Rebuilding on the Rubble [Part 1]

Allen Wright, pastor, Bible teacher, and author of his latest book, The Power to Bless. This is what the Lord says. I will restore the fortunes of Jacob's tents and have compassion on his dwellings.

The city will be rebuilt on her ruins and the palace will stand in its proper place. This is what the Lord says. I will restore. 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 From Now On, 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, a copy of Pastor Alan's book, Lover of My Soul. This 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. That's pastorallen.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

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

Here is Allen Wright. Are you ready for some good news? Yesterday's rubble makes for tomorrow's building supplies. This is Jeremiah 30 18. This is what the Lord says. The city will be rebuilt on her ruins.

The city will be rebuilt on her ruins. We're in a new series. I've called it From Now On. Wouldn't it be wonderful to live your life from now on? Instead of dwelling on the past or dragging the baggage of the past with you to be able to just live from this moment forward. It's rooted in our New Year's blessing this year, May God Make You as Ephraim and Manasseh, a mysterious blessing that is absolutely powerful once you begin to understand its gospel symbolism, the subject of my new book.

I'm so excited about coming out this week. And that part of the blessing, May God Make You as Manasseh, because Manasseh means forgotten all my troubles. It was Joseph's firstborn son. And Joseph had faced so many troubles. But when his life had been redeemed by God, he'd been put into a position of such leadership in Egypt. And now God had given him a son.

And he just named him Manasseh. He said, it's as if I've forgotten all my troubles. Well, he hadn't literally forgotten his troubles, but he was able to live from now on. He's able to live knowing that I'm actually at a higher place because of what my brothers meant for evil in my life. And so that's what we're learning about.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to live like that? And today I want to explore the part of living from now on that is what do you do with all the ruins of your life, all of the mistakes, all of the trauma, all the baggage, all the stuff that didn't work out, all the stuff that you messed up or somebody else messed up because they afflicted it against you, or just things that didn't work out in life, difficult things. All of it leaves in a sense, figuratively, this rubble in our lives.

And what do we do with all of that mess? And we come today to this prophetic text from Jeremiah who is prophesying to the people of God who have been in exile in Babylon, away from their homeland, and God has a plan to restore them back to their homeland, and these restoration promises become spiritually powerful for us. So here is today's text, Jeremiah 30, verse 18.

I'm reading from the New International Version because I think it is particularly beautiful. This is what the Lord says, I will restore the fortunes of Jacob's tents and have compassion on his dwellings. The city will be rebuilt on her ruins and the palace will stand in its proper place. This is what the Lord says, I will restore. That's who God is.

He's a restorer. You know, there are two television network stations that I could have never, ever imagined would have become big hits. I wouldn't even thought they'd been able to stay on the air. The first was when the Weather Channel came out. Some of you remember when the Weather Channel first emerged. I was like, who is going to watch the Weather Channel? I mean, the weather, you find out in 30 seconds what the weather forecast is for the next day. Who would have known that we would just be mesmerized by sitting around and watching the weather 24 hours a day? But the other one that I would have never imagined was HGTV, home and garden TV.

I mean, there are times in my home I thought it would have been better off if that had never existed. My wife loves HGTV. My daughter loves HGTV. All mainly centered around reality shows of people that fix up old houses or fix up their house and decide whether they're going to sell it or whether they're going to stay in it. And Chip and Joanna Gaines, who I do love because they're Baylor people.

My son went to Baylor. They're out in Waco, Texas, gave a real name to Waco. Fixer Upper, where they just go into a house and envision it being totally different and taking all of that exists and making it better. Until there's just a big reveal moment and the people get to come and see their house that's been completely remade. And people just love it. I read, as I was looking this up this week, that the HGTV network is the third most watched channel after Fox News and ESPN. HGTV and Fixer Upper. Why do people love to see somebody else get their house fixed up?

Isn't that kind of weird? I think it's because down deep in our souls, all of us in some way have this deep, innate longing for nothing to get scrapped, but for everything to get remade. That there's something within us that just loves it when there's a big renovation project because we're made for it. There's a big renovation project going on in London right now, the Buckingham Palace. The palace itself is, of course, home of the queen and the royal family, and I understand it's going through a half million dollar renovation project. They say all the wiring, all the pipes, they're all old, they've got to be replaced. They're taking out all the art, they're taking everything out, they're redoing it, they're painting everything.

They're going to spend a half million dollars on it. You know what's interesting is that when the subject of how old and needy the Buckingham Palace is, one thing for sure nobody said was, hey, it's just too expensive, let's just get rid of the thing and build some new shiny palace somewhere where they can live. Nobody's saying that about the Buckingham Palace.

Why? Because it's the Buckingham Palace, because it's got a value that is not just in its bricks and mortar and all of its ornate beauty. It's got a value because of the history, because of what it is, because it's the Buckingham Palace.

It is the place of inhabitation for the royal family. The reason I bring that up is I want you today to get this beautiful prophetic picture for your life, that God has made a promise through Jeremiah not just to the exiles in Babylon, but to you, to me. Your city, your life, your destiny, your sense of being, your city, you, like the city will be rebuilt upon our ruins.

And if you would never think of tearing down and just annihilating the Buckingham Palace, I want you to be assured that God isn't going to let your life be thrown away either. But instead, he is the master renovator. He is the restorer.

And I want to show you today what it means to say the city will be rebuilt on our ruins. I want you to be reacquainted with the God who is the restorer, who one day will make a new heaven and earth not by annihilating this heaven and this earth, but by remaking, building it afresh out of the same raw materials. That's who God is. 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.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. Here's the text again, Jeremiah 30 18. This is what the Lord says, I will restore the fortunes of Jacob's tents.

Tents is a symbolic way of referring to the people of God, and have compassion on his dwellings, to have mercy on the people by relocating them. And the city will be rebuilt on her ruins. Now that phrase, the city will be rebuilt on her ruins, is a description of, in Hebrew, what is called a tel. And you can see this word spelled T-E-L or T-E-L-L. A tel is essentially a big mound that gets formed over time. And essentially, here's what happens.

Here's what happens. And as you'll imagine, this little process with me, our cartoons we have here, so there's a small city, and maybe there is a marauding army, an enemy that comes, or maybe there's a natural calamity, a fire or a storm, and it's leveled, it is put into ruins. And what happens, especially in the Middle Eastern world, is that over time, all that rubble and all those ruins, they are slowly filled in by the sediment and the sand that blows. You can just imagine, after years of the wind blowing over all the rocks and the mud bricks and all of the rubble from the former city, that eventually it just fills in, you see. And it becomes part of a new, like a mound that is there. Well, people who come by later go, well, here is a more elevated building site that would make a suitable place for building again, and so they come back and they build again on top of it. And imagine that same process, a marauding army comes, a calamity comes, and the city gets leveled again. Rubble upon rubble, and the winds of time blow and sediment and sand, and it slowly fills it in again until now the hill is even bigger.

And so now you have an elevated spot and some future people come and say, here's a perfect place to build a new city, and up goes the city. And they love to study these because of all the layers of civilization that are seen there. There are thousands of tells across the Middle East. Here is an example of Tell Bare in northeastern Syria. A small tell, which is particularly beautiful, the Citadel of Aleppo, which has been occupied since the third millennium B.C.

And the most maybe famous tell is Tell Megiddo. This is known from the Bible because in Hebrew it's called the Mount of Megiddo or Har Megiddo. The archaeological site is really special there because it hadn't really been disturbed since the fifth century B.C.

It's called Har Megiddo or Armageddon that looks out over the Valley of Jezreel that you read about in the book of Revelation. So what would happen is that people would come and they would build on these tells. The city gets rebuilt on its original ruins, and it seems counterintuitive at first to think that you'd build on top of where there were ruins, but once you understand how over time it all has formed this elevated place, it becomes a perfect building plot. And one website was describing the tell and listed a number of reasons why people would build on these tells, and I thought how spiritually significant each one of these points. So first was that under the ruins of the city that had been broken down, all the building blocks were available.

So they could excavate and recapture the heaviest blocks that had not been destroyed but could be recaptured, and now they didn't have to do the hard work because this is one of the hardest things in building a city or the city walls was to get those really heavy stones, the huge building blocks that had to be transported over a long distance, and that was a big expense and a big labor, and when they come to a tell, those big building blocks were already there. And I just want to say that I think God wants you to know that though you may not feel it or see it right now, that in the rubble of your life, there's some big building blocks that are already there. Just because some difficult things have happened in your past doesn't mean that they're not raw material there that God's going to use now. There might be some of the worst mistakes of your life or even some of the trauma of your life, but it is that really the enemy has wrought against you that have left your soul feeling like it's just in ruins over it that actually are huge building blocks that are going to be foundational to what God is going to do next from now on. Foundational.

It's already there. The second thing I read about tells and why people build on the tells is that the waterworks were still available where the city was originally built near a stream or a river because that was so imperative to have any sort of thriving city is you had to be able to channel water into your city. There's either a spring and some sort of waterworks that have been crafted or a river that's nearby, and the better cities had found ways to channel that into their city and work it. And people like to build on the tells because even though there was a mound of ruins, they could excavate it and they could find the sources of water that were ancient. God likes to rebuild on the rubble of our lives because even though we have experienced the pain of life, the river of life is still running through us.

Anyone who is in Christ has a river of life, abundant life springing up on the inside, and God still has His Holy Spirit at work in you even when life is difficult. A third reason that they like to build on tells is that a new city would require a lot of heavy financial investment, and sometimes it just wasn't possible financially for a people to go and start totally afresh. In other words, there was value in that tell, and people that would build on it would redeem its value, whatever they could use of the materials there. Beloved, you and your life, no matter how much it's been broken or hurt, are of infinite value in God's eyes, and what looks like ruins to you is of great worth to God, and there is building material in your life that you may not be aware of, but God is, and God wants to rebuild the city on its ruins. A fourth reason that they would like to build on tells is that the old city was usually built in a prime location. There was a reason somebody built the city there in the first place.

It was something about that city that was set there, and so there really is no better location, no real sense to go try to relocate somewhere else because here this tell has been built in the location that made sense anyway. I see something prophetic in that for us that is encouraging. Sometimes when life's been hard, when you have rubble in your past, there's this idea that I just got to get away from it all, but I think sometimes God says, no, you are still in the right place, you're still the right person, and I don't need somewhere else or somebody else.

I'm going to do it through you. Whatever's happened in your life doesn't mean that you've been rendered unimportant. No, this is still the strategic location. You still are God's strategic location. Yes, you are.

You still have the plan for your life. Alan Wright. Today's good news message, rebuilding on the rubble. It's in our series, From Now On, and Pastor Alan is back with us in the studio sharing his parting good news thought for the day in just a moment. 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 and joy, 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. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Back now, sitting with Pastor Alan in our parting good news thought for the day. And that line right there, you are still God's strategic location. In ancient times, when a city was overwrought by an enemy, left in rubble, you might say, well, there it is, just a heap of ruins.

But an interesting thing is, time would go by, years and years sometimes. The sands would blow and sediment would fill in those places in the rubble until it really just became a big hill. And it's called a tell, a tell, a big hill that once was a glorious city, but then was put into ruin, but now has become a big, a big hill. And what we're learning about is, that the promise of God through Jeremiah that the city would be rebuilt on ruins, is to say there's something like that in our lives, that the stuff that feels like ruins can be like a tell, like a place that becomes a big hill. And what they would do is they'd go back and rebuild on top of those hills, because that's a better position.

It's a higher position for superior advantage and warfare. A better vista, they'd build, they'd have building supplies there. And so what we're learning about today is what it means for your life to be like a city that's been rebuilt on its ruins. The things that you might think, well, that's just what's ruined my life. That's just what's the rubble of my life.

God can take that and make it the building blocks of something better than you ever imagined. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online for more information. Visit us online at pastorallen.org or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. If you only caught part of today's teaching, not only can you listen again online, but also 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 pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.