could do all the work for them, so they really, it was a win-win as they saw it for them, but it was a lose-lose for the people of God of that time, having to get up in the morning early to find straw near the end of their captivity to make bricks to build monuments for men's egos. Terrible, terrible time that they were in. No hope, no future, no chance for advancement, no education for their families.

Everything taken away. All that is there is darkness and captivity. And then one day, two old men come to town.

They were 80 and 83 years old, and one was carrying a stick, and he had a stutter. And his brother was a more eloquent speaker, but a little more distant from the things of God than Moses was. And then they came, and they told the people, the time of your freedom has come.

God is going to set you free. Now, I have a question in my heart. Why did the people believe them? Why did they, after four, probably in the vicinity of three to four hundred years of captivity in that timeframe, the estimates vary, these two old men come to town, and after all that time with one of the most powerful armies in the world holding them captive, they've been slaves.

They were born. All of the people of that time were born into slavery. They'd known nothing else but captivity.

And suddenly, these two old men come to town, and they say, your freedom has come. And the Scripture tells us they believed them. So I want to talk about why did they believe these two men, and why should you believe tonight? You who are online listening this evening, and you've been captivated by drugs or loneliness or depression or illness or heartache, whatever your situation is, you've been captivated as long as you can remember.

And you're now listening, you've come to this prayer meeting, and now you're hearing a voice that's telling you this evening, and I'm telling you with authority that your time of freedom has come. You can get up, and you can get out. There is victory for you.

So in your heart, you're probably saying, why should you believe this speaker tonight? Why should you believe the songs that have been sung on this platform this evening? Why should you believe the testimonies that have been shared, the prayers that have been prayed? Why should you believe that it will make any difference in your life? Let's go back to the beginning, where Moses in Exodus chapter 3, God comes to Moses in the wilderness. He knew he had been called at one time to do a great work for the kingdom of God, but he felt no doubt that he had lost the opportunity. He had been impulsive.

He had a bad temper. He'd let it get a hold of him, and because of it, he had to flee into a foreign place. And he found himself not just only in the desert, but the Scripture says in the backside of the desert.

It doesn't get any worse. It was like as far into the desert probably as you can go. But it's there where God met this man.

And the Lord said in Exodus chapter 3 verse 7, I've surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt, and I've heard their cry because of their taskmasters. In other words, because of their slavery and what they were forced to do every day. I've heard their cries.

Realistically, it had to be an all-day cry. I know that I'm speaking to somebody today that your cry is not just at night or not just in the morning. It's morning till night you cry.

God, I can't take this anymore. As one of our prayer requests tonight that came in, just help me. Or I don't remember exactly how it was worded, but it was, God, you know what I need.

And the Lord said, I've heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I've come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a good and a large land, a land flowing with milk and honey. In other words, a land of sweetness, a land where honey, according to the Old Testament, brings light to the eyes, a land of health to our physical being and to our spiritual being, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

In other words, a place that belongs to you that you're not occupying yet. Something else is in that place. But God says, I'm coming to take you out of where you are, and I'm going to take you into another place, and I'm going to drive out everything that opposes you in the place that I have determined to take you.

Now that's a word for somebody tonight. Listen to me carefully. The Lord's speaking to you.

Your time of freedom has come. He's going to take you out of where you are, and he's going to take you into a place that you haven't been yet. And no matter what kind of obstacles are there telling you you can't come in, the Lord says, I will remove them.

You walk with me, and I will remove those obstacles, and I will bring you into the place that I have destined your life to be in. He says to Moses in verse 9, Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to me. And I've also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them.

Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. And so here comes Moses, here comes his brother Aaron, into this nation called Egypt. And the first place they go is to the elders of Israel.

In verse 16 of chapter 3, Go and gather the elders of Israel together, and say to them, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared to me, saying, I've surely visited you and seen what is done to you in Egypt. And I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hibbites, and the Jebusites, to a land flowing with milk and honey. Then they will heed your voice, and you shall come, you and the elders of Israel, to the king of Egypt.

And you shall say to him, The Lord God of Hebrews has met with us. Now please let us go three days' journey into the wilderness, that they may sacrifice to the Lord our God. In other words, God said to Moses, Speak to those who are called to lead my people.

Now some of you listening tonight online, you're not just called to get out of captivity. You're actually called to lead. You will lead your families into victory.

You will lead your friends. You will lead, maybe you will be part of a ministry in a church. I don't know.

But you're not called just to come out. You're called to go into something and not to go alone. The calling of God on your life is to be a leader in some capacity in the future.

And God, through your life, will bring others into the same freedom that he's leading you into. In Exodus chapter 4, beginning of verse 1, Moses answered and said, But suppose they will not believe me or listen to my voice. Suppose you have a hard time believing me tonight.

Suppose you're hearing these words and saying, Yeah, over the last couple of hundred years, when people have been raised up and said, We're leaving on Monday and we never left. We're leaving next Friday. We never left.

We're leaving next month. We never left. There have been all kinds of voices.

So why should we listen to your voice? And that's what Moses was saying. But suppose they will not believe me or listen to my voice. Suppose they say, The Lord has not appeared to you.

So the Lord said to him, What is in your hand? And he said, A rod. He said, Cast it on the ground. So he cast it on the ground and it became a serpent and Moses fled from it.

Then the Lord said to Moses, Reach out your hand and take it by the tail. And he reached out his hand and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand, that they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, has appeared to you. Show them, God says, that I give you power over that which formerly overpowered you.

You see, Moses fled from the serpent. And God said, No, I want you to pick it up now. Now the scripture says, interestingly, he picked it up by the tail, which means that when he moved, according to the word of God, to pick up the serpent, it was fleeing from him.

That's quite a thought. And he picked it up by the tail, it became a rod. And one of the signs that God is with us, that God has given us his word is that we're no longer afraid of what we used to be afraid of.

There's an absence of fear has come into our lives. Now I'm speaking to you from my personal life. Some of you online may not know my story.

But for nine years, I suffered from panic attacks from the age of 15 to 24, almost debilitating, put me in the hospital twice. It was a terrible affliction in my life. I never knew when this was going to happen.

And I did everything in my power to subdue my physical body to keep the tension within me abated. But every once in a while, I would lose that battle. And I would collapse, be it in a classroom or at home, wherever the situation was.

It was like hell on earth for me. But when I came to Christ, I was a brand new believer. And I was reading the Bible one day and the scripture said of God before us who can be against us.

And I went that night I felt one of these panic attacks as a new believer in Christ trying to come again. This is this was my serpent. These things that I fled from these things that caused me to take volume like they were candy and drink whiskey to get before I was a Christian to get rid of these these attacks when they came on my life.

But now I was a believer in Christ. So you'd say, well, why should I trust your word tonight? Well, I went down into my living room, I felt one of these panic attacks coming on my life. And I remember the words I said, I said, Satan, you can only kill me tonight if God allows you.

And if he does, I'm going to heaven. So I win. It's win win for me.

I went either way. But I'm going to win this fight tonight. I'm not running from this fear any longer.

I'm not living my life. I remember saying I'm not living my life like this anymore. I said, you throw at me everything you've got, but I throw back at you what I now have in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, I resist you.

And as I stand here, and I'm not embellishing this, I felt a heat hit my feet. It was not just a warmth, it was a heat. It went through my calves, through my legs, through my torso, through my chest, and out the top of my head.

I was set free from nine years of hell. I was set free that night in one minute of time, and I've traveled all over the world. I preached in war-torn areas.

I preached in poverty. I preached when there's danger. I preached in prisons.

And there's a marked absence of fear in my life. Thank God for the victory of Jesus Christ. What if they will not believe you? But God in a type was saying to Moses, what used to cause you to be afraid, you now hold in your hand.

Hallelujah. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a power and love and of a sound mind. Thank God.

I have been set free from fear so I can speak with authority tonight to you to tell you that your prison doors can't hold you any longer. Your time of freedom has come. Jesus Christ died for you.

And when his blood hit that ground, every drop of blood was like a drumbeat in hell itself. He was putting hell on notice. I've come to redeem my people from their captivity, from their oppressors, from everything that was telling them you have no hope and no future.

I've come to set them free, and I'm going to destroy the power of hell and darkness and sin over their lives and bring them into the place that I have destined my people to be. Secondly, he said, if they don't believe the first sign, so I'm going to give you a second sign. Put your hand in your bosom.

So he took his hand and he put it inside his coat. And then he said, take it out. And he took it out and it was rotten.

It was leprosy as white as snow. His flesh was rotting. And he said, now put your hand back in your bosom.

And he put it back in again and he took it out and it was restored like his other flesh. And God said, it will be if they do not believe you nor heed the message of the first sign, they will believe the message of the latter sign. God was saying to Moses, show them that I give you the power to change from the inside out.

If anyone is in Christ Jesus, he becomes or she becomes a new creation. Behold, all things have passed away and all things have become new. I give you power, not only over your former fears, but over your former limitations.

Hallelujah. And I make you into a new creation. I change you all the rot in your heart.

I'll take it away. I'll give you a new heart. He says through an old Testament prophet, I'll give you a new mind.

I'll give you a new spirit. I'll give you a new life. I'll give you a new future.

I'll give you new giftings. I'll give you new hope. I'll give you a new character.

You'll be born again by the God. You'll be transformed. You'll be a different person than the person you used to be in.

I can stand here tonight and I can vouch that that happened in my life. As the apostle Paul would say, I'm not everything that God's calling me to be. I get that, but I'm not what I used to be.

Thank God. And I'm moving forward to the calling, the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. There's a wonderful life in Christ.

It's an amazing life in Jesus Christ. Morning by morning, I see new mercies. Morning by morning, God in his mercy is taking one new thing of rot out of my heart and making it whole the way he designed it to be.

So I thank God for that. Show them that fear has no power over your life. Show them that the former things in your life are passed away and all things are become new.

And they said now in verse nine, if they do not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, that you shall take water from the river and pour it on the dry land. And the water you take from the river shall become blood on the dry land. God said to Moses, this is the final sign or the next side, in a sense, the final really that you will show them.

You'll take water out of the river, out of that which is of this world, and you will take it out and you will pour it on the land. It will become blood on the dry land. John chapter 19.

Let me just read it to you. Verses 34 and 35. Speaking of Jesus Christ on the cross, it says, one of the soldiers pierced his side with his spear and immediately blood and water came out.

And he was seen, testified, and his testimony is true. And he knows that what he's telling the truth so that you may believe. This is what the scripture tells us, that Jesus Christ went to a cross.

He died. He paid the price for all the wrong that we've done against the Holy God. And he did it by sacrificing his life in the stead of our own.

If they will not believe, just because you're not afraid, if they will not believe, just because your life is transformed, then let them go to the sign. The biggest sign of all is that the Son of God will be killed on a cross. And one day a soldier will pierce his side and out of him will come water and blood on the dry ground.

The mixture is in a sense of water and blood. The last drop that came out of the Son of God. And John said, this is true.

And this is the greatest sign of all, that God sent his only begotten Son to die for you and for me on a cross. And it's because of that that we can know that the time of our freedom has come. He paid the price.

There are no cords of hell that can hold us any longer. There's no prison door that can keep you behind it. There's no blindness that could cause you not to see a future.

There's no wounding of your heart that cannot be healed by the presence and power of the Son of God. There's no future denied you, no matter what or who is occupying that place that belongs to you. God says, if you'll get up tonight, if you will walk with me, the time of your freedom has come.

Exodus chapter 4 verses 29 to 31 says, And then Moses and Aaron went and gathered all the elders of the children of Israel. And Aaron spoke all the words which the Lord had spoken to Moses. Then he did the signs in the sight of the people.

So the people believed when they heard that the visited the children of Israel and that he had looked on their affliction. Then they bowed their heads and worshipped. It might have been the first time this kind of worship had ever come in hundreds of years.

They bowed their head at the words of an 80 and 83 year old man and the signs that God had set before them. What else can God do for you tonight? Listen to me, you who are convinced by your own heart or your own mind that you'll never be free or never get out from your prison. Tell me, what more can God do? He sends to you a sign.

It's not just history now, but you actually have living signs standing before you. People who were afraid and are not afraid anymore. People who were one kind of a person, but when they came to Christ, their lives changed into that which God had destined them to be.

And then ultimately the sign of the Son of God dying on a cross. That's a proven historical fact. That's not fiction.

It's not made up. It's easily provable. And the last thing to come from his body when he's pierced by a soldier is blood and water, just as God gave them that third sign.

You can take water out of this world. He was fully God and fully man. Truly amazing what happened on that cross on that day.

And the people, when they heard these words, they bowed their heads and they worshipped. This is what I'm asking you to do tonight, to bow your head, people online, and worship God. Bow your head and say, God, I believe.

God, I believe. They had every reason not to believe, but God had set before them stronger reasons to believe. God, I believe that I'm going to be free.

God, I believe that there's a place for my life where I'm going to have joy, where I'm going to have purpose and meaning in my heart. I'm going to be free. God, I believe that you have something for my life.

And then that belief was put into action. Yes, the devil did everything he could to try to convince them they're never going to be free. But you see, the night they worshipped, it was settled.

The night they worshipped God and they declared him to be Lord. And if you will do that tonight, if you'll open your heart, those that are online with us and those that are here in the sanctuary we're visiting, if you'll open your heart to God and just say, Lord Jesus, I can't save myself. I can't get out of here on my own.

I've tried, but I can't. There's no way out. But I believe tonight that you took my place.

You paid the price for my sin. You became the key and the door for me to get out of where I am and to where you want me to be. So tonight I open my heart to you, Lord Jesus, and I invite you into my life to be my Lord and my Savior.

And I thank you, God, that you're going to take me out of captivity and you're going to bring me into the place that you have destined my life to be in, a land of milk and honey, a land full of promise and strength, a land of vision and happiness and joy and purpose in life, a land of supernatural strength. God, you're going to take me out of where I am and you're going to bring me into that land. God, I trust you with all my heart tonight.

And I open my heart and I invite you into my life to be my Lord and to be my Savior. Let's pray. Let's pray for those who are coming into freedom tonight.

Let's all say these words together. Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for loving me. Thank you for coming to get me tonight and not leaving me here with oppressors and oppression all around me.

God, I believe. I truly believe that Jesus Christ, you are the Son of God. You did die in my place and you were raised from the dead on the third day as proof to me that my faith in you is not in vain.

Your word tells me that the same Spirit that raised you from the dead will raise me from spiritual death and bring me into life and give me a reason and a purpose for life. God, I thank you with all my heart tonight for receiving me and telling me that my time of freedom has come. I'm getting up and I'm getting out and I'm going in everything that you have for my life.

I am a new creation in Christ Jesus. I'm saved. Heaven is my eternal home.

Jesus Christ is the Lord of my life. Amen.