Made Holy [Part 2]

Allen Wright, pastor, Bible teacher, and author of his latest book, The Power to Bless. This doesn't cause us to boast. This doesn't cause us to lose an awareness that we still are prone to stumble in our sin. Instead, it causes us to see ourselves as something completely different.

We belong to God, and it changes everything. 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, Belonging to God, as presented at Reynolda 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.

877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Allen Wright. This is a great, troubling, difficult thing for most Christians to ever really believe, because we know that we still sin, and we have been taught over and over and over that to be more holy, we need to become more and more conscious of our sins. That is not the teaching of the New Testament. There are a couple of scant verses that will speak to this, like in 1 John, if we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us.

But the preponderance of New Testament teaching is trying to move Christians to a point where you can get a hold of your new identity so that you would quit disqualifying yourself from the massive destiny that God has placed on your life. One time I read about a professional golfer many years ago that played in a Pro-Am, and Billy Graham was on his team. And the golfer just played terrible, and he got in the locker room, and he was kind of mumbling around with some of the other golfers, and he said, you know, they said, well, how was it? He said, I played terrible, the whole thing. And he said, well, what? And he said, well, I don't need Billy Graham breathing down my throat all back all the time about what a sinner I am and all this. And the guy said, are you serious?

Really? I mean, Dr. Graham was getting on you out there? And he said, well, no, he didn't say anything, but I know he's thinking it. That's a sin consciousness.

You see, when you become a Christian, God wants you to lose sin consciousness and get holiness consciousness. It's kind of like, I was thinking of the way I feel when I go to a sporting event, I usually don't have good seats. I usually have the cheap seats, but I'm very masterfully watching to see where the good seats might be available for the people that have the good seats that didn't come to the game, and I'm ready to move down to their good seats. You know what I'm talking about. And some of you might be very much amateurs at this.

Let me give you a point. It's all about timing. It's all about timing. You don't want to go too early because if you go too early to the good seat, people are still cruising in because people that got the really good seats, you know, they can just come on in whenever they want to. And so if you go down too early, I mean like if you're at the basketball game and you think that just because it's four minutes into the game, you can move down to a good seat, you better be ready to get moved out of that seat. But you don't want to go too late because then the other people who are doing the same thing you're doing, we're all ready to go get the good seats.

So you have to be skilled at this. But I'm just going to tell you that it takes a whole lot of your conscience being seared during the game in order for you to feel really comfortable in that seat once you've taken it. I've moved down to some excellent seats before, snuck past ushers and everything to get down to them, but you're kind of sitting there the whole game looking over your shoulder like, when's somebody going to come in here, even in the second half, they might come in and say, excuse me, what are you doing in my seat?

And you're like, oh, you know, oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize this was, I didn't realize this wasn't my seat. I got down here from the upper deck. I don't know how this happened. You know, I feel like you can't totally enjoy the game because it's not your ticket.

You don't have a legal right to it. And the real owner of the seat could come at any time. The ultimate for me in getting the good seat was when I was a kid, my best buddy, David, I won't say his last name, get him in trouble now, all these years. David, he was a ball boy at the Greensboro Coliseum during the ACC tournament. I mean, in the ACC tournament, back in the day, it was everything. You had to win the thing or you didn't even go on.

I'm talking about back early on. And his dad was on the board or something at the Coliseum and his dad was sort of mischievous. And they said, listen, Alan, just come on. All you got to do is put on some white pants and a Navy shirt. You'll look like everybody else on the ball boy. Just come on in. Walk in the back door to the Coliseum with us. And I was like, okay. And so I just, I put on my white pants and the Navy shirt and I went in and I sat down there and I threw the ball out to Phil Ford as he's warming up and everything else. And first I just sit there and I'm going, who up there is looking down here saying, who's that kid down there? Just waiting on the security guards to come and yank me out. But over time during the game, I started getting more bold. You know, going out there, mopping up the sweat, trying to wave at the camera and everything else. But the whole time knowing, Alan, you don't deserve to be here.

You're not really a ball boy. God wants you to know, Christians, you belong to Him. You belong in the presence of God. You are the recipient of the covenantal blessings that were bought for you in Jesus Christ. And the reason that you can minister the things of God and draw near to God and experience the glories of God and hear the voice of God and be used by God for a mighty destiny is that you in Christ have been made holy. In the old covenant, it might have been a prophet that was holy. It might have been a king that was holy.

It might have been a priest that was holy. But in the new covenant, He has poured out His Spirit upon all flesh. You've been made holy. And it changes everything. It changes everything for you. It changes how you live.

It changes how you think. If you do not see yourself as holy, then what recourse do you have when God comes near except to want to get away from Him? There's a very fascinating story in Luke chapter 5 where Peter and the guys are fishing and Jesus comes and gets into Peter's boat and teaches from the boat for the good sound that could travel over the water and people could hear him well. And after he finished speaking, I'm in Luke chapter 5, he said to Simon, Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. And Simon answered, Master, we toiled all night and took nothing, but at your word I will let down the nets. And when they'd done this, they enclosed a large number of fish and their nets were breaking.

And they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both the boats so they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me, for I'm a sinful man, O Lord. What he was saying is, Now we're out in the deep water, and I can't depart from you lest I drown, but I can't be in your presence, so you need to get away from me. The worst predicament you could have as a Christian would be to have any part of you, even one percent of your soul, that would be saying to God, Depart from me because I'm sinful. You don't want to be in a position where you're repelling and making it your prayer request that the God of grace and mercy and power and healing and provision and life and hope and strength would be away from you. You want to be close to Him.

You can never be close if you're constantly conscious of the nagging suspicion that you don't belong in that seat. You've got to come to the place where you realize you have been in Christ, seated with Christ in the heavenlies. You have been made holy.

It changes everything about how you live then. This is what the writer of Hebrews says, The sacrifices, verse one, could never make perfect. Verse two, if they had, they would cease being offered, but they're still being offered, so they must not have made us complete, must not have been sufficient for our holiness. They're just reminders, verse three, he says, of the sin that we have by the very fact that they kept offering the sacrifices. It just made them more aware of how sinful they were. Come on.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Imagine for 99 days in a row someone tells you, I love you, I'll never forsake you, wouldn't you feel cherished? But what would happen if on the hundredth day that same person said, I'm not sure you're good enough for me. If you don't measure up, I don't think I'll love you anymore.

Wouldn't that one day contaminate the meaning of the other 99 days? Wouldn't one percent of conditional love poison the other 99 percent? Well, just one percent of law is enough to spoil grace. The tiniest bit of law can introduce an unlimited capacity for fear. What if I don't measure up?

When might I be rejected? When the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church, the apostle Paul was outraged and wrote a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of law. Alan Wright's 12-message audio series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians, and that's the gospel.

Discover the purity and power of the grace of God. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. A lot of Christians, they live their life like I need to do something to make it up to God. Every time you're trying to make a sacrifice for God, all you're doing is bringing a reminder that you're sinful and you don't belong in the presence of God. Something much better has come in Jesus Christ. Verse 8, when he says, You've neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifice and offer in burnt offerings.

These were offered according to law. He's saying that God has come in Jesus to inaugurate a new covenant, which is far better than the old covenant. It's not that the old covenant and the law was not a good gift, it was.

It's not that He's come so much to repeal it as He is to fulfill it and give you something that is so much better. What God has done for us in some is that He came in the person of Jesus Christ and Jesus, the temple, the meeting place of God and man because He is the God-man. He Himself figuratively went into the Holy of Holies, offered His own blood once and for all so that anybody, anybody, if you've never said yes to the saving work of Jesus, you could do it right now. You could do so today. Say yes to the saving work of Jesus Christ who made the sacrifice that once you accept that sacrifice is full and complete.

Why? Because He was sinless, He was perfect, He was God. His sacrifice was perfect so therefore whoever receives Him is regarded by God as having been perfected from sin. It doesn't mean that we don't still sin. It just means that to God we are reckoned as if we have not sinned. We are reckoned by God as if we've lived the righteous life of Jesus and this doesn't cause us to boast. This doesn't cause us to lose an awareness that we still are prone to stumble in our sin. Instead it causes us to see ourselves as something completely different. We belong to God and it changes everything. The most important piece of this that I want to get through to you because until you really get this, it's hard to believe that you're holy until you get this. We have been made holy means is something God has done.

It's a declaration of something God has done. I don't collect a lot of things but I do collect logo golf balls. Now generally my criteria is that when I collect one, it's at some special golf course and really I should have played that golf course. Now there are a few times where it's like I just collected one, like I went to Pebble Beach one time and it cost $600 to play so I just bought the golf ball.

But most of the time I've played the golf course and so I've got a number of some. Probably the most special of those golf, I don't know if it really means to me, is that seven years ago we had a wonderful sabbatical trip. It was probably the highlight family time of our whole lives, all out across out west. Bennett and I went and played Torrey Pines. It was a couple years after Tiger Woods had famously won the U.S. Open in a playoff against Rocco Mediate and we later found out Tiger was winning it on a broken leg. Unbelievable golf course and we went and played it, played 36 holes there in La Jolla, California and it was just a beautiful day. It was just a beautiful day and at least Bennett played good, you know, and I didn't but I'll never forget that day and it became even more special because he ended up marrying a girl from San Diego right near La Jolla.

She could have been out on the beach that day while we were up on the bluffs playing. So that Torrey Pines golf ball, right, I don't go out and play golf with it. I don't go out there and swack it a hundred miles an hour. Well, swing speed's not quite there, but you know what I'm saying.

Don't want to take a chance. Don't shanken it into the woods. Don't want to hit it in the water because it's my Torrey Pines golf ball. Is it a different golf ball than other golf balls? No.

It is of the same materials, but because it says Torrey Pines on it, it shares its identity with the famous golf course and it is therefore sealed and it's set apart. That's what it means to be holy. You share Christ's identity. You share Christ's identity. You're made of no different materials than other people, but when you accepted Jesus, you became identified with Jesus. Brian Chappell has written a wonderful book, Holiness by Grace, and he writes this, because of definitive sanctification, we have been made holy. Because of that, he says, I get credit for what I did not, do not, and cannot earn. This blessing comes through my union with the life of the one who fulfilled all God's righteous standards in my behalf. Even now, he allows me to share his identity. And he compares this to swiping the credit card at the gas pump and said, you know, the wonderful thing about being able to just swipe your credit card at the gas pump is not just that you don't have to go marching into the gas station office and pay and do all that.

You can just convene it. He said, but I don't have to go at all. He has a teenage son as he was writing, and he said, I can send my teenage son and go fill up the tank with gas. He said, and my son, he doesn't have enough money to fill up the gas tank. He said, but I can send my credit card with him and authorize him to take my credit card and swipe it at the pump and fill up the gas tank, and he said, it's like I was there.

He said, he doesn't have the money in his own bank account, but when I give him my credit card, I give him all my good credit and all the money that I have that backs it up so that he legitimately can swipe the card and fill up the gas tank as if it were his own resources. He said, in the moment that he is doing that, you see, he is sharing my identity. This is what it means to be imputed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. This is what it means to share an identity with Jesus Christ. It means that the resources of God that should have been reserved for Christ alone are instead shared with you, Jesus' own brothers and sisters and co-heirs with him. It means that because you've been made holy, Christians, that you can minister the things of God. Because you've been made holy, you can receive the sacrament without the slightest fear. It means because you've been made holy that you can pray in the name of Jesus with confidence that he hears you.

It means to say you have been made holy that you can rest at night in peace, that there is no nagging consciousness of an unclean conscience that's keeping you awake wondering if there's something else you need to do to make yourself right with God. It means, therefore, that you can have unfettered joy. How could there be joy if we were always a little bit afraid of disappointing, displeasing God and being rejected by him, but instead you have been made holy?

Hallelujah. You can have joy. You can have joy. You can have unfettered peace and joy, a peace not as the world gives.

You can have this. To be made holy means that you can hear from God. It means that you can speak prophetically, encouragement to others. It means that God's power is available in and through you. It means that you can have the eyes of your heart enlightened so that you can see the hope of your calling, the glorious inheritance that is yours and the saints and the incomparably great power that is at work in you and through you right now.

To be made holy means that you are not of the ordinary. It means that you've been set apart for the extraordinary. It means that you have been consecrated. It means that you're different. It means that you're God's. It means nothing could ever pluck you from His hand. It means that the mighty power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work through you.

It means that you can do the things that Jesus did and the Bible says even greater things that you will do. To be made holy means you've got full rights and privileges as an heir of God to come into His presence boldly in your time of need. Amen. You're holy. Amen. If I won't hit my Torrey Pines golf ball for fear of shanking it, how much more secure can you be in the watchful care of God on your life, O holy ones of God? And that's the gospel.

Allen Wright. In today's teaching, we have been made holy. It's in our series, Belonging to God, and we've got more with Allen here in the studio.

To dive deeper, additional insight on this for your life and our final word today. Imagine for 99 days in a row, someone tells you, I love you, I'll never forsake you. Wouldn't you feel cherished? But what would happen if on the hundredth day that same person said, I'm not sure you're good enough for me. If you don't measure up, I don't think I'll love you anymore.

Wouldn't that one day contaminate the meaning of the other 99 days? Wouldn't one percent of conditional love poison the other 99 percent? Well, just one percent of law is enough to spoil grace. The tiniest bit of law can introduce an unlimited capacity for fear. What if I don't measure up?

When might I be rejected? When the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church, the apostle Paul was outraged and wrote a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of law. Allen Wright's 12-message audio series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians, and that's the gospel.

Discover the purity and power of the grace of God. When you make your gift to Allen Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, pastorallen.org. Allen, at the conclusion of this teaching, but as we continue in the series, what is your takeaway today? We've been made holy. I think that if a Christian can become more comfortable saying, and I encourage every listener just to say it, you may want to say it out loud, I have been made holy. I am holy to God. I am set apart to God.

You're not bragging when you say that, and you're not saying that I've reached some level of moral perfection. What you're saying is that I'm acknowledging that this is my new identity. I belong to God. My whole life belongs to Him. I am therefore privileged to be able to come in the presence of God in the way that the, quote, holy priests of old now in Christ, I am that holy person. And I really think that, Daniel, the more that we can believe that, the more we can see it, the more we can hold on to it, the more we can say it, the more we're going to become increasingly comfortable with this is who I am, and it'll change your prayer life, and it'll change your confidence of victory over sin, and it'll change the way that you are holding on to all the promises of God. We have been made holy. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.