Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing, a biblical faith-filled vision for your life. I bless you to be as Ephraim, Ephraim, the name that means twice fruitful. God blessed your earliest ancestors to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion, Genesis 1:28. And his will is not changed. He's likewise destined you, as Jesus said in John 15, to bear much fruit.
You're a sower. a spiritual farmer. whose harvest will come in due season. And so I bless the seed that you have in the ground. May all your good, hard work sprout and grow.
Into sweet fruit that contains more seed. And I bless the seed you have in your hand. The good intentions and investments of your life that you're now scattering. Remember. The smallest seed.
can grow. and to the greatest, most fruitful, Tree. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. They not only were protected through the fire of adversity, but they came out on the other side and they didn't smell like smoke. 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. Daniel chapter three, where we return today. Having seen This incredible story and how It applied to A wonderful notion that while these men were thrown into a fiery furnace. That the fire that had been turned up in anger by Nebuchadnezzar. Backfired on the strongmen, the henchmen of Nebuchadnezzar, and burned them up.
But our three heroes, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, come through it unscathed. This is all about 600 years before Christ. Daniel and his three good friends are exiled to Babylon, and they are given favor in the royal court. They're taught and schooled in the Babylonian ways. And everything seems to be going fine until Nebuchadnezzar makes this huge 90-foot golden statue, an idol, that he says everybody's got to bow down and worship every time you hear music.
And Daniel's friends, they refuse this. And when they refuse, we pick up the story at verse 19 that Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel 3:19, Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury, and the expression on his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach. Meshach and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated. And he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace.
Then these men were bound in their cloaks, their tunics, their hats, and their other garments, and they were thrown into the burning fiery furnace. Because the king's order was urgent and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell bound into the burning fiery furnace. Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished. And he rose up in haste, and he declared to his counsellors, Did we not cast three men into the fire?
They answered and said to the king, True, O king. He answered and said, But I see four men unbound walking in the midst of the fire, and they're not hurt. And the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods. Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the burning fiery furnace and he declared, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out and come here. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out from the fire, and the satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the king's counselors gathered together and saw that the fire had not any power over the bodies of those men.
The hair of their heads was not singed, their cloaks were not harmed, and no smell of fire had come upon them. And Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him and set aside the king's command, and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any God except their own. God. I once had an emerald-colored car. I dubbed it the Green Hornet.
I think I was the only one that ever got stung by that green hornet, though. It had various mechanical problems, and eventually the seals all became sort of degraded. Water would leak in through a variety of crevices and um The Green Hornet had a number of problems, but the worst problem of the Green Hornet was. It smelled of smoke. I never should have bought the car.
Because it smelled of smoke when a test drove it. But I told the salesman, I said, I don't like the smell of smoke in my car. And he said, oh, he said, we can get that out. I said, are you sure? I thought it was hard to get the smell of smoke.
He said, no, we have new ways of getting the smell of smoke out of cars, guaranteed. And so, sure enough, the day I picked it up after purchase, it was a bright, sunshiny day, and the windows were down in the car, and it smelled pretty good on that day. For all those years I had it, no matter what. If you got one of those gray February cold, damp days. It's still.
The green hornet. It still smelled of smoke. I've often thought my soul was a little bit too much like that, you know? It's like, you ever feel like that? It's like, on a good, clear day, my thought life is clean and pure and good, and self-image is good, and who I am in Christ is good, and all that's good.
But then it's through those damp, cold seasons of life, you know, where things aren't going so well, and it's just the spiritual battle is a little more intense. Those times where. Man, that old shame, that old way of thinking, just, you know, in my soul, it's like on the cold days, it still smells of smoke. And you always just wonder, say, is that the way it's going to be? You know, and sometimes you just have this, maybe you start resigning yourself to the fact that, well, I've been through some really hard things in my life, and I guess I'm always just going to have to live with that.
I'm going to have to live with the tyranny of those thoughts of my failures or of disappointments or the rejections that I've experienced. Or I'm just going to have to live with this kind of low-grade bitterness and anger in my life. And if you feel like that, if you've ever felt like that or feel like that today, then I have good news for you today. And it comes from an unusual little verse that's tucked away in the middle of this great story. One of those verses, you just wonder why, in the middle of such a fantastic story, does God make sure that we get this one verse that comes in here?
And it says the hair of the heads was not singed, the cloaks were not harmed. But then, this one half of one verse at verse 77, this is my subject matter for today. And no smell of fire had come upon them. They not only were protected through the fire of adversity, but they came out on the other side and they didn't smell like smoke. The mischievous part of me has wanted to dare to entitle the message, Walking Through the Fire Without Smelling Like Hell.
But I really think that some of you would misunderstand that and think I was trying to be too cute.
So I'm going with. I'm going with a title That a friend suggested smoking. or non-smoking. That's today's message. Smoking or non-smoking because it gives kind of the idea that Sort of like saying suffering and trouble may be inevitable.
But smelling bad on the other side, that's optional.
Well, it's an incredible story. We referred to this in a previous message about how the anger in King Nebuchadnezzar makes him turn up the fire hotter and hotter, turn up the heat. And the fact that he was so mad and he had to keep turning up the heat, that was the very thing that backfired on him, because then his own henchmen got killed because the flames leapt out and killed him, because the king's anger had backfired on him. And we just looked at how incredible it is that God is able. To not only cause the weapons that are formed against you to not prosper.
But he's also able to turn the very weapon that was formed against you back against the accuser who so wants to destroy you. And as you see it over and over, Joseph, who is hated by his brothers, and the brothers' wicked conspiracy to sell Joseph into slavery, actually is the very thing that God uses to turn around the situation and save many lives. The very hatred that Pharaoh has of Moses, the more he turned up the heat, the more God lured Pharaoh and the entire Egyptian army into the Red Sea to be swallowed up there. David used Goliath's own sword to decapitate the Philistine giant. And all of it is just like shadows pointing to the ultimate irony, the ultimate moment where God turned the enemy's weapons back on the enemy, because all of the conspiracy of hell had been working towards the moment in which Jesus the Nazarene would be nailed to a Roman cross.
The moment that it looked as though hell had its greatest victory. And we, from the gospel perspective, realize that because God was using this event in a sovereign way, he was actually backfiring it all upon the powers of hell for the cross. Was God's set purpose and plan, and through the cross and resurrection we have. been saved. It's a great story.
And then, tucked into the middle of it is this notion that not only did God want them to be saved while the enemy was being destroyed. But when they got on the other side, he wanted them to still smell good. They didn't want him to. Smell. Here's the most important thing to begin to frame.
Today's message. I begin with this assumption based on not only this beautiful picture, but all of the scripture. God doesn't want you left in your shame. He doesn't want you left. In your self-condemnation.
He doesn't want you plagued for the rest of your life by your regrets. He doesn't want you inwardly eaten by bitterness. That is not his intention. For you. For there is a double blessing when you come to Christ.
Not only do you receive in Him payment for your sin, so that you are saved. But you receive healing, which is a transformational process by the renewing of your mind. In other words, God not only Okay. Give you new life. In Christ.
He transforms you. Into the very picture of Jesus Himself. And we want to pray today. We want to pray with you. Because we believe and we have seen and we know Our guy Heals.
And therefore, we have infinite Hope. And I want to just uh frame our discussion around sort of a natural picture that points to a spiritual reality. You know, God often does this. He'll have some natural picture of something that you could experience with your senses. And it's actually pointing to something that's important spiritually.
Telling Hosea the prophet to marry an adulterous wife, Gomer. He actually marries her. But the point of this was not that Hosea and Gomer needed to be married. The point was God was painting a portrait of the nature of his love and his relationship with the bride of God, the people of God. And so this this evokes the whole image of of smell.
Their clothes didn't even smell of smoke. It's interesting when Noah survived the great flood, he worshipped the Lord with the first recorded sacrifice in Scripture in Genesis 20. Verse 20 says that Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man. For the intentions of man's heart is evil from his youth.
Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. Isn't that interesting? The Lord makes a unilateral covenant of remarkable grace in response to smelling. The pleasing aroma.
In fact, that phrase, pleasing aroma, stands out because it becomes a refrain in Scripture. That describes the offerings that God's people make to the Lord. Like Leviticus chapter 2, and he shall take from it a handful of the fine flour and oil with all its frankincense, and the priest shall burn this as a memorial portion on the altar, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the Lord. Or Numbers 29, on the first day of the seventh month, you shall have a holy convocation. You shall not do any ordinary work.
It's a day for you to blow the trumpets, and you shall offer a burnt offering for a pleasing aroma to the Lord. In fact, The Lord specified there should always be a fragrant aroma rising up in his presence, there, even at the Ark of the Covenant, in the holiest place of the tabernacle. It was described in Exodus chapter 30 that you shall make an altar on which to burn incense. And has described all that it should be made of, and said, Aaron shall burn fragrant incense on it every morning when he dresses the lamps. He shall burn it.
And when Aaron sets up the lance at Twiyah, he shall burn it, a regular incense offering before the Lord throughout your generations. Ezekiel was one of the prophets who actually prophesied to the exiles in Babylon. And in Ezekiel 20, we hear this word of the Lord. As a pleasing aroma, I will accept you when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you have been scattered. And I will manifest my holiness among you in the sight of the nations.
There is, in the Old Testament, there are shadows, hints, little pictures of a reality that is coming in Jesus Christ. And it only makes sense if you see them as shadows. Because if you never read the Bible and you didn't understand our whole big story of redemption, then you'd read something like this and say that is God really a deity that likes to smell burnt offerings? Does he have nostrils? Does he really, is this a plea?
No, of course not. God is spirit. But what this is unveiling to us is something figuratively about the heart of God. And about the nature of the people of God.
So, this is what I want you to keep in mind: that it is the heart of God to breathe in the pleasing aroma. that is associated with sacrifice. Every culture, every tribe, and every form of religion has discovered, at least in some hint, that if there's going to be real relationship. Where there has been sin, there must be sacrifice. You can't just gloss over sin.
You can't just ignore it. You can't just say it doesn't matter. And so every culture, in one way or another, in all the crazy and wrong ways that cultures have done this, but nonetheless have pointed to this fact that Hebrews says, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.
So all of this is a shadow and it's a hint. It's pointing to the magnificence of the gospel. That there would be a sacrifice that would be made that was so complete and so wonderful that it is the ultimate pleasing aroma to the Father. And that the promise of Ezekiel stands true, not just to these Babylonian exiles, but to all who have been exiled and cut off from God because of the problem of sin in the world. He has prophesied that you will be gathered back to me and you'll be a pleasing aroma.
The sense of smell is just interesting because really it's unique amongst the senses. I've been reading a little bit about smell this week. Scholars propose it's the oldest human means of knowing whether to draw near or run away from something. It's like that. The sense of smell lets you know yes or no.
I mean, an egg might look like an egg and it might look just fine, but if it doesn't pass the smell test, then you're not going to touch it, you see. The sense of smell is kind of like a natural picture of the spiritual reality of discernment. It's interesting that people that have very keen spiritual insight and very keen spiritual discernment sometimes have reported to me that they can actually smell things as if in the Spirit or in the wonderful presence of the Lord. There are some people who will actually have a sensory perception of some fragrance or even in the presence of evil. Smell is that thing that lets you know whether something is good or bad, whether it's okay or not.
It's a very interesting sense. It receives the messages slower. Because it Smells don't come to you at the speed of light, and they don't come at the speed of sound. They come by little breezes and air molecules that float around, and you. And you catch the scent of something.
But what's interesting is that even though it may be slow to arrive, from what I have read, it actually sends the message to the brain faster than sight or sound. The New York Times article I read said the olfactory cortex is embedded within the brain's limbic system and amygdala where emotions are born and emotional memories stored. That's why, according to the article, smells, feelings, and memories become so easily and intimately entangled.
So what it's saying is that just in the natural, the sense of smell just sends a message straight to the emotional memory center of your brain. And sometimes a smell. Can just sweep you away into into emotion. It's memory, but it is not just memory like I can envision what happened. It is memory like I'm there again.
Alan Wright. In today's teaching, Smoking or Non-Smoking. 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.
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org. In today's message, we're talking a lot about Aroma, not the typical topic for church, not the typical theme from the fiery furnace story either from Daniel, but how impactful today's message really, really is. I just couldn't get away from that one line of scripture that says, and they not only were spared during the fiery furnace. But Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, their clothes didn't even smell of smoke. Yeah.
And just in a prayer time, I had this idea with some other believers. We were praying about this, and one lady said, You know, isn't that just a beautiful picture? How we can go through so many difficult things in life, and yet, by the grace of Christ, we come out on the other side and we don't smell like that negative experience we went through. We don't have to smell like the bitterness. And so it's a beautiful thing to think together about what it means that we are the aroma of Christ.
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