Pastor Alan is on the road and you're invited. Check out pastorallen.org for more information. But if you live in the Carolinas, you're invited to a men's event in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on February 27th. And if you're in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas, join us at the Epic Conference open to all in late February. Plus, catch Pastor Alan preaching at Sojourn Church in Carrollton, Texas on March 1st.
All the details at pastorallen.org. Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing: a biblical, faith-filled vision for your life. I bless you to keep sewing because. In due season, you will reap. Galatians 6:9.
Hell can't crush your crop. The adversary can't foil your fruit.
So, Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up, Paul says. The question isn't whether the seed will sprout. The question is whether we can bear to wait it out. you have some good seed in the ground. Every prayer has been a seed.
Every gift given has been a seed. Every kind word uttered, that too, a seed. The seed will sprout and grow and produce sweet fruit someday.
So, you can keep sowing, you can keep going, you can keep knowing. In due season, you will. Reap. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Rice. Do you realize every time that we have jubilation together and express common joy in Jesus Christ and express our joy having come from all these different places and all these different things going on in our lives, and people have got all these problems and everything?
We've all got problems, but we come in here and we're the who's in whoville on Christmas morning. Whether we got presents or don't have presents, we come in here and we start celebrating Jesus. And you know what we're doing? We are defying the spiritual malaise of society. That'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 Nehemiah, Dreamer, Builder, Warrior, as presented at Renolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. For a limited time, this can be yours for your donation to Allen Wright Ministries.
As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Or call 877-544-4860. Again, by phone, 877-544-4860.
More on this later in the program, but now let's get started with today's teaching. Here. is Pastor Alan Wright. Ooh. If we had time to go through, we'd read all these names and we could link up and show you how if you trace their ancestry, so many would be linked to specific saints.
Many to Abraham himself. But like Zechariah in verse 35, you could trace his ancestry back to Asaph, who was one of the worship leaders in the time of King David. And if we look to the chapter, you see David being mentioned in their celebration because David evokes celebration in memory. Like when he brought the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, when he was going to take the throne finally in Jerusalem, and bringing the Ark in and appointed choirs and priests to stop and offer sacrifices and praise and worship, and then they'd take some more steps and have some more worship of God because David celebrated God. We think of David who danced with all of his heart without regard for what others thought before the Lord.
And we think of David who wrote so many of the Psalms that they would sing as they would ascend to Jerusalem in times of pilgrimages, the Psalms of ascent. I think of like the beautiful Psalm 133 that David wrote, one of the Psalms of Ascent. Good how behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity, like the precious oil that is poured out upon the head. It's a beautiful psalm that envisions a commanded blessing that comes. when the people are together in unity worshiping the Lord and ascending up.
It's like the dew of Mount Hermon. Psalm 133, 3, who falls on the mountains of Zion, there the Lord's commanded blessing and life forever. One commentator put it this way as they hearken back to David. None of the current celebration would have been possible had it not been for David, who captured the city in the first place, had devised so many instruments, written so much worship, and laid up a blessing for generations.
So in corporate jubilation. The shared joy is not just our shared joy now. But with what has brought us to this point. This is the power of tradition in celebration. It is why God instilled a rhythm of celebration in the life of Israel.
Three feasts in the spring, one in the summer, three in the fall. If you were in the family of God in Israel, you either were getting ready for a celebration or in the middle of the celebration or cleaning up from a celebration. And every celebration activated the memory, the spiritual memory of the people. If it's Passover, you remember when God. took the people out of their bondage in Egypt.
You remember it? If it's the Feast of Booths, you remember how God provided for them in the wilderness, and therefore you stay and sleep in a leafy booth for a while. You're always being connected to that which went before you, so that your joy now is increased. That's what happens with it. You know, it's hard to explain, but you do this in your regular life.
You may not even realize how powerful it is. But it's like I was thinking about Christmas, some of our Christmas traditions, and one of which Ann and I every year go to Ryan's. Restaurant and go to the Nutcracker Ballet. We just do it every Christmas. This Christmas, the Stevens Center's closed for renovation.
We didn't go. I felt like my whole Christmas was a miss. Like, what is going on? I said, well, at least we're going to go to Ryan's, where where I sat one day and she gave me a present at my birthday and I opened it up and it was some pink booties, I think it was, and it was the announcement that we're expecting our second child. And where, when I turned 40, she had organized a big surprise birthday party, and friends and family flew in from around the country and surprised me.
And we've had so many intimate dinners. We go to Ryan's and we talk about the goodness of God, and we talk about life and relationship. We never take our calendars, we never do church work. And if it comes up, we say, Oh, but just remember, we're not working, we're celebrating. And that's what it is, you see.
So every time I walk in there, All of that is evoked.
So that becomes the connectivity. What I'm saying is that they were on this celebration of the wall remembering God's faithfulness.
So that's why, first of all, they were so excited to see all the priests. And then there are all these connections that go back to the past. And then the third and most obvious and most important thing about this celebration that I noticed, it was for everyone. Did you notice this at verse 43? They offered great sacrifices that day, rejoiced.
God had made them rejoice with great joy. Was this a professional celebration for the priests? No, it says this, and the women and the children also rejoice. This is the whole family. This is everybody.
Everybody's in on this. The celebration is always better together. Celebration is always better together. The corporate experience of joy is better. It's like the difference and I love cheering for Team USA in front of our TV, but what Abby had sitting at the finish line with 77,000 people and watching somebody cross it, that's better.
It's better for Anne and I. We'll try to get our own little chant, USA, USA. But it's hard to get a chant with just two people. And it's real hard to do it just by yourself, but get in with about 10,000 or 50,000 who are doing it, and it's better. Why is it better?
Something about it is just better. And part of it is this, and that's why I call it the synergy of shared joy. Synergy means one plus one equals something more than two. There's a synergy of shared joy. And in the first place, it's this: joy is contagious.
We know that to be true. Laughter's contagious. We got to pray in this morning. We had church before church today in our prayer time, and the joy started happening, and the joy is hitting me, and I've been joyful ever since. And it just came in.
Do you know, a neuroscientist at University College London has studied laughter for two decades and discovered not only are we more likely to laugh when others are laughing, But we know this to be true, but he proved, but just being in the presence of someone who's funny makes you more likely to laugh. You just like I tell you, awakenings for women on Thursday morning, they laugh so much, they have so much joy, and my wife's so joyful, they laugh about things that, I mean, there are times Ann's like, I thought that was going to be serious, and they're still just celebrating. It's just like you walk in, you're like, okay, I'm ready for the joy. I want to be that kind of person. I want the body of Christ to be like that.
Like, they'd come to church, here's where the joy is. That's what it should be. Uh That's Alan Wright. And we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Parents, are you ready for some good news?
You can have a low-pressure, high-expectation home by God's grace. If you want your children to be their best without hounding, threatening, or pressuring them, there's good news. God's grace works in parenting. Shame and pressure offer only fleeting motivation while creating long-term, toxic anxiety in a child's heart. But children thrive in the environment of grace.
Now, for the first time, Alan Wright has joined with his wife Ann to produce eight video sessions that blend humor, deep gospel insights, and loads of practical advice to equip parents and grandparents to raise their children in homes filled with grace and blessing. Use the videos for personal growth with your spouse or with your small group. The DVD album comes with a detailed study guide as well. When you make your gift this month, we'll send you the DVD album as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Make your gift today and start raising kids by the power.
Of the gospel. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. Today is the final day we're offering this special product. Call us at eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty.
That's eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. Or come to our website, pastorallen.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. Psychologist Robert Provine in his book on laughter has shown how much more likely you are to laugh with people.
Then you are on your own? I doubt you would guess this. 30 times more likely to laugh with people than you are on your own. We don't laugh that much on our own. And what we've learned about the brain.
is that we're designed to mirror one another. This is an extraordinary piece of brain science we're discovering.
Some human interactions are immediate and involuntary. And so the brain just communicates with someone else's brain before there's any other communication that could have taken place. It's a fascinating thing. We were in a store yesterday and walk in, and there's some of our older family right there, and they smile, and we smile. Like, wow.
So, when you do that, and you recognize somebody that you didn't expect to see, and then you smile and they smile, do you realize your brains just communicated with each other, and that's joy. And then we turn around, and here came somebody else from Renola and said, Who are you? And we smile, and they smile, and there's joy. And then here came somebody else. And then we just had a little party up at the front of the store.
It was Renola time, right up in front of the store. But our joy, you see somebody that you didn't expect to see in a crowd, and they smile at you, and you smile back at them, your brain lights up with joy. It is an immediate Communication. I'm talking about the synergy of shared joy that you cannot have alone. Yeah.
You don't get it alone. And Not only is it You share it. But it is multiplied when we are together. Because We actually share one another's joy. If there's something good In you That is your joy and I'm with you, it's also my joy.
So if you Except Jesus. And you get baptized, and you come up out of the water, we're going to celebrate like crazy. Because Your joy is our joy. That is our joy. It's like when Sidney McLaughlin Lavroni runs across the finish line in the 400 hurdles way in front of everybody else.
And we're jumping up and down. It's like her joy, but it's our joy because that's Team USA and I'm in the USA. You have a Confederate, they call it. You have a representative. who is the one who has crossed the finish line for you.
Who has said it is finished? Who has accomplished all there is to be accomplished for your salvation and has defeated the darkness, has defeated sin, has defeated death, has defeated sickness on your behalf, and now reigns victoriously, and you're in Christ, so his joy is your joy. We share his joy. Woo! And we share each other's joy.
Have you got some joy? I want to get some of it. I want to be with you. That's the way it works. And the more you mature, as a child of God and as a human being.
The more mature you become, the more you can celebrate somebody else's joy. Hell doesn't have any celebration of somebody else's joy because everybody's so self-absorbed in hell that nobody can celebrate anything good happening to anybody else, and we're just the opposite. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. And I'll just say this also about it.
You can see it in the MI here. We don't just share one another's joy, we embolden one another's joy. Don't you know they're up on top of that wall and they're like, Yeah, Tobias said a fox would knock it down, but I believe we're not knocking it down. And somebody's like, Hey Joe, you laid the bricks right over there in that section. I sure did.
You did, you did. And then the big choirs start going, and people who are normally reserved and have no joy are swept up into it, and suddenly they get bold with it as well. I've gotten times where I'm like in a big crowd at some sporting event, and I'm like. Find myself all of a sudden, I lost my mind. What is going on here?
I've gotten emboldened. I feel like I could run down there on the field and do something right now because shared joy, corporate jubilation, is actually powerful spiritual warfare. Do you realize every time that we have jubilation together and express common joy in Jesus Christ and express our joy having come from all these different places and all these different things going on in our lives and people have got all these problems and everything, we've all got problems, but we come in here and we're the who's in Whoville on Christmas morning. Whether we got presents or don't have presents, we come in here and we start celebrating Jesus. And you know what we're doing?
We are defying the spiritual malaise of society. Jubilation. It's a beautiful scene in Nehemiah chapter 12. But I'm telling you, it's only A shadow. Yeah.
Precursor. A An early glimpse, a preview. Of coming attractions. Because there's a much greater scene. The writer of Hebrews tells it.
In chapter 12, verse 22, you've come to Mount Zion. and to the city of the living God. This is what it means to be a Christian. You've come to the heavenly Jerusalem and to innumerable angels and festal gathering. and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.
and the sprinkled blood. that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. You, the writer of Hebrew, said. have come to the real thing. That was a shadow.
Those walls of Jerusalem, that temple, those priests were just foreshadowing the real. And now it's high noon, and there are no more shadows, and you have Jesus Himself the high priest, and you've got the living city of God. The kingdom of God is at hand. That's what you've come to.
So observe those walls. Celebrate that reconstruction. It's much more grand. John got a vision of this in its consummation on the Isle of Potmos. And in Revelation 21, he said, I saw.
a new heaven and a new earth. For the first Heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more, and I saw the holy city. He saw it. New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. Verse 10, He carried me away in the spirit to a great high mountain, showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.
And look at this, it had a great high wall. Were twelve gates, and the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed. Verse 17, he measured its wall, 144 cubits. The wall was built of jasper, the city of gold. The foundations of the wall were adorned with every kind of jewel.
Verse 21, and the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. The only difference was I saw no temple in the city, for the temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb. And if you want to know what it sounds like. He got that in the spirit too. Revelation 19:6, I heard.
What seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters, like the sound of the mighty peals of thunder crying out, Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns. The sound of heaven is like a great roar of praise, and it's going to be ours, but we don't have to wait for it because the kingdom has already come. Let the sound of our joy be heard far and wide, because celebrating together is always better. And that's the gospel.
Amen. Pastor Alan Black. In our good news teaching, corporate jubilation, the synergy of shared joy. It's from our series on Nehemiah, and I encourage you to stay with us. Pastor Alan is back here in the studio with a parting good news thought for the day in just a moment.
Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's daily blessing. It's free, and just to click away at pastoralen.org. I don't want to pressure my kids and I sure don't want to shame them, but I do want them to try hard and be all they can be.
That's the desire of every well-meaning parent. For over a decade, Alan Wright has been teaching all over the nation about the toxic effects of shame and the amazing power of the gospel of grace to heal and set free.
Now, for the first time, Alan has been joined by his wife Ann to produce a video series about shame-free parenting. It's called Good News for Parents: Raising Grace-Filled Kids in a Pressure-Filled World. The eight DVD video sessions are chock full of humor, deep gospel insight, and loads of practical advice. Use them for personal growth or with your spouse. They're also perfect for use in your small group.
The DVD album comes with a detailed step-by-step study guide as well. When you make your gift this month, we'll send you the DVD album as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Make your gift today and start raising kids by the power of the gospel. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer.
Today is the final day we're offering this special product. Call us at eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. That's eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. Or come to our website, Pastor Alan.org. And we're back here in the studio sharing Pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day.
And there's a bit of celebration and jubilation today as we've come to the end of a series on Nehemiah.
Well, I hope that everyone has not only learned sort of From the model of this dreamer and builder and warrior. But that you've been having your heart pointed towards Christ. Because in the end, Nehemiah, like all of our heroes from the old covenant. are pointing to a better day and to A greater day. that has been fulfilled in Christ.
and I can't think of a better scene to be left with than the people all around Nehemiah celebrating what God had done through ordinary people that then eventually points us to What the writer of Hebrews said is that we've come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, and to envision ourselves joined up in the great chorus of angels and archangels that are bringing praise to God. And the great multitudes like the roar of many waters. And so that's the sound. And we are already in. that celebration.
May God give you shared joy. corporate jubilation. that brings in a synergistic way in a way that makes something better than what it could ever have been just for yourself. real partnership In celebrating the goodness of God, there's some way. that God has been good to you and someone who can share in that with you.
And when you do, And you praise him for it. there's incredible power that is released. Nehemiah. He's a dreamer, he's a builder, he's a warrior, and he was pointing us always. to Jesus.
Uh 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.
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