Christ, Our Exile [Part 3]

Pastor author and Bible teacher Alan Wright we might want the Lord instead to just change the culture because I really like to verify with pull over to the side of the road like they did, then, if you know how to 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 in priority is the kingdom of God in my citizenry, and yours doesn't change.

God has a goal and Babylon has a goal and God's goal is Pastor Alan Wright to another message of good news that will help you see your life for no hold. I'm Daniel Britton excited for you to hear the teaching today. In the series called Daniel is presented with an older church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program. I will make sure you know how to get our special resource right now you can be yours for your donation this month. Alan Reich ministries as you listen to today's message go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at pastoralan.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 is actually those that are uninsured of an eternal home that can't be real about the pain adversities and eventual death that we experience in this world so the first thing is not rush past the sense of exile that these people felt. You have to imagine it. I I invite you to just imagine with me what that was actually like that they were the favored people of God, chosen out of all the peoples of the earth to represent God on earth. They all the promise that the Torah law and the promises of God for all the prophecy they had the temple. They had a life of worship in first starting with with Syria that comes in 722 but then this the Babylonians. They come in in three waves and just start laying bare the city and deporting them one after the other valves upon thousands upon thousands snatched away from their homes and their homes are destroyed. You gotta think about us.

This is what they're experiencing and then the temple is raised, it is it is demolished. The thing that is most holy to them in the center of their life.

The communal life is is put to rubble. Solomon's Temple and all of its glory. Put to rubble and there deported to Babylon.

How are they feeling I thing out there feeling that the feeling like the book of Lamentations there 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 liars. They put in their instruments aside, their music, their joy there delaying it aside for their are captured first three required of the songs and our tormentors mirth sing sing. That's one of the songs Zion to that alone is a cone around is going to pick up your guitar and play slow song from when you're songs are used to seeing and feeling singing verse four how should we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land. If I forget, yo Jerusalem, let my right hand forget it skill, let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth. I do not remember you if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy is this is earthy and this is real and this is in the Bible because this is this is this is what good Christians say this is what they were feeling. This is what the exiles were actually feeling verse seven or Lord gives the Edomites.

The data Jerusalem, how they said barely bear down to its foundation. Oh 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 take your little ones and dashes them against the rock is not nice talk is not. It is not a happy song but it is what there feeling because they've they've been they've been robbed of everything that they knew that was precious to them and and and the Lord, the Lord's allow desk and you can know what is going on with this part of it that the heart of it, can you just see me the message that is underneath the promises that the prophets of the comfort of the Lord in the presence of the Lord in the promises of restoration of the Lord. The restore their fortunes and have compassion upon the promise and promise and this is not the way it is always good to be but is allowing them to experience the feeling of exile, 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 home that puts us in touch with our great great longing for ultimate home with God forever. He's giving them a sense of picturing that you're going to have to rely upon something other than a physical temple.

These vessels and all of these things and you you you can have to discover God in the land of your exile and his inward tension that they feel and exile is its is already in edits not yet in its is not comfortable so uncomfortable when your next is just it just no longer surrounded by the familiar and people are buying into your belief system. Just because you say so or just because it's popular and you struggle between want to run away from it somehow are wanting to fix it or wanting to strike out against it are choosing to bless them and point to God.

It is, it is a dynamic tension it is. It is something is hard to describe but I tell you who has done this and describe the picture of the reality of being citizens of the kingdom of heaven, while also in this earthly realm. And that is CS Lewis in his in his Narnia stories because what they are there stories of these kids that back in London are just kids and nobody pays much attention they just kids, ordinary kids, but when they stumble through the wardrobe into the snow laden forests of Narnia. They enter into a land of magic the kingdom. Where is been prophesied that they will have thrown for care parallel they will be kings and queens in Narnia and so the stories go up there great exploits and how they conquer the white which and how all the animals. The forest pay great homage to these little children because their kings and their 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 the witch and 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 and Lewis rights before they gone 20 more. They notice 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 Lucy and their old clothes. It was the same day the same hour on which they had gone into the wardrobe to hide Ms. McGrady in the visitors were still talking in the passage, but luckily they never came into the empty room and so the children were caught in that would've been the very end of the story. If it hadn't been that they felt they really must explain to the professor wife four of the coach of the wardrobe were missing and the professor was a very remarkable man didn't tell them not to be silly, or not to tell lies, but believed the whole story know he said I don't think it be good to try to go back to the wardrobe door to get the coach you won't get the Narnia again by that route nor the codes be much used United at what's that, yes, of course, you'll get back to Narnia again someday. Once a king and Narnia. Always a king in Narnia. There we are there we are. When you accept Christ, will 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. 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 in your promise that one day there'll be a new heaven and new earth� Ditch this earth is gonna remake it is to be some kind of supernatural merging of the heavenly's and of the earth in a new reality and you're going to rain forever.

Your already established what I'm saying is beloved in Christ you're already established is 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 an ordinary London just looking like little kids wearing ordinary clothes and people are looking at you like you're nothing like us just so ordinary and your sin. They're going yeah but Yamaha Masonic King and a Queen, Prince of a princess and and and and and another land and then there people like the professor they see it. They don't make fun of it because I know it's real and they believe it and they see it and you live every day of your life with someone see it as some who don't. And depending on the culture and the time of the place more people who may, or may be more that don't. But it never changes. The reality of who you actually are talent right will have more teaching moment from today's important series.

It's shocking how quickly American values have changed.

Suddenly, most people don't go to church or have a biblical worldview. Everything has changed so much that maybe you feel like a foreigner in your own culture. I was a Christian supposed to live in a post-Christian world we fight against it.

We decide our light in the midst of it. We pull away from it. These are the same questions that face the young exile named Daniel in Babylon 600 years before Christ. Though he was an alien God showed the young man favor when you make your gift to Alan Wright ministry today will send you Pastor Alan's eight messages on Daniel of favorite foreigner in an attractive CD album on a USB thumb drive for through digital download is our way of saying thanks for your partnership. You may feel like a stranger in this world is God showed favor to gain his farmland God's grace is upon you today. Your gift today will only help you walk in the grace of God during these troubling times will also help someone else. This ministry is only possible through prayerful support listeners like you when you give today will send you today's special offer call 877-544-4860 877-544-4860 or come visit Pastor Alan.org today's teaching now continues here once again is Alan Wright and so the key when you start feel like a foreigner in your own culture is not simply to bemoan the culture not to disdain start hating the people around you, but instead the key is to be forever reminded of who you are and Jesus Christ and the reason I like going to church. The reason I like being with you is because we get together we in Narnia we remind each other 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 we remember who we are as an object, and you worship the Lord and your with one another.

Then you walk out and so my right around you would 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 wisemen around him and he's going to be pointing to God and is good be bringing glory to God and Daniels will live with this dynamic tension of what is he gonna be willing to participate in a what's he, not in an answers never really easy is it.

I mean he he goes through all their educational process and he's is willing to to took to do all of that but for whatever reason, what comes to eating the Kings foods is known not to do that and later working to save definitely when it comes to took took took to bowing down to a pagan deity or quick praying and and and glorifying God. Absolutely no rather die than do that and and and yet the favor of God remains on him. We live kind of Anna in a world like that and I believe that in a time such as this that what is appropriate for us as 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 really like it. A verb I would pull over to the side of the road like they did at my Bennett's funeral and I really like it if all the mayors were bowing down and pray 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. 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 them here bring the best and the brightest and make him eat our food. Give them our names.

Tell him about our guides teach them about our history teach in our literature and will 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, it is a surprise ending in a sense that by the time this three years of training this full scholarship that they had to the University of Babylon when it was over.

Instead of them being simply brainwashed little followers of Nebuchadnezzar.

They were just still in love with God and yet Nebuchadnezzar looked at several of these guys are 10 times better than anybody we've got. I like that I 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 is a rhythm of the story of exile in the reason I think that Daniel is prominent here in the middle. 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 favored 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 once he came to save.

He died upon the cross and called out my God my God why you forsaken me, and experiencing that exile for us.

He made it possible for us to no longer be in exile but be restored to God's love chart. Colson's story that may be first appeared in this issue of guidepost be told in other places. He wrote these words as one who has served time in prison and a sense but spent most of my life working in them. I'll never forget the most unusual prison I've ever visited called it night of prison. It is in the sow. Jos� does Campos and Brazile, formerly a government prison.

It is now operated by prison Fellowship, Brazil as an alternative prison without armed guards are high tech security.

Instead, it is run on the Christian principles of the love of God and respect for man whom I to 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 drug related crimes. Every man is assigned another inmate to whom he is 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, particularly the murderer who held the keys open the gates and let me in.

Wherever I walked I saw minute piece assault clean living areas. I saw people working industriously. The walls were decorated with motivational sayings and Scripture. Micah has an astonishing record its recidivism rate is 4% compared to 75% and the rest of Brazil, 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 reach 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 is 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 desk Hospital Helen Wright in today's teaching Christ our exile. It's shocking how quickly American values have changed.

Suddenly, most people don't go to church or have a biblical worldview. Everything has changed so much that maybe you feel like a foreigner in your own culture.

I was a Christian supposed to live in a post-Christian world we fight against it.

We decide our light in the midst of it.

We pull away from it. These are the same questions that faced a young exile named Daniel in Babylon 600 years before Christ.

Though he was an alien God showed the young man favor when you make your gift to Alan Wright ministry today will send you Pastor Alan's eight messages on Daniel of favorite foreigner in an attractive CD album on a USB thumb drive or through digital download is our way of saying thanks for your partnership.

You may feel like a stranger in this world, but as God should favor to gain his foreign land. God's grace is upon you today. Your gift today will only help you walk in the grace of God during these troubling times. It will also help someone else.

This ministry is only possible and prayerful support listeners like you when you give today will send you today's special offer call 877-544-4860 877-544-4860 or come visit Pastor Alan.org so Alan is it okay to wish the culture had morals like Christianity teaches. But the reality check here is in order to understand this world is fallen, and those expectations were 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 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. 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 new, but is 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 is very fine too long for a culture in which many many more people know the Lord and therefore they treat the things 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 in an recognize that we are.

We're in unchurched sort of post-Christian. Today's good news message is a listener supported production Alan Wright ministry