Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing: a biblical faith-filled vision for your life. The Pevensey children stumbled into snowy Narnia as children unaware of the ancient prophecy that sons and daughters of Adam. would one day dethrone the white witch. and reign on thrones at Care Paravel. unaware of their true identity, unaware of their true Destiny.
Who were they? In England, unnoticed minors. In Narnia, exalted majesties. Who are you, child of God, in this world? ordinary sojourners in God's kingdom.
royal heirs.
So I bless you, elect exile. to live from your deeper, truer self, your majestic self. and when the world mistakes you or treats you as a misfit. Remember who you are. May you now and forever remember.
Who you are. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. We might want the Lord instead to just change the culture because I'd really like it if everybody would pull over to the side of the road like they did at Mama Bennett's funeral. And I'd really like it if all the mayors were bowing down and praying next to the industry signposts in their community. But that, in the end, is not the priority.
The end priority is the kingdom of God. And my citizenry and yours doesn't change. God has a goal, and Babylon has a goal. And God the goal wins. 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. It is actually those that are unassured of an eternal home. That can't be real. about the pain adversities. and the eventual death that we experience in this world.
So The the first thing is not rush past. The sense of exile that these people felt. You have to imagine it. I invite you to just imagine with me what that was actually like. They are the favored people of God, chosen out of all the peoples of the earth, to represent God on the earth, Israel.
They had all the promises, they had the Torah, the law, they had the promises. of God through all the prophecy. They had the temple They had their life of worship. And first, starting with Assyria that comes in 722, but then this, the Babylonians that come in in three waves. And just start laying bare the city and deporting them one after the other.
Thousands upon thousands upon thousands, snatched away from their homes, and their homes are destroyed. You got to think about this. This is what they are experiencing. And then the temple is raised. It is It is demolished.
The thing that is most holy to them and the center of their life, their communal life, is put to rubble.
Solomon's temple in all of its glory, put to rubble. and they're deported to Babylon. How are they feeling? I'll tell you how they're feeling. They're feeling like the Book of Lamentations.
They're feeling like Psalm 137. By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows, there we hung up our lyres. They're putting their instruments aside, their music, their joy. They're just laying it aside.
For there our captors, verse 3, required of us songs and our tormentors mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. See, the Babylonians are coming around there saying, you know, why don't you pick up your guitar and play us a little song from one of your songs you used to sing? And then it feels like. Verse 4, How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.
Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy. This is a this is earthy And this is real. And this is in the Bible because this isn't what good Christians say, but this is what they were feeling. This is what the exiles were actually feeling. Verse 7: Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites, the day of Jerusalem, how they said, Lay it bare, lay it bare down to its foundations.
O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed. Blessed shall he be who repays you with what you've done to us. Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock. That's not nice talk. That's not a happy song, but it's what they're feeling because they've been robbed of everything that they knew that was precious to them.
And the Lord has allowed this. And you can just go, well, what is going on with this? And part of it, at the heart of it, can you just see the message that is underneath it? And the promises through the prophets of the comfort of the Lord and the presence of the Lord and the promises of restoration of the Lord to restore their fortunes to have compassion upon them. He keeps promising them, promising them this is not the way that it's always going to be.
But he's allowing them to experience the feelings of exile. He's allowing them to experience some of the feelings of what it is to be separated from that which is precious because this is the human dilemma. Sin has caused a separation from God. We all, apart from Christ, are exiled from God. And when we identify what it really feels like to be separated from our homeland, it puts us in touch with our great, great longing for our ultimate home with God forever.
giving them a sense. Of picturing that you're going to have to rely upon something other than a physical temple and these vessels and all of these things that you, you're going to have to discover God in the land of your exile. And It's an inward tension that they feel in exile. It's a. It's already in the edits.
Not yet, and it's It's not comfortable. It's not comfortable when you're in exile. No longer surrounded by the familiar. And people aren't buying into your belief system just because you say so or just because it's popular. And you struggle between wanting to run away from it somehow, or wanting to fix it, or wanting to strike out against it, or choosing to bless them and point to God.
It is a dynamic tension. It is something that's hard to describe, but I tell you who has done this and described the picture of the reality of being citizens of the kingdom of heaven while also in this earthly realm. And that is C.S. Lewis in his Narnia stories. Because What they are, they're stories of these kids.
that back in London are just kids. And nobody pays them much attention. They're just kids. Ordinary kids. But when they stumble through the wardrobe into the snow-laden forests of Narnia, They enter into a land of Of magic.
of a kingdom Where it's been prophesied that they will have thrones at Caer Paravel. They will be kings and queens. in Narnia. And so the stories go of their great exploits. And how they conquer the white witch.
And how all the animals of the forest pay great homage to these little children because they're kings and they're queens. In Narnia. But there comes a time in which they are escorted back. into their old world. And at the end of the lion and the witch and then the wardrobe, when they are out, Riding their horses and speaking to one another the way kings and queens speak, and then they notice a lamppost and have a vague memory of it.
Lewis writes, Before they'd gone twenty more, they noticed that they were making their way not through branches, but through coats. And next moment, they all came tumbling out of the wardrobe door into an empty room, and they were no longer kings and queens in their hunting array, but just Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucia in their old clothes. It was the same day. in the same hour on which they had gone into the wardrobe to hide, Ms. McCrady and the visitors were still talking in the passage, but luckily they never came into the empty room, and so the children weren't caught.
That would have been the very end of the story if it hadn't been that they felt they really must explain to the professor why four of the coats of the wardrobe were missing, and the professor. It was a very remarkable man. Didn't tell them not to be silly or not to tell lies, but believed the whole story. No, he said, I don't think it'd be good to try to go back through the wardrobe door to get the coach. You won't get into Narnia again by that route, nor the coats be much use to you now.
Did, eh? What's that? Yes, of course you'll get back to Narnia again someday. Once a king in Narnia. Always a king.
in Narnia. There we are. There we are. When you accept Christ. Whether you feel this or not, this is what happens.
You are born anew supernaturally. And there's a great shift in the whole cosmos about where you are positioned spiritually. You are reckoned as the righteousness of Christ. And in that sense, You are not only made his child, But you are positioned. With Christ as if you had lived.
A meritorious life. And your citizenship is permanently, eternally, forever. with God in heaven. And your promise that one day there'll be a new heaven and a new earth. God's not going to ditch this earth.
He's going to remake it. And there's going to be some kind of supernatural merging of the heavenlies and of the earth in a new reality. and you're going to reign forever. You're already established. What I'm saying is, beloved in Christ, you're already established as kings and queens.
And here's the deal.
Some people recognize it. And some people don't. And some days you're just surrounded by People the way Lucy and Edmund and Peter and Susan would be in ordinary London, just looking like little kids wearing ordinary clothes, and people are looking at you like you're nothing, like it's just so ordinary, and you're sitting there going, Yeah, but I'm a king and a queen, I'm a prince, I'm a princess, and in another land. And then there are people like the professor, and they see it and they don't make fun of it because they know it's real. And they believe it.
And they see it. And you live. Every day of your life. With some who see it, And some who don't. And depending on the culture and the time and the place, more people who may and or maybe more that don't.
But it never changes the reality of who you actually are. And so the key when you start feeling like a foreigner in your own culture. is not simply to bemoan the culture. not to disdain and start hating the people around you. But instead the key is to be forever reminded of who you are in Jesus Christ.
And the reason I like going to church. The reason I like being with you is because when we get together, We in Narnia, we remind each other of what a wonderful adventure it is. We encourage each other to be brave enough to continue in the battle. And we remind each other that we ultimately have been given thrones because of the grace of God. And we remember who we are.
And sometimes you come and you worship the Lord and you're with one another, then you walk out, and somebody right around you who doesn't understand you might begin to persecute you. And we must not become a people that simply are condemning those around us because our mission in the world is to love the world and to bless the world. In other words, Daniel is placed as an exile into a position where he is going to be a blessing to the king and a blessing to the pagan wise men around him. And he's going to be pointing to God and he's going to be bringing glory to God. And Daniel's going to live with this dynamic tension of what is he going to be willing to participate in and what's he not.
And the answer is never really easy, is it? I mean, he goes through all their educational process and he's willing to do all of that. But for whatever reason, when it comes to eating the king's food, he says, no, I'm not going to do that. And later we're going to see, definitely, when it comes to bowing down to a pagan deity or quit praying and glorifying God, absolutely no. Rather die than do that.
And yet the favor of God remains on him. We live kind of in a world like that. And I believe that in a time such as this, that what is appropriate for us is we meditate. Upon a story like Daniel, as we gather next week under the sound of the blessing, that we bless one another with this blessing: that the Lord protect you, and the Lord provide for you, and the Lord promote you. We might want the Lord instead to just change the culture because I'd really like it if everybody would pull over to the side of the road like they did at Mama Bennett's funeral.
And I'd really like it if all the mayors were bowing down and praying next to the industry signposts in their community. But that, in the end, is not the priority. The end priority is the kingdom of God. And my citizenry and yours doesn't change. Uh In other words, what I think the message here is to recognize that God has a goal, and Babylon has a goal.
And God's goal wins. Glory to God. The goal of Nebuchadnezzar, bring him here. Bring the best and the brightest. and make them eat our food, give them our names.
Tell them about our gods, teach them about our history, teach them our literature, and we'll make them one of us. And yet, God had a bigger goal that was trumping that goal, and that was that God would supernaturally demonstrate His favor upon them so that He could point. even the most pagan, to the reality of God. It is a surprise ending in this sense. That By the time there's three years of training this full scholarship that they had to the University of Babylon.
When it was over, Um instead of them being simply brainwashed little followers of Nebuchadnezzar. They were just Still in love. With God. And yet, Nebuchadnezzar looked at him and said, Well, these guys are ten times better than anybody we've got. I like that.
I'd like to believe that over your life and mine. Is a story that is about these people that are exiled, but the reason that there's a rhythm of the story of exile. And the reason I think that Daniel is prominent here in the middle of your Bible, and the reason that I want to spend so many weeks. exploring these texts with you is for something larger than saying We all ought to try to be like Daniel. There are lessons to be learned from how Daniel lived his life, but the bigger Message of the gospel is what I'm after here.
Because our gospel story is a story not just of Daniel. It is a story of an ultimate Daniel. It is a story of one who was exiled on our behalf and favoured for our well-being. One who came to live And in no way and absolutely no way submit To the domination. of the ruler of this age.
but who would come and pour out his life and have all ultimate wisdom and revelation and never sin. Jesus came into that which was his own, the Bible says, but his own did not receive him. He was exiled. on our behalf. and he lived as an exile in this world whose real place was at the right hand of the Father.
And he came to a moment where he would experience the ultimate sense of exile. Having been absolutely and completely misunderstood by the ones that he came to save, he died upon a cross and he called out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And in experiencing that exile for us. He made possible for us to no longer be in exile, but be restored to God. I just love Chuck Coulson's story.
That maybe first appeared in this issue of guideposts. He told it in other places. He wrote these words: as one who has served time in prison and has since spent most of my life working in them, I'll never forget the most unusual prison I've ever visited called Umaita Prison. It is in São José dos Campos in Brazil. Formerly a government prison, it is now operated by Prison Fellowship Brazil as an alternative prison without armed guards or high-tech security.
Instead, it is run on the Christian principles of love of God and respect for men. Umaita has only two full-time staff. The rest of the work is done by the 730 inmates serving time for everything from murder and assault to robbery and drug-related crimes. Every man is assigned another inmate to whom he's accountable. In addition, each prisoner is assigned a volunteer mentor from the outside who works with him during his term and after his release.
Prisoners take classes on character development and are encouraged to participate in educational and religious programs. When I visited this prison, I found the inmates smiling. Mm-hmm. particularly the murderer who held the keys, opened the gates and let me in. Wherever I walked I saw men at peace.
I saw clean living areas. I saw people working industriously. The walls were decorated with motivational sayings and scripture. Umaita has an astonishing record. Its recidivism rate is 4% compared to 75% in the rest of Brazil.
Now almost none of these men went back to prison. How is that possible? I saw the answer when my inmate guide escorted me to the notorious cell once used for solitary punishment. Today, he told me, It always houses the same inmate. As we reached the end of the long concrete corridor, And he put the key into the lock, he paused and asked, Are you sure you want to go in?
Of course, I replied impatiently. I've been in isolation cells all over the world. Slowly he swung open the massive door. And I saw the prisoner in that cell. A crucifix beautifully carved, Jesus hanging on the cross.
He's doing time for the rest of us, my guide said softly. Jesus left his heavenly home. to experience exile.
So that we Who were in exile. would be assured of our Heavenly. Home. Christ, our exile. That's the gospel.
Alan Wright. And today's teaching, Christ, Our Exile. Ever feel like the pressure is always on? What must I do to be accepted? There is only one solution.
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So, Alan, is it okay to wish the culture had morals like Christianity teaches? But a reality check here is in order to understand this world has fallen and those expectations are a bit skewed. Yeah, and I, you know, I want to keep making it clear throughout the whole Daniel series that there are many important learnings from Daniel being in Babylon.
So he is a man of God in the midst of a pagan culture. And I'm not saying that America is Babylon. But what I am saying is that in a culture where most people in America don't go to church anymore, Um It is okay to be in touch with and even grieve the loss. of the kind of heart Of a Christian, more Christian culture that many of us once knew. But it's very important to recognize that it has changed.
And if we don't Recognize changes that have actually happened, I think will be frustrated and mad rather than. grieve and pray.
So I think it's very fine to long for A culture in which many, many more people know the Lord and therefore. they treat the things of the Lord differently. But on the other side of that, I have found that it's actually more liberating to grieve the loss of what we have to have let go of and recognize that we're we're in an unchurched sort of post-Christian culture yeah. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.
