Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing, a biblical faith-filled vision for your life. I bless the ruins of your life. to become the hill upon which your tomorrow is built, higher and better. He is molding a mountain out of your mistakes.
So you can live atop it. a whole new Perspective. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. Quit expecting the world. to act a way that You think that any good Christian should act when they don't know a different way.
Start seeing with the eyes of Jesus and you'll be moved with compassion which will lead you to prayer. 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 You'll See as presented at Renolda Church in North Carolina.
As we approach the end of our fiscal year here at Allen Wright Ministries, we welcome your prayers and financial support during this critical time. You can give online right now at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org or call 877-544-4860. 877-544-4860. Thanks for all the ways you partner with Allen Wright Ministries in sharing the gospel and the good news of Jesus.
Speaking of which, now let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Pastor Alan Wright. At our Presbytery meeting years ago, the Assembly of Elders and Pastors that is the place where we approve examination of new ordination candidates and the ordination candidate has to preach. And a sermon that's approved by the Presbyterian. And I love the opening line.
This young man preached on Psalm 23. And he started his sermon by saying, Charles Darwin's survival of the fittest theory can't be right for one reason. Sheep still roam the earth. It was hilarious because sheep are one of the most defenseless creatures imaginable. It's so interesting that we are compared to sheep.
But we are. In fact, this image of sheep without a shepherd finds its root In antiquity, Numbers twenty-seven, fifteen, when Moses spoke to the Lord. He said, Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation. He's talking about a leader who shall go out before them and come in before them, and shall lead them and bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord may not be sheep that have no shepherd. He's saying they need leadership at the most natural level.
But Jesus came and identified himself as a shepherd. In fact, in John 10, he said, I am the good shepherd, and the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. In other words, Jesus is saying, I'm like a shepherd who cares for the sheep, but I do the unthinkable. I lay down my life for the sheep.
In fact, Matthew 18:12, he says, What do you think if a man has 100 sheep and none of them have gone astray, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the 99 on the mountains and go in search of that one that went astray? He says, I'm a shepherd that would lay down my life for the sheep, and I'm the good shepherd who would go seeking out the lost sheep. You would pursue The sheep, because the sheep cannot find its way back to the flock. They aren't bloodhounds. They don't, you never see a snake putting his nose down, going, I'm gonna find my way back home.
They cannot find their way home. Sheep without a shepherd will eat and drink the wrong things. Philip Keller, in his book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, said that he had observed that sheep will just stay in the same little pasture, eat the grass until it's gone, and then paw up the roots until there's no more grass that can even grow. They don't know how to go find a new green pasture. And they'll just foul the water that they drink in until it's polluted and then keep drinking it.
This is why they need a shepherd to make them lie down in green pastures and to lead them beside clean waters. They can't find it on their own. Sheep will eat and drink the wrong things. Sheep will be so vulnerable to the coyote or the wolf or even the mountain lion. Because they cannot defend themselves.
Sheep, you know what the analogy that I think of? A guinea pig. We had guinea pigs when I was growing up. Fluff one and fluff two met their demise. In a most unfortunate way.
You'd think you'd learn but Fluff One had him out in the front yard And a neighbor's dachshund came down. This was back in the day. There were no leashes, there were no fences. And just had him out front for a small period of time, and that dachshund came and just pounced on Fluff One at the end of Fluff One. Can you believe?
That fluff too, you'd think we would learn. But Fluff 2 got eaten as well.
So I hate those dachshunds. I fell in love with Ann and I said, Have y'all got a dog? And she said, Yeah, we had a dachshund named Mike. I said, She said his wonderful dog said the only bad thing is that one time he pounced on the neighbor's guinea pig in their front yard. I said you are kidding me.
What is a guinea pig going to do to defend itself from a weenie dog? No! What are you going to do with a sheep? Put it into a Cross-country training where you can learn to outrun the wolf. No.
They cannot run very fast. Are you going to try to sharpen their teeth so they could Bite the mountain lion that comes after it. How silly is that? They're not going to rear up on their back hooves and fight off anything. In fact, they don't even make noise.
They can't even call out and say, come help me, rescue me. They can be led to the slaughter and not make a sound. Sheep are one of the most defenseless creatures on the face of the earth. If they don't have a shepherd, they will be eaten alive. Sheep will follow other sheep into.
Dumb places, dangerous places, Phil Keller said, even some have been known to follow one another right off the cliff. Imagine that. I remember one time and I was a Teenager, I was at a Party at somebody's house. I never liked going to parties. I thought they were so dumb.
People standing around what we were supposed to do, but. We were standing around, had about three or four of us, nothing to do, talking to each other, and it must have been some. Black electrical tape on a shelf in this house. I don't remember why it was there, but one guy was fiddling with it, and next thing you know, a piece of it got stuck on his nose. We said, You got a piece of black tape on your nose.
And uh he said, I think I might leave it there. And so We said, yeah, I want to do the same thing.
So, about three or four of us put a piece of black electrical tape on our nose. I am not making this up within 30 minutes, the majority of the 50 or so people of this party had a piece of black electrical tape on their nose. Sheep can be cast. down in this sense That when they get on their side, if they shift their weight and their wool is a little heavy. They can get right on their back and their feet straight up in the air.
And when this happens, a cast sheep cannot right itself. They're stuck. And if a shepherd doesn't come, And get them back up eventually, especially under the hot sun, a sheep will die. in a cast position.
So the shepherd has to come. Get the sheep, sometimes use the staff to leverage it. Get the sheep back upright, rub the legs. and get the life going again. When the psalmist said, He restores my soul.
The word for soul is my life. Because if you cast down, you can't get yourself up. When Jesus said that I see them and they look like they are harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd, the word for harass. means torn or flayed. Like they have been attacked.
He saw the spiritual battle. He saw the spiritual battle. And he said they're helpless. And the word for helpless actually comes from the word in Greek meaning to throw down. It's the word used of Judas when he threw down the pieces of silver at the temple.
It's a picture of a sheep that's been thrown down. I think it's the picture of a cast sheep. who is helpless. Leonette's back. And Jesus was saying, What I see, the crowds, here's what's going on in my guts.
I see that they've been ravished by the enemy and that they are cast, they've been thrown down and they're stuck and they're not going to be righted unless they have a shepherd. They're like sheep without a shepherd, and I feel for them. When you See as Jesus sees. The splung knob. Your insides.
Yeah. being moved in a visceral way with Love and mercy and compassion Because sheep are just sheep. And they cannot get themselves going in the right way. until they have a good shepherd. In other words, Quit expecting sinners.
to act like they're not sinners. what they need is a savior. Quit expecting the world to act a way that You think that any good Christian should act when they don't know a different way. Quit expecting depressed people who are cast down to get themselves back up because they can't. Start seeing with the eyes of Jesus, and you'll be moved with compassion, which will lead you to prayer.
People, let me put it even more pointedly. People, and this is completely countercultural and maybe offensive to the spirit of this age, but. What the Bible teaches is that we do not find our identity in ourselves. The message of the age is look inside of yourself and find out who you are. That is Exactly opposite of the scripture.
David said, The Lord is my shepherd. I am identified by whose I am. I never could find myself by looking inside of myself. I needed a voice beyond me to call me and tell me who I am and call me his own. I'm identified by the fact that I'm in the family of God.
A sheep is identified by the shepherd. We're expecting people to find their way. When they don't know the way, They'll never have an authentic identity unless someone tells them that they were made in the image of God. A little lower than the angels. Never have an authentic identity until they understand that God gave His all out of compassion and inexhaustible love to die in their place on a cross so that they could be His child and that their destiny is to be an heir alongside of Christ Himself.
Here's our identity: We are baptized into Christ, we are immersed into Christ. My identity is not found by looking inside of my identity is found by being immersed into the love of Christ. My shepherd. It means we won't have victory by looking inside ourselves either. It's impossible for sheep not to act foolishly when they don't have a shepherd.
It's just not in their nature. The power of compassion in Christ. is the power That moved him Even when he was physically exhausted, It moved him to heal. And it is that compassion It moved him. To die for you.
It's why he did it. He loved you. And you were like A sheep that had no shepherd. and would have remained such. If not for the compassion of the Son of God.
Henry Nouwen has said that competition and compassion are in conflict. I think this is a A brilliant insight. That In a culture that is bent on getting ahead of someone else. It is extremely difficult to have authentic compassion. If you are worried about your position, whether you're in front of somebody else or not.
And So Where there is competition, you don't have compassion.
So I'm a competitive person and I love sports.
So when my team is winning, Then I am cheering. If my team is winning by a large margin, And my wife is in the room. She starts feeling sorry for the other team and I have to kick her out of the room. I said, no, there's no feeling sorry for the other team. No, no.
These leads, you can't have too big of a lead. Maybe you can with just a minute or two left, but Here's what.
Now and said, And see if you can wrap your mind around this. Only God can be wholly compassionate, completely compassionate. Because only God is not in competition with us. The paradox of God's compassion Is that God can be compassionate because God is completely other than we are? And because God is holy other, God can become a completely as we are.
God can become so deeply human because God is so fully divine. In short, God can be fully compassionate. Because there can be no comparison with us, and thus God is in no way in competition with us. This is one of the greatest assurances you could ever have: God's God all by Himself. He's God, you're not, His ways are not our ways.
He is so transcendent and so beyond. He is God, He is perfect, He's holy, He is love.
So, in that sense, there's no comparison between you and God. God doesn't have any need to compete with you, He's God. And so, all that's left is his movement towards you in compassion. It's like a father who has a toddler. When I had a toddler that I'm trying to help learn how to walk, I'm not in competition with the toddler, I don't have to prove something to the toddler.
It's a toddler. I just have compassion. I just want to help. I just want to help. So All of this is to say When you start feeling frustrated, And I'm honest with you, I get frustrated.
with the crowds. What if you were just to stop and say Jesus Could I have your eyes? to see this properly. Maybe there's a person you're frustrated with. Could I just...
Borrow your eyes, Jesus, to see her. Her as you do. to see him through your eyes. It is, in a sense, to stop. and ask why.
And you'll find that The answer to the why is often because. There's sheep. And they don't have A shepherd. And once you see If from that perspective, you will be transformed. When our son, our first child, Bennett, was one.
He'd been so healthy. I don't even know, other than the early checkups, we'd never even been to the doctor. And one night, He was just fussing all through the night. And this was after a time in which he had learned to sleep through the night because he would get up in the night and cry and get frustrated. And this night we were actually visiting Ann's folks.
We were in Durham at the time. We came to visit in Winston. And Bennett was fussy through the night. And I was frustrated with it. I thought, well, he's just going back to his old ways of fussing through the night, wanting to get some attention.
And I kind of said, and I said, he's just being fussy and we got to. We can't overly coddle them now. And the next day, he wasn't himself, and he didn't feel like eating. And that's when I said, oh, that's not good.
So we took him into the doctor, same pediatrician Ann had when she was growing up. Went to see Dr. Stamey and he First time we'd had our child and the pediatrician, and Dr. Stamey looked in his ear and said, oh, he's got a raging ear infection going on. I just about burst into tears there in the doctor's room because I've been kind of frustrated with the little guy the night before.
And he said, he does not feel good. And I said, well, doctor, he hasn't been eating. He said, oh, well, once we get some antibiotic going to get this here, he'll eat everything he can then. I feel like that We spend way too much time thinking we know what's going on with people and just being frustrated with them. Why don't they get their act together?
And I think that underneath it there is a different narrative. And it doesn't excuse their sin and it doesn't excuse the problems of this world, but it changes the way that we feel. That God has come to us in the person of Jesus as a shepherd, and He has such compassion on us that He will never Let us go. When you feel frustrated. Just pause and say Jesus.
How do you see this? And he'll show you. That's the gospel. Alan Wright. Today's good news message, condemned no more.
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Back now with Pastor Alan.
So, what's our takeaway from this series and this teaching today?
So, we're learning how to see with the eyes of Jesus, and it's a whole different way of living. Instead of living moralistically, which is to say, well, what would Jesus do? And I'll try hard to be like Jesus. The invitation of the gospel is much richer. There's a way of being empowered to live as he does.
And one of the ways. That I and many others have been putting into practice is by a simple discipline of praying, Lord, how do you see this? And when you see through Jesus's eyes, that changes your feelings, that changes your thoughts, that changes your behaviors because we act according to what we actually see. And today we're learning, Daniel, that one of the things we need to see through Jesus' eyes is not only others' sins, but we need to see our own sin. We need to see the full depth of the way that He can forgive us, and we need to be able to see our accusers for who they are and what they are.
Ask Jesus, how do you see all these failures in my life? And He'll show you, and it'll change everything. 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 pastoralen.org.
That's pastoralan.org. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.
