Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing, a biblical faith-filled vision for your life. I bless you to be as Manasseh. Forgotten troubles, the name means. You are not defined by the pain of the past, but by the plans of God. Though Joseph's first 30 years were riddled with sorrow and disappointment.
God's triumphant providential plan for him eclipsed the adversities of home and of Egypt. God may not plan for you to govern a nation like Joseph, but He's always intended for you to, as Paul said in Romans 5, reign in life through Jesus Christ. You can forget what lies behind and As Paul said in Philippians 3, press on toward the goal of the prize in Christ Jesus. Yesterday is over. But the rubble of your past shall not be wasted.
Beloved. You are a Manasseh. The troubles of your past do not define you. they refine you. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright.
You know, it's so funny, we'll raise money and send missionaries over to love the world, and yet we'll just get mad and halfway curse our neighbor because they don't get up and go to church on Sunday morning. Listen, quit expecting people that aren't Christians to act like Christians. They're not going to, and just be missionaries to our own culture. 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 called Daniel, 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. It can be yours for your donation this month 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 or call 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright.
You ready for some good news? This world around us, I'm talking about our culture here. Around us in America. It's changed a lot, and sometimes you might feel like a foreigner in your own culture. But take heart.
The hand of the Lord is upon you. He will never leave you nor forsake you, but more than that. He protects you. He provides for you. And he has an amazing way in which he will promote you Even when you feel like you're in exile in your own land.
This is a time For the Church of Jesus Christ. to not be discouraged by simply looking backwards. and remembering what used to be. This is a time for us to be encouraged profoundly that we live in such a time as this. And see.
How powerfully the hand of God is upon us. A wonderful time to be a Christian. in the world today. Uh We're going to be turning to the book of Daniel in just a moment. Before we do, just kind of set the stage for this a little bit.
It's a new series, and just on my mind as we set this stage, is this whole backdrop of exile for the Israelites that was a very real and painful thing as they look back and remember their homeland and how they were then separated from all that they held that dear to them. And we all can be a little sentimental like this. My wife had a moment in her life. It was one of those moments you just sort of remember and cling to because it warms your heart and you want life to always be like that. She remembers it well.
Her grandmother, Mama Bennett, at her funeral, when they would ride through the funeral procession in Little York, South Carolina, how not only would the police authorities stop the traffic and stand in respect? Um procession would go by, but also the cars would pull over to the side of the road and just pay their respect as the funeral procession. And Ann, she she really liked that. In fact, very early on, and we were dating 29 years ago, and she saw a funeral procession, and nobody was pulling over. And she said, You know, when my grandmother was buried down in York, South Carolina, everybody pulled over to the side of the road out of respect for the funeral procession as it would go by.
She said, You know, I like that. I wish people would do that. And now, for nearly 28 years of marriage, every time we see a funeral, she'll say, Did I ever tell you about Mama Bennett, her funeral? And you see, as a pastor and pastor's wife, we go to a lot of funerals. And we are actually leading and upfront in many of these.
And so we have many opportunities, hundreds of opportunities over the last 28 years for her to say, did I ever tell you about Mama Bennett and how they would pull over? I wish people would pull over and show their respect. And then, you know, she'll sometimes say, I hope people pull over at my funeral. And so, you know, you kind of look back like that. I think I've always had a little bit of an old soul.
I've always felt a little bit out of place in the culture ever since I've been an adult. And my heart's warmed, you know, to see things sometimes the way they used to be. This morning, the Sunday morning Winston Journal, this morning on the cover, a color picture of the mayor of Mount Airy, the inspiration for the fictional Mayberry of Andy Griffith fame. And the mayor, Deborah Cochrane, kneeled. In prayer, next to the Henry Don Furniture Plant sign, because she was wanting to symbolize for her little town of 11,000 people that has lost so many jobs through the industrial changes.
That prayer and hope matter so much and be the heart of what she sees that she wants to see transformation. And man, so I was touched by that. I said, That's the mayor. That's the mayor. She's kneeling in prayer.
She's kneeling in prayer, so a photograph could be taken of her. And I, you know, I kind of flipped on, but then I stopped. I said, wait a minute. I said, that's a mayor. That is the mayor.
That's the mayor. Yeah, granted, it's it's Mayberry, but it's still a mayor. That is praying next to next to a corporate sign. And And she's allowed to do that. And we could put it on the front page of the paper.
And there's a part of me that just goes, I want to live in a country where mayors pray next to the signs of the companies. I like that. I like that. I'd like to live in a country where people pull over for funerals and where mayors pray next to the signs. I'd like that.
I have to admit, I'm a little bit. Because I'm a little bit I'm a l I'm kinda living with an old soul. I'm a little bit stuck in maybe a previous generation. I'm kinda stuck in Andy Griffith and all the reruns of I Love Lucy. And our latest thing, it's a little edgy in our house, is we found out that they have all 269 episodes on Netflix.
Of murder, she wrote. Imagine how excited my kids are that that's what we do now: we sit around, we cut it off with 10 minutes left and say, okay, everybody, guess who did it? I am four in a row on guessing who it is. And murder, she wrote, missed the first 17. But anyway, you know, that's kind of out there.
I feel a little bit culturally irrelevant at times. We're sitting in In the uh restaurant the other day, and the radio was playing the uh the the the well-known uh uh uh Hits Grammy winning song, Rolling in the Deep. And uh my wife, she just piped up and she said, That's Adele singing that song. And my kids, uh, they they were wide-eyed. They said, Wow, Mom, you just said something culturally informative there.
And. And it was. I was actually surprised she even knew who Adele was. We listened to Christian music and we watched Mayberry and Get On Edge. We watched Murder She Wrote.
And so I feel a little bit. out of it and there's just that part of me that wants uh Sometimes just to things to be the way they they were. And you you can You can begin to feel sometimes when you've seen so much change. I mean, just the the the The period of my life on this planet, the changes I've seen is astounding. Absolutely astounding.
It can make you begin to feel like, I'm not even sure where I live anymore. You can begin to feel like, as an evangelical Christian, you begin to feel like a foreigner in your own culture. And you can get a sense that, yes, this is partly because so many less people go to church now. Can we just be honest about that, church? I mean, I love church.
That's what I do. I live in church. I go to church. And by some estimates now, Um 85% of people in America don't go to church regularly.
Some studies show it not quite as severe a number of that, but every study shows the majority of people in America don't go to church regularly anymore. Yeah.
So we're an unchurched nation. We have far more people that don't go to church than do. And so that's that's significant. But I'm not even really talking about that. As I began to lay this framework for this whole series on Daniel, I'm actually talking about something that's much deeper than that.
Um when I when I use the analogy of of being like a foreigner. Or, like Peter says, sojourner or pilgrim in this world. I'm actually talking about something that's even deeper. Then the cultures change, and not as many people go to church, and the priorities seem so different. I'm talking about something deeper than that that has to do with being.
as a Christian is being profoundly misunderstood by our culture. And that's very painful. It's very painful. Yeah.
Some years ago, our churches, we were having a Facility expansion, and everybody that's been part of the family of Renolta for some time knows this is part of our story. that as we were uh Getting ready to build and proposing what our site plan could look like. That there was a group, a relatively small group of people in the surrounding community that became very upset, very frightened by what we were going to do, fearing we were going to spoil the neighborhood, cause too much traffic, cause problems, congestion, whatever, variety of fears, ruin history, all of this. Um So we were sued. And it was a long and arduous and very expensive process.
And for anybody that was against us in that, that would happen to hear the sound of my voice, I hold no bitterness. And I understand in this world that we wind up with sometimes crazy conflicts. It wasn't just the it wasn't where this began to dawn on me and I began to feel like a foreigner to my own culture was I think a lot of it began in that time of that lawsuit, not just because I realized that That there were people that just weren't for the church growing or expanding, but something more than that. We, the church, here at Rinalda, during that, had a capital campaign as we're going to have this coming year. And we asked people to do a very, very countercultural, radical thing.
We asked them to give. their money to a cause that would just be a blessing to others. You see, because we were going to build classrooms and corridors and elevators and things that. We, for those of us who are already in the church and already had a seat and already had a group, we didn't need. We wanted to be a blessing.
And so we asked people, as we're going to do again this year, to give above and beyond, just give away resources that could be spent on cars or family vacations or home improvements, but to give those resources for a cause to build an elevator that disabled people could get around our building or classrooms that little children could hear that God loves them or for connection points where we could reach out to a young generation. All of this is part of that. In other words, I know many, many people, many of you, you gave generously and sacrificially to that as a demonstration of the chief character and nobility of the character of a Christian, and that is that we live to give because we believe it's more blessed to give than it is to receive. It's one of the most radical things. Here we were giving many of us thousands of dollars.
for a completely selfless act and The people, a number of them around us, were suing us because they thought We were just selfish. Let that sink in. That we could be at one moment doing one of the most selfless things any of us had ever imagined doing, giving away money. It's very countercultural to do that. And people misinterpret and think that we were just this Group of selfish people that didn't care about anybody around us, and that everything we're doing is just because we do.
Care.
Now What I'm saying is that there is now at hand, I'm not speaking about the global south, South America, Africa, I'm speaking about here in our culture in America in 2013. We not only live in a culture where most people don't go to church anymore, but I'm saying we live in a culture where people don't understand not only the gospel, but they don't understand Christians. And yeah, maybe they've seen some bad examples and maybe they've seen some judgmental Christians and they don't have anything to do with that. But I'm just saying that there are a lot of people they just don't even understand what this whole thing is about. And what it does is it can begin to make you feel a little bit like you're just a foreigner in your own country.
It can begin, this is the word of the phrase the Lord's been assuring my heart of is that you know, Alan, accept the fact you're a missionary to your own culture. And you know what? That's okay. That's okay. Because Eric Metaxas, author and communicator, Eric Metaxa, was here some years ago, and he made this great point.
He was communicating. He said, here's the irony: we raise money. Send missionaries like our churches just helped send George and Phyllis Crispy to Africa to help drill wells. I just corresponded with George yesterday. And you know one of the things that they're doing, they're needing to raise some more money.
They got to hire a tutor to help them learn the language there. They're going to spend a lot of time, a lot of years learning the culture. Why?
So that they can share the gospel. They're building wells for them. They're going to people that don't know the Lord, that don't know their culture, that they're in a foreign place, and they love being there because they're called to be there. And Eric Metaxa said, you know, it's so funny. We'll raise money and send missionaries over to love the world, and yet we'll just get mad and halfway curse our neighbor because they don't get up and go to church on Sunday morning.
Listen, quit expecting people that aren't Christians to act like Christians. They're not going to. And just be missionaries to our own culture. And I feel like the Lord's just been saying to me, Alan, the sooner you accept what it really is, then the happier you will be in the midst of that culture. Because the call upon the people of God, which we have stated explicitly in our mission, is not just love God and love each other, but the third part of this mission, and this is the heart of God, is love the world.
Don't love the sin of the world, but love the world. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. Why did God come to us while we were still his enemies? Because he loved us. He knew that in all of our sin and all of our frailty, that we didn't understand.
Jesus came, and the profound part of this experience of being like an exile for Jesus was not just that people didn't receive him, but that they persecuted him as if he had come for a selfish purpose, and yet he'd come to lay down his life for them that they might live.
So I want to turn. to one of the most marvelous stories of a foreigner In exile. who was favored in that foreign land for the purpose of glorifying God. His name's Daniel. You can find them towards the middle of your Bible after the book of Ezekiel.
And it is an amazing story. Daniel. In order to um Capture the beginning of this. I need to read this significant length of text in the opening chapter that lays the background of Daniel. Let me just say first that this is simply a story of A remarkable, handsome, gifted young man and his friends.
that are placed into the royal court. of their captors. that in about 600 BC, there really were three waves of the Babylonian invasion, but it was taken away in the first part of that, about 600 years before Christ, overrun by this massive empire, and deported to Babylon. And here's the beginning of this story where I want to live with you in coming weeks. In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it.
And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hands with some of the vessels of the house. of God. And he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his God, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his God. Let's pause there to say what Nebuchadnezzar is doing is not only having ransacked Solomon's temple at the heart of Jewish life, but gone in and taken holy vessels, the utensils and appointments of worship that were in the temple, and took them out and brought them and put them as if they could be suddenly transformed to a pagan deity's allegiance and puts them in the treasury of his God. Verse 3, the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and nobility, youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding, learning, and competent to stand in the king's palace and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans.
The king assigned them a daily portion of food that the king ate and of the wine that he drank, and they were to be educated for three years, and at the end of that time they were to stand before the king.
So the the Bottom line to this is that For three years, there was a planned system of indoctrination to induct them into the system of Babylon. In other words, it was what we might say colloquially to brainwash them into Babylonian ways. With the goal in mind of then, they would have some of the finest young men of Israel who now. Were educated and made like Babylonians and could serve the king. Among these, verse 6, were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah.
And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names. Daniel he called Beltashazzar. Hananiah he called Shadrach. Mishael he called Meshach. and Azariah he called Abednego.
But Daniel, verse 8, resolved he would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine that he Drank. This is partly because maybe the food was ceremonially unclean, but it was also partly, I think, symbolic that I'm not going to take into my being. I may be here in this court, but I'm not going to take into my being all of the king's food and wine. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs.
And the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, I fear my lord the king, who has signed your food and your drink. For why should he see that you in worse condition than the youths who are of your own age?
So you would endanger my head with the king. Then Daniel said to the steward, whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned over Daniel, Hananiah, Michel, and Azariah. Test your servants for ten days. Let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king's food be observed by you.
And deal with your servants according to what you see.
So Daniel's set up a test, and he said, he's essentially saying that he believes that by the grace of God, that even though they will not be eating all this rich food, that they're going to be healthier than anybody else. Alan Wright, and today's teaching, Christ, Our Exile. With so much worry about yesterday's failures and so much hurry getting ready for tomorrow's tasks, sometimes it's hard to focus on the moment that matters most. Right now, in a hurried, worried season, God invites you into the present. Modern-day life coaches call it mindfulness, but it isn't a new psychological program and it isn't rooted in Eastern religion.
Mindfulness, living in the present, is God's idea and the Bible unveils the way. Pastor Alan Wright invites you to savor life each day. When you make your gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's eight messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Make your gift today and learn how to savor the textures and flavors of God's grace each moment, in the moment, every day of your life. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Allen Bright Ministries.
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 dot org. We really do try to force Christian expectations and principles on bil unbelievers, don't we, Alan?
We really do. We get so frustrated with people for not acting like Christian when they're they're not Christian. People that don't know the Lord aren't going to act. Like they know the Lord. It's a very unchristian thing to do, right?
Exactly, exactly. But we have such a wide sense of mercy towards people on the other side of the world that we'll send a missionary to. You can be a missionary in your own neighborhood. 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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