Holy Vessels [Part 2]

Allen Wright, pastor, Bible teacher, and author of his latest book, The Power to Bless. You're the holy vessel of God. You can't be made unholy. You could be misused. You could be in the wrong place.

You could think and do the wrong things, but you would simply be running contrary to your holiness. 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. Because the Persian army had been pressing in, they had suffered a massive defeat, the Babylonians had. And basically, Nabonidus was afraid and he had fled. And so he had left Belshazzar on the throne, and this scene has taken place 539 B.C. Belshazzar comes from the name Bel, Baal or Bel, and it's referring to this pagan deity, saying may Bel protect the king.

So he's pagan all the way through. It wasn't uncommon that a king would throw a huge, huge party like this. We have historical records of Persian kings throwing parties for as many as 15,000 people. The king of the great throwing a party for 10,000 noblemen. What's fascinating is that we have actual history that shows that on the night that Babylon fell to the Persians, we know that very night was October 12, 539 B.C., because Herodotus and another Greek historian, Xenophon, testified, they wrote down that there was a huge banquet that was going on the night that the Persians sacked Babylon.

What's puzzling is why Belshazzar would be throwing a party like this, and a big drunken party, right when the Persians were literally at the city gates. And you can only conjecture as to why. Except I would just say this, that there can be the illusion that you are somehow having power over your enemy, if you are exerting power over the symbols of that which you feel like you have conquered, and somehow the desecration of that which is holy gives the illusion of power. And the reason I raise that is because I want you to just be aware of that, that I think this is one of the principles of hell. Is that there is an illusion of lordship and an illusion of power if hell could desecrate what has been consecrated as holy unto the Lord.

Can I just say it more plainly? I think that all the powers of hell would like to take you who are holy, and try to get you being used for unholy things. But you're the holy vessel of God. You can't be made unholy. You could be misused. You could be in the wrong place. You could think and do the wrong things. But you would simply be running contrary to your holiness. You would just be the golden vessel that was being at that moment misused. And I'm just saying let us not be naive.

We have an enemy that would like to misuse us to gain the illusion of control. These golden vessels, some of them dated back all the way to the time of Moses. They set up a temporary portable worship center called the Tent of Meeting or the Tabernacle. And some of these golden vessels had been preserved even from that time. And then they were placed into the glorious temple that Solomon built. And that's where they were when Nebuchadnezzar came and raised the temple and destroyed it, destroyed the city, and immediately took away all of these. It's interesting that in the very opening words of the book of Daniel that these vessels are mentioned.

In chapter 1 verse 1, the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand with some of the vessels of the house of God. And he brought them to the land of Shanar, to the house of his God, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his God. So in the opening verses of Daniel we see these vessels, that they're being mentioned. These ones that are going to come back and be seen in this gruesome scene in Daniel chapter 5. What's interesting is that this whole idea of demonstrating your power and prowess by taking the spoils of your war would be highlighted later, many, many years later in the famous Arch of Titus.

The Arch of Titus was actually erected by Emperor Domitian, the younger brother of Emperor Titus, after Titus died. And on this big, huge arch that was erected around 80 A.D., after Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 A.D., and the temple was torn down, and they took all of the holy things out of the temple. And in great relief, on a close up of this, you can see that permanently etched a picture of the Romans carrying off their golden candelabra, the menorah, and all of these different utensils of all the spoils of the things that were taken out of the temple of Jerusalem. The devil just absolutely loved to put on display the desecration of the sacred things of God. So the pathway to victory for the Christian is not trying to, by any of your own power, overcome your sin nearly so much as it is to find yourself seeing in Christ your holiness so that those things that might have formerly felt appropriate for you no longer feel appropriate because you're too holy for that.

You start thinking like this. I'm too full of the Holy Spirit. I'm too holy to gossip. I'm too holy to be thinking about that or talking about that. I'm too holy to the Lord to be involved in that. I'm too holy to walk around in bitterness. I'm too holy. I'm the holy vessel of God. And what happens is it just starts being where you just start going, you know what?

That just doesn't fit me. That's the way it is. This is really the way that you grow in Christ. And so many Christians are confused by this.

They're trying to go just backwards of that. I think many of you may know the story of our executive director, Mickey Thigpen, my dear friend and colleague for so many years that when he was a student, I think it was either middle school or early years of high school, I can't remember. And nobody in his family had gone to college and I'd imagine Mickey wasn't thinking of going to college either. And he came out of the room one day and had taken a test and he made a poor grade on it.

I can't remember. I think he said it was a C minus. And the teacher that really loved and knew Mickey well was standing across the hallway and she saw a paper in his hand and she said, Mickey Thigpen, let me see that. And he showed it to her and she looked at him and she said, you're no C student. She said, you're one of the smartest boys I've been around. She said, you're an A student. She said, in fact, I believe you'll be a Morehead Scholar. Well, Mickey didn't know what a Morehead Scholar was. Probably not only the most prestigious scholarship at the University of North Carolina, but one of the most prestigious scholarships in all of the southeastern United States. But he went home and looked it up and discovered what it was.

Mickey Thigpen became a Morehead Scholar. I'm just saying that if something goes inside of you as your identity, it's amazing how much you'll live up to it. And I'm just saying to you, beloved, that you are the holy vessels of God. You're precious to Him and you are for Him and for Him alone. And the more you know that, the more that you're going to know your victory over sin in every dimension of your life. You're God's. You 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, 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 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. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. It's interesting, this symbol of the golden cup is not new. It's something that has a thematic element that runs through the Scriptures. And everywhere you see this golden cup, it is either a symbol of great blessing or a symbol of tremendous judgment. For example, in Psalm 75, verse 8, For in the hand of the Lord there's a cup with foaming wine, well mixed. He pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs. So there's one image in the Bible that has this picture of the cup, like it's just foaming filled with poison and fury and wrath. So it is a picture of judgment if you drink it. But on the other hand, over and over we'll see this picture of the cup, like we do in Psalm 23, where you realize that the blessing of the Lord is symbolized in it. My cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. Or, for example, in Isaiah 51, 17, Awake, awake, rise up, O Jerusalem, you have drunk from the hand of the Lord. This cup of His wrath, you have drained it to the dregs, the goblet that makes men stagger. There's the image of the cup again, and it's now a picture of judgment. But you can turn around and read Psalm 116, 12, What shall I render to the Lord?

For all His benefits to me I will lift up the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord. It's interesting, in the story of Joseph, when he's reunited with his brothers, maybe you know the story, when he gets reunited with his brothers, to test the brothers to see if they actually have changed. He has one of his servants put a silver cup down into Benjamin, the youngest boy's bag, because he then sent them away, and he sent the servant after them and said, Look, somebody stole one of my master's silver cups, and they look in and they're sending Benjamin's back. And Joseph just wanted to see, what would the brothers do? Would they turn on Benjamin and just, you know, let him go? Or would they try to defend him?

He wanted to see whether they changed. These brothers that had thrown Joseph away, would they just throw Benjamin away? So the cup becomes this symbol of, is it going to be a picture of blessing, or is it going to be a picture of judgment? Over and over you see it like that. Paul speaks to the Corinthians, and said we should not be drinking of the cup of demons and the cup of Christ. It's a very curious image in the scripture, the golden cup. It seems to be either this terrible foaming judgment, or this unspeakable overflowing blessing.

It is seen both. And so I point all this to say that what happens is that this picture finds its fulfillment in Christ, because Christ speaks of the suffering that he is going to endure as being like drinking of the cup of the wrath that we've seen quoted in the scripture. He says in John 18, 11, the cup which the Father has given me shall I not drink it. So he describes what's going to happen in his suffering as drinking of the cup. And in Gethsemane, you remember the Lord sweats blood because he is so grieved, that the text says that his soul was sorrowful even unto death. He was so weighted down emotionally by what he was about to suffer, that it almost killed him. And he said, Father, I wish that you could take this cup from me.

But he added, but not my will, yours be done. A commentator has pointed out that there was a particularly gruesome form of Roman punishment that was often utilized amongst the military. If a Roman leader had discovered that there had been some sort of rebellion in the ranks, it would sometimes randomly choose one soldier to drink from a cup of hemlock poison. And one swallow of it would be lethal, but it's not instantly lethal. There would be time to drink the whole cup. And they would give the Roman soldier the option to drink it all or to just drink a swallow or two.

Either way, he would die. If he didn't drink it all, then the cup would be passed to the next person and they would drink. If they didn't drink it all, it would be passed to the next person and they would drink. But if the first soldier would drink it to the dregs, then none but he would die. And I think that what Jesus knew was that God had given Adam and Eve a beautiful cup to drink from.

Eat of the fruit of the trees of any in this garden and walk in fellowship with me. But the devil allured them to drink from another cup. And it was as though that cup that began with their own sin was just passed right down. And Cain drank of it. And when he saw that his brother received a blessing from the Lord that he didn't believe, that he didn't receive, he was filled up with envy and resentment and there was the spirit of murder in that cup.

And he killed his brother. And they handed it down. Every generation is drunk from it for all were born in sin. And I see that cup that Jesus was going to drink as the very picture of all of the poison of sin and shame handed down generation after generation, century upon century. In that cup from which Jesus would drink, there's the poison that had infected the first murderer and every murderer since. And that cup was the spirit and taste and saliva of every form of perversion, every evil that's ever been perpetrated in the world. And every sinner drank from it and added their own vile saliva to it. The village just became the foaming cup of wrath and poison and death. And Jesus said, Father, could you take this cup from me?

But not my will, yours be done. Jesus went to the cross and beloved, he drank it. But he didn't drink it in part.

He drank it to the dregs. Not just my sin but also my shame. He who knew no sin became sin, that we would become the righteousness of God. He, the golden vessel, Jesus, was taken outside of Jerusalem and he was crucified and he was mocked. And every demon in hell, just like Belshazzar, thought in desecrating the most holy vessel that had ever been on this earth, that somehow there was victory.

But there was not. What Belshazzar was not acknowledging that night that he was getting drunk, drinking out of Israel's sacred vessels, was that Persia was at the gates. And so what happened, if we continue to read this story, is immediately fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace opposite to the lampstand. And the text says in Daniel 5, the king saw the hand as it wrote.

And the king's color changed and his thoughts alarmed him and his limbs gave way and his knees knocked together. And they called in Daniel, who was known as an interpreter of such things, to come in and interpret what it has meant. And Daniel came, and we read starting in verse 23 of chapter 5, Daniel comes in and he rebukes the king, he says, You have praised the gods of silver and gold and bronze and iron and wood and stone, which you do not see or hear or know, but the God in whose hand is your breath and whose all your ways you have not honored. Then from his presence the hand was sent and this writing was inscribed, and this is the writing that was inscribed, Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parson. And this is the interpretation of the matter, Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom. Mene is a word in Aramaic that sounds like numbered. And Tekel sounds like weighed.

You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. And Perez related to the word parson in Aramaic, Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians. And that very night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom. What Belshazzar didn't know was that by God's design, Cyrus had been raised up in Persia and he would restore Israel. And if we had time we'd look to Ezra and read about the joyous day, that they brought all of the sacred vessels back into Jerusalem and restored them to their rightful place.

What I'm saying is that Jesus is ultimately that golden cup taken outside of the city and they attempted to desecrate him and they mocked him. And he drank all the poison to its dregs. But they did not understand that there were angels at the gates and that death could not hold him and that hell had no fury that could overcome him. But on the third day he was raised again from the dead. And he was raised up to the right hand of Father God. And there he is interceding, reigning victoriously. And you beloved, you the holy vessels are engrafted into him the one true temple. And you are restored to your rightful place.

And guess where you are? The Bible says you're seated with Christ in the heavenlies. I'm saying, beloved, as astounding as it is, you are the restored holy vessels of the temple of God. And that's the gospel.

Alan Wright. And chin up, that's good news for today. It's our teaching, Holy Vessels in Belonging to God, a series we're currently in. Alan is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a 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. 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. So whether our friends have been listening throughout the entire series or maybe today was the first time you've tuned in, either way, we have been repeating over and over and over, as with Paul, you are holy, even if you don't feel like it. Amen, amen. And you're a holy vessel. And Christ was treated like an unholy vessel. He was treated as one as if he was unholy, though he was holy.

And in so doing, God made a great transfer. He took the curse, he took the sin, and he drank the cup of wrath so that anyone who trusts in Christ can be a pure and holy vessel. It doesn't mean that you're going to live a life and you don't do anything wrong. It just means that if there is sin in your life, you're running contrary to how holy you actually are as the pure and holy vessel of God that is set apart to be used by God. Overcome sin in your life, not by trying harder to be holy. Overcome it by seeing how holy you are. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.