You're Holy [Part 2]

Allen Wright, pastor, Bible teacher, and author of his latest book, The Power to Bless. What he really loves is hesed, mercy and kindness and grace.

God is a lover of grace, not a lover of law. 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. 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're just like... And Jesus uses that story to rebuke the Pharisees. What is going on here? So here are the disciples of Jesus and they're out in the field and they're like kids who have just gotten in the cookie jar. They've been out there on the Sabbath day doing what they're not supposed to do, plucking it off and eating some of the...

I just imagine there they stand, you know, Peter got granola bar coming down on the side of his face. There's John over there and he's still chewing on it, you know, that's from... And the Pharisees are sitting there going, look, they've 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. And this is his way of saying that what you saw in the Old Testament, tabernacle, and what you saw in the picture of the showbread, and what you saw in that holy place, all of that that you saw, he's saying something even greater than that is here now.

He is affirming that that was a foreshadowing of Jesus himself. He is, remember, the son of David. He is the one who has come from the lineage of David. So David was a king, but Jesus is the king of kings. David was a shepherd, but Jesus is the good shepherd. David was a worshiper, but Jesus is the ultimate intercessor and advocate. And so Jesus is saying the real David is here, and the real tabernacle is here, the real showbread is here, and he is moving the discussion to a completely new place.

And then he adds into this a very, very interesting quote. He says, if you had known what this means, I desire mercy, not sacrifice, then you would have not condemned the guiltless. He's saying to the Pharisees, you don't understand what Hosea prophesied. You didn't get the message of Hosea, and you're not getting the heart of God.

But you see, Hosea was this incredible prophet who was given an unbelievably painful assignment. He was supposed to marry a prostitute, so he married Gomer, a woman of unfaithfulness. And God said, I want you to be married to a woman who is unfaithful to you.

I want you to be married to a woman who has just sold herself to anybody. I want you to know what it feels like to be in covenant with somebody that doesn't love you in return. And yet I want you to go, Hosea, and I want you to marry her, and I want you to love her. The miracle of the story, if you read Hosea, is that not only was he obedient and a breathtaking way, he went and married this prostitute, Gomer, but he loved her. The prophet got to experience the heart of God because he couldn't help himself. He just loved this woman even though she didn't know how to practice covenantal faithfulness to him.

And God said, I want you to see this because then you can prophesy for me. Hosea was the one who prophesied the word of the Lord is I desire mercy. And it's my favorite Old Testament word, chesed. It means covenantal love, steadfast love. It means kindness and mercy and loving kindness, all of this, and it's a beautiful word. It's the kind of love that comes only in a covenant, seated in choice, rooted in commitment, in romantic love, not love that can come and go, but this covenantal, deep love. And God said, I desire, what do I really love?

What does God really, really love? I love chesed, not sacrifices. Now he had given them the tabernacle. He had given them the brazen altar. He had given them all of this stuff so that the people could, at least temporarily, have their conscience cleansed.

They could bring their sacrifice and know that I'm guilty, but right now an innocent one, this animal, is gonna pay for my sin. And so it was a temporary covering. And so it was a gift from God. And so people would make their sacrifices and people would do these things so that they could be considered ceremonially worthy.

And so it was a gift to the people. But what God was saying through Hosea all those years before Christ, see, God hasn't changed. He's always been a God who desires chesed. He's never been a God who loves this system of sacrifice. He doesn't love that. He didn't ever love that.

It was just a temporary provision for the people. But what he really loves is chesed, mercy and kindness and grace. God is a lover of grace, not a lover of law.

God is a lover of grace. And Jesus on this day is saying, if you had understood anything about Hosea, you would not be trying to condemn these disciples that Jesus called guiltless that day. See, beloved, if you're going to be in the holy place and handle the holy things and be called to holy purposes, there's really only one of two ways that you're gonna approach this. And one is that you're gonna say, well, I'm just not holy enough, so I'm disqualified, I won't do holy things. Or if you don't go the way of rebellion, you can go the way of religion. And the way of religion is to say, I'm not holy as I am, but if you'll give me the list of things to do and tell me what it means to be holy, then I will do my level best to keep those commitments and do those holy things so that I will be worthy to come into the presence of God. And what Jesus is saying is that neither of those will ever work and neither will ever, ever please the Lord.

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.

But 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. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. We came back from a trip to Salt Lake City recently. We had a mission team that went that learned about Mormonism, shared the gospel with people in the Mormon faith, got to spend time with Christians who had come out of Mormonism and just encouraged them. By some estimates, the Christian evangelical population of Salt Lake City is as little as 1%. There are not that many Christians that are in the Salt Lake City area. Most people are Mormon and lots and lots of unchurched people.

We had a very fruitful, fruitful trip. And I learned a whole lot about Mormonism. And perhaps if you have some connection with Mormonism or someone that you know, you're like maybe many Americans and even Christians in America that kind of think of it as like another Christian denomination. And in fact, it's interesting that the Mormon church really wants to try to publicize itself as Christian. But their beliefs are completely antithetical to Christianity. I mean they have the Bible and they have the Book of Mormon, but the system is completely antithetical to Christianity.

So I don't say this in any way to mock people for what they believe or anything, but I think it's important just to see what this distinction is. And I do so by way of illustration because when we visit Salt Lake City, you can see there this magnificent Mormon temple. There are about 157 temples around the world in the Mormon church. And it is absolutely, it's a magnificent structure. And next to it is a conference center that amongst other things has within it a 21,000 seat auditorium where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings and everything is pristine and whole temple square and people are really, really nice and all of this. But here's the thing. We took a tour of the conference center.

You can't go in the temple. And our guide was a really nice man. I'd say he was about 70 years old, sweet guy. And we enjoyed talking to him. He was a former Baptist. And we were very gracious to him. He was very gracious to us. I mean he knew we were Christians, but we weren't trying to confront him. We were just trying to learn and walk around. And we went and stood on the rooftop of the conference center, so expansive that it has literally a forest on it.

It has grass and fountains and trees. And we're looking out at that glorious temple. And we said, tell us a little bit more about what is required to go into the temple. And he was kind enough to show us his card, his temple recommend card it's called. And you have to be recommended by a bishop in the ward of the Mormon church to be temple worthy. And if you will agree to the word of wisdom that you won't use alcohol, you won't use tobacco, and you won't drink hot drinks like tea or coffee, and if you'll commit to give 10% of all your income to the church, if you will keep yourself worthy, then the bishop can recommend you to be worthy to go into the temple.

I was looking on the LDS website to read some about being temple worthy. Let me just give you a couple highlights from this. Again, I'm not trying to mock somebody else's belief system. I'm not doing that at all. I just am trying to point out, to make an illustration of what is so distinctive about the Christian gospel. A lot of people don't understand how distinct and absolutely radical what we're talking about today is.

But compare it to this. Here's from the Mormon website. In the temples, members of the church who make themselves eligible.

Let me pause there. Who make themselves eligible. What I'm trying to say to you is that the spirit of religion always says you need to do something to qualify yourself. But what Christianity says is you can't do enough.

There's no way. And so we needed Jesus to make us eligible. That is the distinction. To make themselves eligible can participate in the most exalted of the redeeming ordinances that have been revealed to mankind. What the Christian gospel says is that you could never make yourself worthy but through simple childlike trust in Jesus Christ you are counted as worthy because of the perfect righteousness of Jesus and the debt that he paid through his own death. Therefore, when you do the most exalted ordinances of the church, like take the Lord's Supper together, it has in no sense, it has in no way depended upon your own righteousness or worthiness. You do not and you cannot make yourself eligible to participate in something like the Lord's Supper or baptism or any other thing, prayer and the laying on of hands.

You can't. But I'm just saying look at this whole spirit. There it continues in a sacred ceremony. Talking about in the temple an individual may be washed and anointed and instructed and endowed and sealed.

Let me just pause there and say do you see this? You have to agree, have an interview with the bishop, agree to all of these laws, make sure that you've paid 10%, absolutely you can't drink coffee and then the bishop can recommend you and then you can go to the temple and be washed. What the Christian gospel says is that you could never make yourself clean so don't even try but just bring your dirty self, David's ragtag men, sweaty cave dwellers and just come to where you don't belong and don't deserve to be there and because of an act of the grace of God chesed, eat the holy bread. The text of this Mormon website says come to the temple.

If not now, come soon. Pray fervently, set your lives in order, save whatever you can in hopes that that day may come. Start now that sometimes very difficult and discouraging journey of repentance. The temple transforms the individual and makes abundantly worthwhile any efforts made to get there. And this host, this sweet man who took us all around the conference there and we graciously had conversation with him and stood there looking at the temple and we said what do you gotta do to be worthy to get in the temple and he told us these same things.

And as we shook his hand and left he said now when you go back to North Carolina be sure and tell everybody we are Christian. I'm not mocking it. I'm pointing out a distinctiveness and saying that there are Christians who think that you have to somehow keep at least a small list of things to make yourself worthy to come into the presence of God.

And I'm saying to you if there's even one thing that you have to do to make yourself worthy then you're disqualified. Because the scales of justice cannot be balanced out by anything we do. Think of it this way. Let's imagine that there is someone who is cruelly and capriciously murdered in a convenience store heist. And the time comes that that thief and murderer is on trial and you are a family member of the one who had been murdered. And that murderer is given a life sentence and someone is yelling out it should be the death penalty. And you're wondering if you give the death penalty to the murderer are the scales of justice balanced?

Of course not. Because your loved one was innocent and was murdered. This is a thief and a murderer. You can't punish this person enough to bring that scale back can you?

You can't. The crime was too heinous. The innocence too much. You can never balance that. You must understand this if you're really gonna grasp what Jesus is saying. I desire chesed, mercy, love, kindness, forgiveness. Not sacrifice. He's saying the offense against God is too great.

The purity and holiness of God too wonderful. You could never do anything to balance it out. You could never make that scale balance. Which means you could never handle the holy things. You could never be temple worthy.

You could never be justified in God's presence. Without Jesus. To be a priest according to the book of Exodus you had to be born into Aaron's family.

You had to be born in the right family. And then you had to be ceremonially washed. Then you had to put on the priest's clothing. And then you had to be anointed.

What Jesus is saying on this wonderful day as his disciples are seemingly caught red handed breaking the law of the Sabbath. He's saying the new temple's here and these are my priests. Because when you become a Christian you're born again into the family of God. You're born into the priestly family.

It's your new lineage. You are of Jesus. And when you're born in this family you come in justified by God's grace.

Washed. Washed clean by the forgiving cleansing blood of the Lord Jesus. And you are dressed in the priestly garment but it is the figurative garment of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. You wear the clothing of Jesus' righteousness. It's given to you. A mantle around your shoulders. And you are anointed with the Holy Spirit. What this means beloved is that you're just like the priest but even more so. You're holy.

So go ahead. Eat the holy bread. And that's the gospel.

Allen Wright. In today's teaching You're Holy Go Ahead and Eat the Bread it's from the teaching belonging to God. Allen is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and our final word today. 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. 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 pastorallen.org. Allen, I know you talked about this a couple days ago. This really does seem to hit me in a way of saying that, you know, sin is bad. We're not going to sugar coat that or anything. But at the same time you don't sit there and dwell on it. I think sin can have a bigger effect when it kind of derails you and gets your focus off God. Exactly. Instead of just repentance and get back on the road. Yeah, I think that, you know, this is what so much Paul talked about in Romans. He wants us to see that we've been freed from sin.

Right. And you go, well, but I still sin. How can I be free from sin? Well, you're free in this sense. You don't have to sin.

Yeah. And something has changed. And so we say, well, with today's message, we're like priests. Well, I think the more literally you understand that, the more that you see that in the old covenant, the priests were born in the right family. They were washed ceremonially. They were clothed properly and they were anointed. Well, and that's what we've been seeing today is this is what's happened for us, but even greater in a spiritual way that we're born into the family of God and we are washed by the blood of Jesus, clothed with Jesus' own righteousness, and we are anointed with the Holy Spirit. And I just encourage every listener just to think of your life this way. See yourself. Whether you are a brand new Christian or you've been a Christian for 50 years, you are a priest. And it was what was understood to be one of the most wonderful privileges imaginable in the old covenant is now the privilege of every single believer in Jesus Christ.