What's New [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. 365 times in God's Word, he says, Fear not.

Enough for every single day of the year. He doesn't want us living by fear. Instead, what does he want to have happen? John says that his little pistol. He wants us to experience the perfect love of God. And perfect love casts out fear.

You already got an A. It's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, Remade, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program today, I sure want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer.

Don't miss it. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org.

Or call 877-544-4860. We're going to give you more on all this later in the program. But right now let's dig in and get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. This is where it gets even better. He says, I will remember their sin no more. I will forgive their iniquity, verse 34, and I will remember their sin no more. See, this is categorically different than what we had in the old covenant. In the old covenant, there was a system of sacrifices in which you could bring your turtledove or your lamb at Passover, present it for inspection for the priest who would make sure it was unblemished, and it would be a temporary covering of your sin. And once a year on the Day of Atonement, the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies and he'd sprinkle blood there because God had made this specification. He said, this is the way it's going to be so that you can know that I am not going to hold the judgment against you.

We'll temporarily place it upon the innocent animal. It's sort of like you, back to the debt illustration, it's sort of like you've got too much credit card debt and the credit card company says, it's all right. We're not going to put you in jail now because you can just make partial payment each month and you're staying afloat that way. But the debt's still there. The debt is still there. Every ram, every lamb, every turtledove did not pay the debt.

That's what the difference is. And then he says, so something's going to happen where the whole debt's going to be gone. But then he says this, which is one of the greatest new covenant truths that you could ever grasp. And I pray that I, and you can grasp this more deeply every, every day that he says, I'll remember their sin no more.

Wow. See that this is, this is the problem is that we, we have such a hard time. We might forgive, but we have a hard time ever forgetting. I was thinking about, you know, that scene, I don't know if it happens in a real courtroom, but in the movies all the time, it happens where in a courtroom drama and the attorney is trying to get the witness to stumble onto a statement or something and trying to get something that probably should not be admissible and ask a question. And then the witness says something and that was not supposed to have been allowed, you know, because it was, I don't know, some evidentiary rule or something like that. And all of a sudden then the witness blurts it out, you know, yes, I saw that she did have a gun in her car, you know, or whatever. And, and, and, but you weren't supposed to have been able to admit that or something, you know, who knows what, and then the opposing attorney, your objection honor says, sustain said, and then turns and said, the jury will disregard what the witness just said. And you can't unhear something.

You can't unhear it. Forget that you just heard that the murder weapon was actually in the, you know, I mean, you know, no, now you got it. And it's the problem in our relationships is that we, we, we forgive, but somewhere in the recesses of your mind, you remember. And so that big argument that you just had was actually over a little thing, but it wasn't the little thing.

It was you remembering the other thing that happened 10 years ago in order for it not to be present in this conversation, you would have to have forgotten it. I want you to know God in Jesus Christ has promised by his own set will to cast your sin so far away as the East is from the West and to throw it into a sea of forgetfulness that for every Christian, listen to this, when you relate to God and you come to him in prayer and you worship him and you walk with him and you read his word, he looks at you as if you had never sinned. That's what we have in Christ. It's what you'll have in heaven. Nobody can be walking around heaven going, remember that time that Alan got so upset about that.

And then he did that and said that nobody's gonna remember that. This is the nature of God. That's the new covenant. And so from that, there is an astounding, an astounding, remarkable, joyous, logical next step that explains a whole lot of the new Testament and explains a whole lot of the gospel and explains a whole lot of transformation in the Christian life. If God not only forgives your sin, removes the debt so you don't have it, but forgets what you did in sinning that caused the debt. If that's possible, if that's what happens, then what that means is that the entirety of the Christian life is motivated not by fear of any sort, but by faith because of radical acceptance in Jesus Christ.

That's new covenant living. And I want that. I want that more in my life.

I want it for your life. Steve Brown, who was just a wonderful man of God, pastor and a teacher and author and a voice sounds like God. And he's meant a lot to me over the years.

I got to be with him at a conference just recently and tell him that. And, but he had, when his daughter was young, maybe middle school or something like that, she was in a, an English class that was an advanced English class and she began to get stressed out over it. And she came home and cried to her father and said, I need to be put in a regular English class.

I can't do this. And she was so stressed by it. She was afraid she was going to fail. That Steve Brown went over and met with the administrator and the teacher and his daughter.

And they're all in the room together. And Steve said to the teacher and the administrator said, my daughter, you can see she was kind of weepy. He said, she is, she's, she's not liking this class and we need to move her over to a regular class if we could please. And the teacher did an odd thing. She said, could I have just a moment alone with your daughter?

And Steve said, well, sure. So Steve and administrator stepped out and the teacher was just there with this middle school girl. And the teacher said, you afraid that you're going to fail this class? And the girl wept and said, yes. And the teacher said, I believe that you're a really smart girl and I know you can do this material. She said, how about this? What if I tell you that starting right now here at the beginning of the semester, you already made an a, if I give you an a right now, you think you could do this class? The girl stopped crying and she said, yeah. And she said, all right, you've got an a, I'll see you in class tomorrow.

And that girl went in there all semester with joy in her heart and did a quality work and in fact made straight A's in all her classes. And you think, well, if you tell me God's already given me an a because of the righteousness of Christ and his sacrifice, doesn't that mean people get lazy? No, it doesn't.

No, it doesn't. Listen, people are already being lazy. Give them more grace. They don't go get more lazy. It's going to remove the fear.

That's Alan Wright. And we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Maybe you're like many Christians in America today. You're stunned by how fast a nation's culture has turned away from God. The values of our country have changed. Suddenly, most people don't go to church or have a biblical worldview.

It can make you feel like an alien in your own culture. There's a lot to learn from Daniel when he was exiled to the pagan land of Babylon. Through our special offer this month, you can learn to live under the favor of God in an alien culture the way Daniel did. When you give before the end of the month, we'll send you Pastor Alan's audio series, Daniel, a favored foreigner.

You may feel like a stranger in this world, but as God showed favor to Daniel in his foreign land, God's grace is upon you as well. Your donation will not only help you navigate through these troubling times, but it will also help someone else. Thanks for your partnership with Alan Wright Ministries. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. 365 times in God's word, he says, fear not.

Enough for every single day of the year. He doesn't want us living by fear. Instead, what does he want to have happen? John says in his little epistle, he wants us to experience the perfect love of God. And perfect love casts out fear. You already got an A. So just enjoy learning, enjoy growing, enjoy doing the work, work hard, work with zeal, but don't do it because you're afraid that your father's going to be disappointed in you.

He already gave you an A. Which means, and this is where the new covenant becomes distinct and beautiful and powerful. And this is the only way that it can make sense. And that is, 1st Timothy, Paul says, 1st Timothy 2 5, there's one God and there's one mediator.

One mediator between God and men, the man and Jesus Christ. In a covenant, as we see in a lot of the writings of ancient times, two entities, perhaps two governance governments, often one that's a strong kingdom and one a lesser would contract with one another in a covenantal agreement that in that particular case between a sovereign nation, the suzerain and the vassal, that it would be this type of covenant. So one strong kingdom says, we pledge that we will protect you from neighboring marauding armies. And in return, the smaller nation might say, we pledge that you can farm on our land and that we will not ever seed over our land to one of your enemies. So you'll have this, but you know, some agreements like that, right? That's what a covenant is.

This party and this party agree. And what they would do is they would, without lawyers and legal contracts, the way they would, they would make this covenantal agreement solemn is they would cut an animal, sacrifice an innocent animal. And literally it sounds gruesome, but it's what they would do. They would take it and put it into two, the carcass into kind of a gauntlet. And each party would go walking through the slain animal and say, here's what I vow to do on my side of the deal. And what they were saying was, if I don't keep my promise, my pledge, then let my life be like this slain animal. And then the other would walk through. They were basically were swearing. They were basically swearing, hope to die if I don't keep it.

That's the way they were swaying. And this was the way they made a covenant. And that's why in Hebrew, whenever you see the words in the Old Testament, you see the words, they made a covenant. The actual Hebrew language is the word cut a covenant. So God says in Jeremiah, I'm going to cut a covenant.

It's not going to be like the old one that got cut. And these two parties would then not only make their pledges, they would describe the benefits to one another. And they usually then would celebrate and confirm it, ratify it with a shared meal together. And you would see this all throughout all covenants.

So the old covenant between God and his people is a strong God and a weaker people. And God says, here's all the things that I want to do for you. Here's how I want to treasure you. Here's, I want to bless you. Here's how I want to give you a land. Here's how I want to, to be with you.

Here's how I want to bless your life. And the people all said, and we will praise your name and we will keep your statutes and we will do everything that you've said. The problem was people couldn't keep their side of it. People couldn't keep their side. There was no human being that could keep the covenantal promises. And this was the problem because how is God going to pour out his blessing while remaining true to his word, unless there is a human person who could keep the covenant and it was none. So to the surprise of even the archangels, God executed his plan that he'd known from the beginning. God became a human being.

He said, I'm going to go keep it for him. And Christ came and he lived a sinless life. He was a new Adam who never listened to the serpent and never disobeyed his father and never was self-centered and always glorified the father, even to the point when he was sweating blood, he said, I wish I didn't have to drink this cup, but not my will and yours be done father. He was perfect in every way, holy and righteous. Jesus Christ was God and man. He is the one mediator because he is both divine and human in this one man, God and humanity met perfectly. And so he on this earth, on your behalf was God to you. And he was human like you representing you and every other human being on earth. He was the righteous human being who kept the covenant promises, never broke a single one of them. And that's why he lifted up the cup at Passover and said, here's the cup of the new covenant because beloved the old covenant was between God and the people, but the new covenant was between the father and the son. And the son kept the covenant for you. That's why you can live with absolute confidence that your relationship with God, the father is in no way based on your merit and entirely based on the merits of Christ.

That's how you can know you've already made an A and that's how the internal change begins to happen inside of you. That's why you start liking green beans. That's why you start liking holy beans. That's why, because the fear gets gone, faith comes in, you fall more and more in love with God and everything in your life changes.

This is it. Paul said in Ephesians chapter one, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ. Where's our blessing? Our blessings in Christ. Our blessing is not in ourselves.

It's taken you out of the picture. Your, your, your obedience is a beautiful thing. And yes, it's wonderful. Eat the green beans.

They're good for you. But what I'm saying is that your blessed is not in your obedience, but in Christ. Bless us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places as he chose us in him.

How'd you get chosen? How did you get saved? How did you become God? How do you belong to in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before? How are we holy and blameless only in him in love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ. He's made you like a firstborn son so that you, you are loved by God, the father in the same manner and to the same infinite perfect degree that he loves his only begotten son. And therefore you have become not only an heir, but a co heir with Christ.

Wow. There's no way that you could ever understand verse six without understanding the new covenant. This is all to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved.

Our whole life, your life and mine and everything we do is to the praise of his glorious grace. The time is coming, Jeremiah prophesied to the exiles in which I'll make a new covenant. I'm going to cut a new covenant.

It's not going to be like the old. This one won't be with the blood of lambs and rams and turtle doves. It's going to be the blood of the son of God once and for all. So as my mentor, Dudley Hall likes to say, if you can believe that Jesus isn't going to sin today and break the covenant, you're mighty safe.

All your blessing is is secure because Jesus died for you and behold, he lives again. That's a new covenant. And that's a gospel. Alan Wright and today's good news message. What's new?

It's from the series Remade and pastor Alan is back with us in the studio sharing a parting good news thought for the day for you in just a moment. Maybe you're like many Christians in America today. You're stunned by how fast a nation's culture has turned away from God. The values of our country have changed. Suddenly, most people don't go to church or have a biblical worldview.

It can make you feel like an alien in your own culture. There's a lot to learn from Daniel when he was exiled to the pagan land of Babylon. Through our special offer this month, you can learn to live under the favor of God in an alien culture the way Daniel did. When you give before the end of the month, we'll send you pastor Alan's audio series, Daniel, a favored foreigner.

You may feel like a stranger in this world, but as God showed favor to Daniel and his foreign land, God's grace is upon you as well. Your donation will not only help you navigate through these troubling times, but it will also help someone else. Thanks for your partnership with Alan Wright Ministries. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Back here in the studio sharing Pastor Alan's parting good news thoughts for the day. And yeah, if you believe that Jesus' promises are true and that he will never fail you, and if you're ever worried about that, my friend says, well, if you ever think God's going to start failing somebody, he'll probably pick somebody more high profile than you. So it won't be with you. There's no more fear of being punished if your sin isn't even remembered. That's what he promised in this new covenant.

And that's what's happened. And if the new covenant is not really about you, not about your performance, not about you keeping any of the, of your end of the deal, does that make you lazy? Does that make you unappreciative and just go on your way?

Of course not. What it does is it sets you free from fear. And when the anxiety of our life is gone and we can relate to God freely and draw near to him with boldness, we begin to encounter God in a new way. We begin to have faith in a new way. We live differently.

The new covenant is absolutely new. The Holy Spirit of the living God is in you. You can know him. You can be assured of it. And you can know that in Christ, every spiritual blessing is yours. All that and more is what it means to be a new covenant Christian. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastorallen.org or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. If you only caught part of today's teaching, not only can you listen again online, but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.