Don't Lie to Me, Man of God [Part 2]

Alan Wright, pastor, Bible teacher, and author of his latest book, The Power to Bless. You can't even dream up what God has done for us. You could have never asked Him for it. Do you understand how He could be the God who does exceedingly abundantly above and beyond all that you could ever ask or think? Let me just say this. Could anybody have ever asked Him for what He's actually done for us?

No angel in heaven could have. 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, Miracle Man, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I'd like 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.

So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. Now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here's Alan Wright. Anyone who has not been able to be a parent biologically has felt the pain of that grief. But it's different in the ancient mid-eastern culture because this is a culture in which the whole plan sociologically for caring for the aged was that the children would do that and the son would carry on the family estate.

So here's what the picture was. She had an older husband who was likely to die far before she, and she had no son to carry on the family estate, the family business, or take care of her. So this was a serious problem that had been introduced, and it was the deep longing of her heart. And when Elisha said, by this time next year, you're going to be holding a son, her reaction to it was to say, don't lie to me, man of God. Because he had just landed upon her deepest desire and one that maybe she had covered up with years and years of submerging it down into the deeper places of her soul.

And she was essentially saying to him, don't you dare do that. I've finally accepted that I'm not going to have a son. I've finally dealt with it, and I've moved on. And how dare you bring that up? Don't you dare bring up something so good as that.

Don't even meddle with me and raise my hopes unless this is absolutely true, because otherwise it would be cruel for you to bring this up if it is not true. Don't lie to me, man of God. Because he had found within her a dormant dream that she had put to rest, but the honest truth was it was still her deepest dream. And this is a picture of what must happen with every single person if you're ever going to really know the gospel of Jesus Christ. That there's a dream, a deep dream, a longing, a yearning that is down underneath the surface layers of your life.

A dream, a longing, an ache, a yearning that cannot be fulfilled except through the gift of God and Jesus Christ. It is a place that is down inside of you, inside every person, because every single person in this earth is aware that we have sinned and there is guilt that's attached to that sin. And we can't feel free and we are ashamed. And some people, they just try to live a rebellious life by saying it doesn't even matter whether what I do is right or wrong because there is no right or wrong. And yet down deep underneath it we know that there is.

And other people just try hard out of being a conformist and a perfectionist, try hard to do what is right. And it doesn't satisfy the deep longing we have to actually be free. We are yearning for eternity. And so often what happens is people just covered it up with the superficial things. You see we think we need more amusement and more leisure when what we are really hungering for is a wellspring of joy that is not dependent upon our circumstances.

How wonderful would that be? To have joy unspeakable that couldn't be taken away even in the sadness of circumstances of adversity. We think that what we need is security that comes from making sure that everything in our life is in order and our bank account is big enough. But what we really long, what I am saying underneath that, what we are really longing for is to know that we are just like children and we have a Father who has an inexhaustible supply and who takes care of us when we can't see the future and can't see the way that we can live a life of trust in Him. We think that we have these surface desires and that's what our issue is. But what we are really longing for is something much better.

Our culture is screaming at us to say what you really want is to be more youthful and attractive. But what we really want deep down is some assurance that this world is not all that there is and that we can live for eternity in vibrancy. We want assurance of heaven. And sometimes you need someone in your life who will be like Elisha who says what do you want and you say I am good. And somebody comes along in your life and says underneath you thinking you are good what is it that you want? And God comes in and starts meddling with the dormant and deep desires that have been covered up and camouflaged.

And when that happens it's the most wonderful thing. It might hurt at first the way that being hungry might hurt but being hungry is beautiful because it's what leads you to life. Being hungry is the thing that makes you get the nourishment you need. Your hunger is for God. John Piper put it so well writing if you don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied.

It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things and there is no room for the great. It's a good and wonderful thing if God would put you in touch with how much you really want Him.

Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled. The other thing to observe about this shocking good news to this Shunammite woman is that this news by this time next year you're going to have a son. Let me just tell you it changes everything.

That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. God's love. You've heard about it with your ears.

You've believed it in your mind. Now experience it in your heart with Alan Wright's beloved book, Lover of My Soul. The Bible is a love story from beginning to end. You are the spiritual bride of Christ, the perfect bridegroom. The Bible tells about a God who has gone to unimaginable lengths to woo you, to win you and to walk with you hand in hand. For any man who has fallen in love with a woman you've tasted the sweetness of what God's love for you is like. For any woman who has searched for true love, which you long for can only be found fully in God. Gary Chapman, renowned author of the five love languages, says the incredible reality that God pursues us in love comes to life in Lover of My Soul. Ancient biblical accounts explode in the heart. Accept Christ's proposal, enjoy His embrace, revel in His love.

After all, it's a match made in heaven. It's Lover of My Soul by Alan Wright. The Gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. 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. You know, good news is exciting to hear and then it starts settling in like, wait, this changes everything. I mean, any parent could attest to this. You get the good news, you're going to be parents. And you're just like, this is so exciting. And then you start realizing, this is going to reorganize my entire life. I'm going to have to reorganize my entire life around this. My priorities are going to change. It's going to change my schedule. It's going to change my budget. It's going to change my household. It's going to change what I do with my time. It's going to change wherever I'm free to come and go. It's going to change everything.

The song title is right, A Baby Changes Everything. And that's what happens when you come into the good news of the Gospel. We're talking about news that is so good that it not only rocks your world, astonishes your soul, but you just start living according to it. I want you to understand that the Christian life is a life that is shaped daily by good news. And what transforms us is that good news. See, as Christians, we grieve, but not as those who have no hope. In other words, we have trouble, but Jesus has overcome the world.

And so what we do is that we face the same kind of difficulties or the same kind of troubles, the same kind of adversities that other people face, but we face it in light of all the good news. I have the blessing of living with a woman who just loves good news, lives for good news and loves to tell good news. That's just who my wife is. I mean, you see my wife, you see how she's just always bubbling around and everything like that with good news. That's just the way she is.

I mean, she does sleep, but she's just like that. And it's partly because she just has discovered the secret of just living by the good news. You don't deny the bad news. We're not in denial. You face things, you do things, you pay the bills, you do all that stuff, but you live by the good news.

So this is like, here's a good example of it. We come home from vacation and we get the mail and see, getting the mail is not exciting to me. I know what's going to be in the mail, but it's exciting to her.

It's still exciting. After this, nearly 33 years of marriage and she's excited. She brings in the mail because this is what she does. This big old wad of mail, you know, and she starts going through it. She starts dividing it up. I don't know where, I don't know how that got to be her job to divide up the mail when we get home.

But this is the way it is. She starts dividing up. She said, and she's putting my pile, my pile, my pile, her pile, my pile, my pile, my pile, her pile, her pile, my pile, my, my, my, hers. And so I look over and my stack consists of electricity bills and tax statements and AARP ads. And her smaller stack consists of nice encouraging greeting cards that people have sent or a random refund check that's come back. And she's like, you know, I'm over here like, oh, oh, my goodness. They say they're going, we got to pay this bill. And she's over here and she's like, look at this sweet card that so-and-so sent us.

Isn't that just something? Aren't they just precious? You know, they're smiling. I'm over here looking, oh, the tax statements coming out. And she's like, oh, she said, look at this, $73 refund check. We must have overpaid at the medical office.

You know, that's the exact amount of those earrings that I saw the other day. So it's like, you know, and he's like, are you living that way? You hear what I'm saying? Is that you've got to take your life and you've got to shape it by the good news. There's going to be plenty of bad news. But what we say as Christians is the good news that we have received in the gospel is so good that it absolutely shapes everything in life.

It will rock your world and then it'll change your world. What I'm saying is that that news that the disciples received, you just see a picture of it with a Shunammite woman being told that she's going to have a son. These disciples, when they realized Jesus was alive, they disbelieved for joy because it's so astonishing. This is the way it ought to be. It is not just a nice little message that we announce and come to church and have it. No, this is earth-shaking news.

I couldn't believe it. Years ago, Pastor Chris, he had the opportunity to preach at present here. It's a governing body in our denomination. And so elders are there and pastors there and spouses and friends and all this.

And it's kind of a kind of an august gathering into this moment, you know. And man, I think it was the best time we ever preached. He's preaching from Colossians 1 about the preeminence of Christ who is before all things and holds all things together. And he preached his heart out talking about the supremacy of Christ. He talked about how scientists can't quite figure out what it is that actually physically holds everything together.

They call it the strong force. And he lifted up Jesus as the strong force and he talked about the majesty of Christ and the power of his grace that's holding all things together, who is before all things, in all things, over all things, the one in whom we live and move and have our being. And he just preached his heart out. And the guy who was sort of leading the liturgy of the service, I couldn't believe it. I mean, Chris just, you know, he stepped down from the pulpit and the guy got out of the microphone and he said, Thank you, Pastor Lawson, for that nice reminder. A nice reminder. I want to go out there and grab the microphone and say, did you hear what this man just said? Did you even hear what this man said? This man just said that the strong force that is a mystery to scientists is actually Jesus, who is the preeminent Lord of the entire cosmos.

This is a nice reminder. What I'm saying is you can't even dream up what God has done for us. You could have never asked him for it. You understand how it could be the God who does exceedingly abundantly of above and beyond all that you could ask or think.

Let me just say this. Could anybody have ever asked him for what he's actually done for us? No angel in heaven could have.

No, think about this. It'd be like, you know, you had to say something like this to God. God, I've got a predicament. You see, I've sinned and I just feel guilty over this. And it seems like no matter how much I try to make up for it, I still feel guilty. And I want to feel free of this. And I got this predicament that I know that sin should be punished. And yet I don't want to be punished. I want to be free and I want to live forever. And I know that there needs to be justice in the world because I don't want to have a world where there's no justice because that'd be a terrible world.

And yet if there's justice, then I know sin must be punished and I know I won't deserve to be with you. So God, here's what I've been thinking about. Here's what I'd like you to do.

Let me run this by you. I would like you, God, the creator of the ends of the earth, the one true, supreme, triune God, would you please divest yourself of that eternal glory and put on human flesh and become a human being like I am? I know it's sort of like asking a human being to become an ant, but this is what I'd like you to do. And you just become a person because if you had become a human being like I am, then we would have a human being on this earth who had not sinned. And if we could have a human being on this earth who had not sinned, then that human being could represent humanity. And so we really need you to be God, but we also need you to be human. So could you just be born in a manger maybe, be born a little baby, have to be everything a human is.

Rely on your mother's milk, experience bullies in the neighborhood, face everything that we face, go through the troubles of growing up and face every kind of temptation that we face. Just so that what we'd like you to do is in the fullness of time, please, would you represent humanity, because now you're a human as well as God, would you represent humanity by taking a punishment that everybody deserved? And it can't just be partial, so we need for you to take the punishment that would have been due to every single sinner, including mine. And what we're going to need you to do is to allow yourself, therefore, though you're God and though you would have all power, you put your power on hold so that we could nail you to a cross, the most heinous form of execution that the world has ever known. And would you, God, would you just hang on that cross until you slowly suffocate to death, bleeding on my behalf so I don't have to bleed and suffocate.

And while you're on the cross, here's what we need to do. Would you just do this, God? Would you allow the sin that was mine to actually be put upon you physically so that you're bearing that sin and the punishment for that sin that would make you, in that moment, experience what it's like to feel God-forsaken? Would you experience hell for me and for all of humanity? And then let them mock you and say things like, He saved others, He can't save Himself.

And as they mock you, you resist the urge to call down a legion of angels and instead let yourself die. So that, because this is what we need, God, we need you to look on Jesus as if He committed all of my sin and in this incredible exchange, would you just do this then, because now justice has taken place and sin has been punished, so now you're free to look on me as so fully forgiven that it's like my sin has been cast as far as the east is from the west. Would you make it so that you can't even see my sin anymore? And more than that, Lord, would you look upon me as if I had lived the life that Jesus had lived because you looked on Him as if He had lived the life that I had of sin, but now would you look on me as if I had lived His righteous life so that then you could impute to me and call me Jesus' own righteousness so I would know that I could come into your presence without any fear or concern of being rejected because you don't see my sin and instead you see Jesus' righteousness. And more than that, Lord, just a little bit more, if you could just do this, not only allow me into your holy presence, but would you make me a co-heir, therefore, of the blessings that should have been only reserved for Jesus, but because now I've been deemed to be righteous through His shed blood, make me a co-heir, and would you, Lord, seat me in the heavenlies even while I'm still on this earth so that I'm positioned with Christ and a recipient of every spiritual blessing in Christ so that I could do the things that Jesus did and even greater things, and in order to do that, Lord, would you please, just when Jesus ascends, would you send your Holy Spirit so that your life would be in me, your joy would be my joy, your love would be my love, your peace would be my peace, your power would be power that's flowing through me, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, would you let that flow through me so that I could live victorious in this life, and would you, just one more thing, would you in the fullness of time, you choose the time, but in the fullness of time, would you come back and consummate everything that you've shown us in the gospel and finally extinguish evil and make a new heaven and a new earth and give me a new spiritual body so I could live with you forever and forever?

Could you do that for me? Who was gonna dream that up? It's beyond comprehension. But that, my friends, is the story of what God has done for us because the gospel is good news that is so good that it seems too good to be true, but it is true, and that's what makes it so good, and that is the gospel. Amen? Alan Wright.

What a way to conclude this series. It's today's teaching, Don't Lie to Me, Man of God, from the series Miracle Man. Alan is back in a moment with additional insight on this for our life and a final word for the series and today. God's love. You've heard about it with your ears.

You've believed it in your mind. Now experience it in your heart with Alan Wright's beloved book, Lover of My Soul. The Bible is a love story from beginning to end. You are the spiritual bride of Christ, the perfect bridegroom. The Bible tells about a God who has gone to unimaginable lengths to woo you, to win you, and to walk with you hand in hand. For any man who has fallen in love with a woman, you've tasted the sweetness of what God's love for you is like. For any woman who has searched for true love, what you long for can only be found fully in God. Gary Chapman, renowned author of the five love languages, says, The incredible reality that God pursues us in love comes to life in Lover of My Soul. Ancient biblical accounts explode in the heart. Accept Christ's proposal, enjoy His embrace, revel in His love.

After all, it's a match made in heaven. It's Lover of My Soul by Alan Wright. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Alan, it really is that good. The gospel is good news, almost unbelievable. Yeah, that's the nature of the gospel. Well, all throughout the series, Daniel, we've been hearing stories of miracles, real miracles, ones that I've seen up close and personal, many with my own eyes and my own experiences. We have seen Elijah and Elisha used of God in many, many different ways. The bottom line to take away from all this is where we started. James said Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed that it wouldn't rain, and then it would rain, and God used his prayer. So there's nothing in the Scriptures about these great men that is categorically different than any of us. So the good news is good news because it's for me and you and every single person that's listening. Miracles.