Belonging to God [Part 1]

Alan Wright, pastor, Bible teacher, and author of his latest book, The Power to Bless. It must be confusing to the world to look at the church and try to figure out what holiness is. Because, listen, I've been in some churches where it looks like the mark of holiness includes this, don't dance. I've been in some other churches.

Listen, I've got a lot of Pentecostal friends. I've been in other churches like the mark of holiness is, you better dance. I've been in some churches where it seems like the mark of holiness is women don't wear makeup.

I've been in some other contexts where you just came in and you were just seeing it for the first time. You'd think that the mark of holiness was, wear lots of makeup. 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 Alan Wright 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.

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

Here is Alan Wright. You ready for some good news? In Christ, you are holy.

You don't seem excited about that yet, but hopefully by the time of the end of the day or certainly at the end of this next series, you're going to see it in a whole new way. Because holiness in Christ is such, such good news. We're going to start our new series that we call Belonging to God, A Good News View of Holiness in the second book of the Bible, Exodus chapter 19. And then we're going to be flipping over towards the end of your Bible the words of Peter in 1 Peter chapter 2 that echo these words from Exodus 19. You'll see how similar the promise made in the old covenant that then is affirmed by Peter in the new covenant.

All about being the holy people of God. So let's start with this in Exodus chapter 19 where God is making a covenant with His people. And we call it the old covenant or the Mosaic covenant.

And we'll just pick up reading at verse, we'll pick up reading at verse 5, Exodus 19 verse 5. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.

Let me just highlight this for you. The first thing, if you will obey My voice and keep My covenant. And then He mentions these things, you'll be treasured possession, you'll be a kingdom of priests, you'll be a holy nation. And then if you can find 1 Peter, very close to the end of the New Testament, just before you start getting to 1 John and Revelation, you'll find 1 Peter. And chapter 2 verse 9, listen to how similar the words are. And now from a new covenant perspective that Peter is announcing these things to every Christian.

There's no condition that is attached except for faith in Christ. And so if you're a Christian, then these things apply to you now that were conditional in the Old Testament and the Old Covenant. 1 Peter 2 verse 9. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. You know the weirdest thing about being a minister?

People think that I'm holier than other people. I realized this very early on as a young minister over 25 years ago when one day in the church I was serving in Durham. I was walking down the hallway and a cute little preschool aged girl, blonde haired, curly haired girl walking down to Cusco Beach. And I walked by and I said, hi. And she looked up without missing a beat and said, hi God.

And she just kept on. That's a lot of pressure to live under. Which is why I try not to tell anybody I'm a minister. Certainly when we get linked, you know, with somebody on the golf course and I don't tell them anything until about the seventh hole it usually happens. And they'll say, so Alan, what do you do? And I'll kind of mumble, I'm a minister.

And the same thing happens, their faces turn sort of ashen and they start playing poorly thinking about everything they've said on the previous six holes. Don't get me wrong, I mean I am holy, I am a holy man, but not in the way that you think. Because what most people think is that holiness is about living up to a certain state of progression of moral purity. Or they think that holiness is just living up to a set of standards better than other people do.

And the thing about this is it's sort of confusing because if you're having to live up to a set of standards in order to be holy, who and what are those standards? Ever notice how random it seems like we place some expectations about what's right and wrong? Sometimes it's just random. I don't know why I was thinking and remembering when Bennett was, our son was three years old and Ann and I and Bennett were goofing around the backyard one day and it started to drizzle rain. And the drizzle turned into a little bit more rain and I looked at Ann and she looked at me and we just had one of those knowing parental looks like there's no thunder or lightning, it's not chilly, it doesn't harm anybody.

Let's just stay out here and let's see what little Bennett says. And so then it started raining hard. And Bennett, this three year old, looks up at me and he says, do we not have to go in because it's raining?

And I just looked at him and I said, no. I said, sometimes you just let it rain and don't worry about it. Well, the little boy's face just got a look of glee on it and he started jumping up and down repeating over and over, I'm just going to let it rain and not worry about it. I'm just going to let it rain and not worry about it. I mean, after all, who decided you got to go in when it rains? You say, well, his clothes are going to get wet. Well, his clothes are going to get wet when we put them in the washing machine a little bit later on today. Well, his hair's going to get wet.

Where's hair's going to get wet when we go and put them in the tub later on today? What I'm saying is it just seems random sometimes the expectations that we have. It must be confusing to the world to look at the church and try to figure out what holiness is because, listen, I've been in some churches where it looks like the mark of holiness includes this, don't dance. I've been in some other churches.

Listen, I've got a lot of Pentecostal friends. I've been in those churches like the mark of holiness is you better dance. I've been in some churches where it seems like that the mark of holiness is women don't wear makeup. I've been in some other contexts where you just came in and you were seeing it for the first time. You think that the mark of holiness was wear lots of makeup, even with regard to money.

It's kind of weird. It's like I've been in some church context and it's like it's more holy if you don't have like if you took a vow of poverty, it'd be more holy. And I've been in other places where, no, there's a lot of teaching about how prosperity is a blessing from God, so therefore maybe you're more holy if you've prospered.

So what is it? In other words, there's a lot of confusion about that, and it's one of the things I want to clear up. But here's the thing that makes it really challenging to preach about holiness. It is that both Christians and non-Christians seem to be either scared or repelled by the idea. It doesn't seem like good news.

I mean, here's how I can prove it to you. How do you feel when I say to you, Beloved, for the next 10 weeks, we're going to be preaching exclusively on personal holiness. Now, you didn't applaud. And in fact, you know, some of the guests are going, oh, man, and I like this church.

It seemed friendly. And now we've got to... Well, what I'm hoping is that in the coming weeks and starting with today, that really it's going to turn everything that you might have ever believed about what holiness actually is upside down. And let's talk to you about what theologians would call definitive sanctification rather than progressive sanctification. About what it means when the writer of Hebrews says we have been made holy. About what it means that Peter has said to every Christian, you are holy.

Because I think that we have the wrong ideas about this, and what it does is it robs us of the incredible power of recognizing what it means to be set apart unto God. Because holy means literally set apart. To be holy means to be set apart to God, which in other words, it's that you belong to God. To say I am holy is to say I belong to God. And that's a far, far different thing than saying look how far I've progressed in my morality or look at the set of standards I keep. I belong to God in Jesus Christ means I am holy unto Him. And what you're going to discover is that if you want to get further along in victory over sin, and you want to move further along in your life and intimacy with God, you're going to do far better to wake up in the morning and instead of saying well I'm an old sinner, I hope I make it through the day, that you wake up in the morning and say I'm holy, I'm set apart unto God, I'm His, I belong to Him.

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 1% of conditional love poison the other 99%? Well just 1% 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. So we start here in Exodus because this is the picture of God declaring definitively to his people through the mediator Moses that this is who I want you to be to me. He's revealing his heart in the old covenant. Now the old covenant has tremendous limitation on it and that it is conditional upon the ability of the people to keep their side of the covenant.

But what you see in this old covenant revelation is you see the heart of God. That he always wanted to have people of his own, a treasured possession that would be like a kingdom of priests that are a holy nation unto him. This is what God always wanted. He wanted the beginning with Adam and Eve and Adam and Eve sinned. And so they broke off their fellowship with God and forfeited that place of intimacy with God.

But God never never relented of wanting to have that kind of relationship with his people. And so here's what the story, the big story of the Bible is all about. God, in order to form a people, he called a man named Abram, later called Abraham, and his wife Sarah, who were far beyond childbearing years. And he told Abraham, he said, you're going to be the father of a great nation.

Look into the stars and count them if you could. That's how many your descendants will be. Well, Abraham and Sarah in the natural couldn't have children. It would require a miracle by the life giving force of God himself for them to become parents and for a nation to be born. Well, sure enough, by a miracle, Isaac is born and God becomes known as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And this Hebrew people, this people set apart unto God, they are formed by a miracle.

But here's to understand the big story. A people who didn't exist came into existence. Who once were not a people became a people by the miraculous life giving power of God.

He created this people by his own power. And then this people became very numerous in those series of circumstances. They found themselves in Egypt and as they grew in number there, they were enslaved.

And they were enslaved by a terrible tyrant in Egypt, a Pharaoh who was absolutely cruel. And many years went by, but God had not forgotten that this was his people. And when they cried out to him, he heard their cry and God declared that he was going to deliver them using a mediator.

Someone who would go between the people and God. And this man was named Moses and he spoke to Moses and he gave Moses powers and signs and wonders to work by the glories and power of God. And through a series of plagues against Egypt, culminating with a tenth plague of the death of the first born of the Egyptians. Finally, the stubborn Pharaoh and the stubborn Egyptians and all of the evil that they perpetrated against the Hebrew people.

Finally, they let them go because on that evening of the tenth plague that we call the Passover, this great force of darkness came through and everywhere in Egypt there was the death of the first born except in the Hebrew huts. They had been given an instruction that if they would slaughter an innocent lamb and take its blood and paint it over their doorposts, wherever there was blood, then the destroyer would pass over and they would be saved and thus they were set free. So here's what it meant to be the people of God, here's what he did. He called up Abraham and he created a people by his life giving force and then he set them free by the blood of the lamb and then, where we come today, he established a covenant with them. Miraculous, creative power, blood of the lamb that sets them free, and then a covenant.

Miraculous power that gives life, sacrificial lamb that sets free, and a covenant that establishes their relationship with God. The reason that's important is because that's also our story as Christians. That what we see happen when you become a Christian, you are, the Scripture says, born again. The life giving force of God's Holy Spirit moves inside of you and what was once dead unto God becomes alive unto God.

And you become alive on the inside and you're adopted as God's own. And by the blood of the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, by the blood of the Lord Jesus, you are set free from the power and the grips of darkness and the punishment that was due you because of disobedience against God. And you are brought into a covenant. It is a new covenant that has been established by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what it means to be the people of God. And so the shadow that you see, the old covenant is pointing exactly what God wants to do, but He's going to establish it for us in a new way through Jesus Christ, which makes it such wonderful news to us because the news that He gave to the people in Exodus 19 is wonderful news. That you're going to be my treasured possession amongst all the people of the earth. That you're going to be like a kingdom of priests to me and you're going to be a holy nation. Those are astounding promises and all of this is wonderful except the people couldn't keep, they couldn't keep the standards. They couldn't keep their side of the covenant and thus the glorious news from 1 Peter chapter 2. So let's just talk about what does this mean to be the holy people of God?

Well, it starts with this. He is saying you're going to be my possession amongst all the people. That's what it means to be holy.

You are going to be mine. You're different, therefore, from others. Christians, listen, because you belong to God, you're different.

There's nothing ordinary left about you if you belong to God. This week, the Dixie Classic Fair will be visiting once in Salem once again, as it always does. And you're going to need to go and drop by the exhibit hall and look under the handcrafted pottery in the adult section in order to see my handcrafted clay bear head.

And there better be a blue ribbon next to it or else you need to go by and protest to the judges. What do they know? This summer, as we have been in recent years, we've spent the 4th of July up at Montreat and every year the women folk always go in and they make some kind of craft and I've never done anything. But this year, as we were riding up the mountain, I said, I'm going to do something in the pottery classes this year. They said, really? I said, yeah. I said, you know, in honor of my son graduating from Baylor, the Baylor Bears, I said, here's what I want to do. I want to make a bear out of clay.

And they were like, okay. We get up there and we saw the sheet that had the week's activities listed at the pottery instruction place and they have some classes every year. And I looked on and said, one of the classes was how to make a bear out of clay. And so I said, that's it.

I've got to go now. I said I was going to go and I went and swam my daughter and her friend and six or seven other people sitting around the table. I nestled up right next to the instructor because I wanted to be sure to understand how to make this bear head.

And I followed all the instructor said and every now and then I'd say, listen, how does this look? And let her take it and mold it a little bit. But anyway, it's still my bear. And I'm going to tell you right now, the key to making a good bear head is do not put the snout too low on the face and don't make it too long or else it will look like a duck-billed platypus.

And I'm not saying that I went there, but anyway. So I took the bear, made the bear with my own hands, took a lump of clay and made it into a bear. And then you let it dry and you come back and then you have to dip it down into the proper glazing to get the color and so forth. And then they put it in the kiln and they fire it and then they come back and pick up your bear to take home with you. Now I came back and there's a bunch of bears all sitting there, the bear heads there.

And I knew exactly which one was mine because I made it. That's my bear. That's not like anybody else's bear. Plus I had to etch my initials onto the bottom of my bear head, my bear. I'm not saying that I destroyed the other bears. I'm not saying that I maligned the other bears, although many of them did look like duck-billed platypus, but I'm not saying I did. I'm just saying it was my bear and so I got it. And it's different. It was set apart.

Why? I made it. It's mine. It belongs to me. It's got my hands all over it. It's not your average bear.

All right? You are not your average bear. You are in Christ. You have been made by God, born again, set apart by Him and His hands are all over you. And He has His name written on your life.

That's what it means to be holy. You'll be my possession. And He said you'll be my treasured possession. A treasure. I love that word, treasure. How do you know what you treasure?

Well, the classic way, you know, the way is somebody says quick, quick, your house is on fire. You can run in. You can grab only one item. What are you going to grab? Probably at my house, I think I'd have to go grab these photo albums, these creative memories that my wife has made of our kids when they were little. We probably need to get those pictures digitized, but they're not. But if they burned up, they'd be gone. And I'd probably grab those pictures.

I mean, you can get more jewelry and TVs, but you can't get that. You treasure something. Alan Wright.

And it's today's teaching belonging to God from the series of the same name. And we've got Alan here in the studio with additional insight on this for your life and a final word. Stay with us. Imagine for ninety nine days in a row, someone tells you, I love you. I'll never forsake you when 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 ninety nine days? Wouldn't one percent of conditional love poison the other ninety nine 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. If you'd like 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. Alan, we're welcoming our listeners today to a brand new series, Belonging to God, and something I think we'll talk about often in this series is holiness, but it's not what you think. Holiness is not a set of virtues or behaviors. To be holy means to be set apart to God.

It means you belong to Him. And so this is a whole new look at holiness today and in coming weeks, Daniel, that I think is going to be not only eye opening, but life changing. 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 PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.