You're Holy [Part 1]

Allen Wright, pastor, Bible teacher, and author of his latest book, The Power to Bless. The church in the building, the church is the people. It's a holy people, and they're spread all over the place.

I have no idea where they are right now. I cannot tell you where my church is. 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. Beloved, are you ready for some good news? In Christ, you are privileged to be like and even more so privileged than the priests ever were in the Old Covenant. Which means that you're fully privileged to not only be in the presence of God but to handle the holy things of God. I want to talk to you today about the fact that you're holy means you can go ahead and eat the holy bread.

We're going to start today in Matthew chapter 12 verse 1. And one of these moments where Jesus has an encounter with the Pharisees and they try to trap him and accuse him. And in this particular story, Jesus responds in a very unusual way. He hearkens back to a story of the beloved David who would become king of Israel.

But it's an interesting, interesting story. So we're going to be looking at both of those today. Starting in Matthew chapter 12 verse 1. At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. I was asking some folks this morning, I haven't been around farms enough to know well what could you be doing? Well you can take grain and pull it right off and pull the outer sheaf off and you can just eat it like a nut.

It's like they're eating some cereal out in the fields is basically what they're doing. Verse 2, But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, they said to Jesus, Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath. Because reaping was considered work. You weren't allowed to do that on the Sabbath. And they were technically reaping some of the harvest on the Sabbath. He said to them, Have you not read what David did when he was hungry and those who were with him? How he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priest? Or have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath the priest and the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you something greater than the temple is here.

And if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice. A quote from Hosea, You would not have condemned the guiltless, for the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath. I chuckle this week to read a story of a priest and a rabbi were driving separately towards an intersection and somebody messed up and they had a bad collision. And their cars were totaled, but thankfully both the priest and the rabbi were fine. They crawled out of their vehicles and the rabbi walked over and saw the priest in his collar. He said, Wow, I see that you're a priest.

How interesting. He said, I'm a rabbi. And the priest said, You know what?

Look at our vehicles. They're totaled and we're just fine. It's a miracle. The rabbi then said, I'll tell you what another miracle is. And he reached in his car and he brought an unbroken bottle of wine. He said, This bottle of wine survived this horrible accident. The rabbi said, I think it's a sign that the Lord wants us to be friends and to celebrate by drinking this wine. And the priest agreed and so he opened up the wine and he handed it over to the priest. And the priest downed about half the bottle of wine, handed it back over to the rabbi. And the rabbi put the cork back on and the priest said, Aren't you going to have some? And the rabbi said, No, I think I'll wait until the police make their report. You know, it's always so interesting when people find out that I'm a minister.

You can't explain how weird this is when I'm such a normal person. But then they find out that I'm a pastor and they just don't know what to say. Normally what someone says when they find out they're around a holy man, is they just try to talk about something that's not that spiritual right at that moment. So usually what they'll say is, Oh, well, you know, what church are you a pastor?

And I'll say, Renold, a church. And usually they'll say, Oh, where is that church? Or they'll say, Oh, I know where that church is. That's that beautiful white church with a green roof or whatever. And I'll explain to them we're multi-site.

We meet in different places because I'm being polite. But the fact of the matter is if they say, Where is your church? I'd have to say there's no way I can tell you where a church is because the church isn't a building. The church is the people. It's a holy people and they're spread all over the place.

I have no idea where they are right now. I cannot tell you where my church is. We've been learning that we are made holy by the work of Jesus Christ. And we have discovered that therefore Paul calls Christians, not sinners, but saints.

That's how he addresses us. We have discovered that we are the very temple of the Holy Spirit and that we have been washed clean so that our consciences do not nag us when we come in the presence of God as if there's something that would disqualify us. And we have been discovering this in an increasing measure and today we come to something perhaps even more extraordinary in this story where the disciples are quote breaking the Old Testament, one of the Old Testament laws at least according to the oral tradition of the law. And Jesus looks back on a story that we're gonna look at in a moment about David before David was king but was on his way to becoming king in which David and his men do something that was considered unlawful ceremonially in his day. And so in so doing what is Jesus saying? He is saying that a new day has come and that in Christ, in me, something greater than the temple is here. He's saying the real David is here, the real temple that was always foreshadowed.

It's now here. And these disciples of mine have now been qualified to do the work of priests essentially is what he's saying because the priests, you know, they work on the Sabbath day. And yet they're not called guilty by God. And so he's saying here it is Sabbath and he's essentially saying that I'm treating all my men like priests. I hope that today that you will not only have your eyes opened to what a joy and profound wonderful act of grace it is to celebrate the Lord's Supper, to eat the holy bread so to speak, but that what you'll see about your life is that if God looks on you as a royal priesthood that it means that those privileges that we saw foreshadowed in the Old Testament priests where they were the ones that handled all the holy things that now these holy things are put into your hands, the people of God, because you have been made holy.

So the Pharisees are always trying to trick Jesus and they try to trap him on a twist of words and catch him in little things like the little things they always get you for and turn a sentence this way or that way to try to trap him. I got so amused this week. I have a daughter who's a freshman at University of North Carolina and I have a son who's a first year student at Duke Law School. This is perhaps the biggest rivalry in the nation, the Duke Carolina thing.

It is so funny. I'll tell you how bad this rivalry is is that I actually was on the Duke campus and walking around with my son and his wife and we're looking around. We went in the Cameron Indoor Stadium where they play basketball and I'm looking in the lobby and they've got all this memorabilia there of all these national championships and everything and I come over to this one case and they've got a basketball in the case and it's big obviously celebrated this basketball is just celebrated and I look like what victory was this commemorating and it wasn't over any big team or anything. It just was there and it's got a big plaque and it said, this is the game ball from the game in which Mike Krzyzewski, Coach Duke, had won, had surpassed Dean Smith for total number of wins. They commemorated that. Not that they played Carolina. They just commemorated. That's the kind of rivalry it is. So my daughter is in her history class at Carolina this week and her professor puts up this big picture of Richard Nixon and Richard Nixon is an infamous graduate of Duke Law School and put an actual quote from Nixon in which it said, everything that I have done or ever will do in some way, Duke University is responsible for it.

So my daughter just texted her brother and included me and she said, so pretty much Duke's responsible for Watergate. That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. 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. Now these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month. 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. Taking Jesus' words and His actions and always trying to twist them so that Jesus would be trapped and go, oh, you got me now. And in this instance, what happens is the Pharisees see that Jesus' disciples, the ones that He is teaching and are supposed to reflect who He is, are out in the field and they're plucking off the heads of the grain or the wheat or whatever is there and they're just out there.

They're hungry and so they're out there snacking on this granola out in the field or whatever it is. And the Pharisees, aha, see there? You can't really be the Messiah because look, your followers don't even understand the law and they're not following the law so you can't even be from God. Because the law and the Ten Commandments said you should keep the Sabbath, honor the Sabbath, keep it holy. And so a whole oral tradition developed amongst the rabbis about what that meant, what was constituted as work, what wasn't work on the Sabbath and harvesting, reaping was considered work. And so they were technically reaping something and they thought, aha, we got you. Now sometimes what Jesus would say is, you nitpicking blind guides, hypocrites, whitewashed tombs full of dead men bones, you are just nitpicking to death here and missing the greater matters of the law.

Sometimes He'd say that but that's not what He said this time. Instead what He did was He hearkened back to an intriguing story. It's in many ways a scandalous story in the Old Testament. Now think about how clever this was of Jesus because this is a story about David. And David was arguably the most beloved figure in the whole history of Israel.

I mean there's Abraham and they're the children of Abraham and there's Moses through whom came the law. But David despite the sin in his life was remembered as Israel's beloved king and they all knew the Messiah was to come from David's lineage and someone from David's family would always be on the throne. So everybody loved David and the Pharisees they certainly knew the story. And Jesus referred back to this story in 1 Samuel chapter 21 if you want to follow along. 1 Samuel chapter 21 David has been on the run because the king Saul the first king of Israel is after him.

He's insanely jealous. He's trying to kill David and David is going to have to keep moving around and as he moves slowly but surely a motley assortment of men begin to follow him. People who recognize David's going to be the king of Israel and this ragtag assembly will eventually be his army. But he's having to hide and so David now comes to a place where he and his guys are very very hungry and they need some help. And it's 1 Samuel chapter 21 verse 1 Then David came to Nob to Ahimelech the priest and Ahimelech came to meet David trembling and said to him, Why are you alone and no one with you? See this is a very uncertain time in the life of Israel because if David is alone what does this mean? Why would he come to this priest alone and the priest is very worried that he's in real trouble that the priest is going to be in danger What's happening with Saul? What's happening with David? Everybody's hearing all the stories. And verse 2 David lies right here. This is a total complete lie. Verse 2 David said to Ahimelech the priest, The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you and with which I have charged you.

I've made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. Well Saul hadn't given any... David's just running for his life from Saul right now and he says to the priest giving this vague roundabout lie when she says, Well I'm here because King Saul has sent me on a very specific and important assignment and we can't tell anybody about it but we're doing it right now. So verse 3, Now then David says, What do you have on hand? He's talking about food. Give me five loaves of bread or whatever's here.

They're starving. And the priest answered David, I have no common bread on hand but there is holy bread if the young men have kept themselves from women. Part of what was considered to be ceremonially clean. And David answered the priest, Truly women have been kept from us always when I go on an expedition. The vessels of young men are holy even when it's an ordinary journey. How much more today their vessels be holy.

He's saying listen we're ceremonially. But the whole matter here is that the holy bread he's talking about which we're gonna describe in just a moment is something that's only supposed to be eaten by the priest. Verse 6, So the priest gave him the holy bread for there was no bread but the bread of the presence which is removed from before the Lord to be replaced by hot bread on the day that it is taken away. So in order to understand this let's just go back and review once again the whole nature of the tabernacle.

The tent of meeting was this portable worship center for the people of Israel as they would move around. And God had given very specific instructions about this and how it was that there would be a big fence around it. One gate, one entrance way that you could come in.

All this foreshadowing Jesus. One way in and then once in a big brazen altar and then there was a big basin where there'd be ceremonial washings. And then once you step inside the tent there were then two primary areas there.

The first was called the holy place and then there was a veil and behind it was the holy of holies. And just inside that holy place that first area inside of the tent there were three primary pieces of furniture that were there and were always supposed to be there. And one was a golden candelabra that would bring light in the midst of this dark tent foreshadowing Jesus who is the light of the world. And then there would also be a table in which there would be incense that would be right there next to the veil. And it would always have incense rising up to the Lord as a picture of like the prayer and the intercession of the people, of the priests on behalf of the people always rising up to the Lord. But then there was a table that was completely covered in solid gold and it was to always have on it these 12 loaves of bread.

Now they were loaves of bread not like you would think because they looked more like pancakes and they'd be stacked there six on one side, six on the other and then there'd be some frankincense that was there also supposed to be accompanying it. And this was literally called in Hebrew the bread of the face because to be in the presence of someone is to be where you see their face. And so the bread of the presence or the bread of the face was called also the showbread it was always there to be visible and it was a picture, this picture of 12 is a symbol of the people of God because there are 12 tribes of Israel. Whenever you see the number 12 in your Bible you can pay attention to it because numbers are very symbolic in the Bible and because this is reminiscent of the 12 tribes of Israel is pointing to the totality of the people of God.

That's what it means. The 12 is the people of God in total. And so this is representing all the people always there in the presence, in the face of the Lord. Well this bread was to be baked by specific instructions that were given in the Old Testament to be baked only by the priests according to very specific instructions and ingredients and then the priests were the only ones who were supposed to eat the bread. Nobody, no mundane person could come and prepare these holy things. No mundane person, regular person could eat this holy bread but on this particular day David comes in, tells a lie doesn't get rebuked by the Lord for it doesn't get rebuked by the priest priest believes it and the priest does the unthinkable. He gives the holy bread to David's men to start woofing it down. Are you kidding me? It is really one of the most scandalous stories in the Old Testament that these men, and let's just be honest about it these guys have been living from cave to cave and they come in, they are not good looking guys right now who are in good condition and they are starving and the priest gives them this bread and they are just like eating the bread and Jesus uses that story to rebuke the Pharisees what is going on here? So here are the disciples of Jesus and they are out in the field and they are like kids have just gotten in the cookie jar they have been out there on the Sabbath day doing what they are not supposed to do plucking it off and eating some of the I just imagine there they stand Peter got granola bar coming down on the side of his face there is John over there and he is chewing on it that is nuts and the Pharisees are sitting there going look they have broken the law and Jesus defended them and took all the attention off of them and he brought it to himself I want you to notice Jesus is your defender the word Satan means accuser and there is always an accusation being leveled against you Christians that you are condemned under the law and Jesus your advocate has stepped in between as the intercessor the one who goes between and he instead draws the attention unto himself he says someone who is greater than the temple is here now Alan Wright and today's teaching Your Holy Go Ahead and Eat the Bread is in our series Belonging to God and Alan is back in a moment with 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 will never forsake you wouldn't you feel cherished but what would happen if on the 100th 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 now these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month call us at 877-544-4860 that's 877-544-4860 or come to our website PastorAlan.org Alan this teaching is flowing very well right from the previous teaching we had it really is a battlefield that I think the enemy can take a stronghold in our life and try to say oh but you gotta you don't measure up oh you gotta do something else and this teaching is hitting that in a perfect way well this just we're seeing a story amazing story about David and his men and how they end up eating the holy bread and drawing this comparison to what we have in Jesus and what God really has done for us is make it such that we're like the holy priest of old and we're entitled to these privileges that would have been reserved only for the priest before and so much as you're saying Daniel the spiritual battle is to really believe that because I think that bottom line we have an accuser who's always wanting to remind us of everything we've done wrong and we have good news today and tomorrow about what it really means to be so holy that you can eat the holy bread Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries