The Sea That Swallows and Saves [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Don't you know there are some other Hebrews that are going, there's a wall of water on the left and a wall of water on the right. Are we going to die? We're going to die in here. Are we going to die?

I don't know. But they just kept following Moses. See, the need was to see their mediator, Moses, and then just move on. 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 that we've called The Top Ten from Pastor Alan, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina in the first 10 years of Pastor Alan's radio broadcast ministry. 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 digital copy of The Top Ten from Pastor Alan Wright. This digital download can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries, or if you prefer, we do have a CD album available. Your choice 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. We'll tell you more about it later in the program, but right now let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. When you've experienced God's freedom and favor and then find yourself facing new and unexpected challenges, take heart. God still parts Red Seas. Receive the word that Moses gave to the Israelites when they felt trapped between an army behind and an ocean in front. Do not be afraid.

Stand still. See the salvation of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you. For these Egyptians whom you now see, you shall see again no more forever.

The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace. It's a rich, deep word, and I point you today specifically to this powerful idea that the Egyptians that you see today, the voices that make you feel condemned. In other words, the presence of that Egyptian army behind them brought back every feeling of slavery. They had been in bondage to those people for all those years, and the mentality, your soul doesn't just change overnight because suddenly you're out of that slavery. And they saw those slave masters, and they saw the chariots, and they saw them coming, breathing down upon them.

And how did it make them feel? It made them feel like we are trapped. We are condemned. There's something wrong with our situation. We're stuck.

We're doomed. In other words, condemnation paralyzes, and that's the way they felt. And God has a word for us that when you feel that, that there is a way in which God not only moves you on towards promise, but his gospel is so powerful that his grace will swallow up that voice of condemnation. It's like, this is the image I feel like the Lord gave me, it's like the difference between saying you have a fear but you can manage it versus not having the fear at all. It might be like if you had a nightmare night after night, and you'd wake yourself up and remind yourself, oh it's not real, so you could comfort yourself with that.

But wouldn't it be a far better thing to just not have the nightmare at all? And that's what I think God has for us. It's been something I've experienced in an ever-increasing manner in my own life. When I was a kid, I had, in a lot of ways, an ideal childhood, so many advantages, so many blessings. And when I tell my story, it's important just to be reminded, myself and others, that I was so thankful I was never abused, I was never neglected, I wasn't openly cursed, or any of that, like many of you have experienced.

But I did come from a home that was broken, a home that had suffered the pangs of alcoholism in it. I came from an environment in which everybody in my family seemed to be excelling, and so that's what I set out to do. And I felt like I had a lot of friends. By the time I was in high school, I guess I was with a kind of popular crowd. I played two varsity sports. I made really good grades.

I was accepted into a good college. I had a sweet, cute Christian girlfriend. I would have never said of myself that I felt under condemnation, or I would have never said that shame was a word that applied to me, because I felt like I was more or less succeeding in life's plan. In other words, I was moving, moving on and moving, moving forward and doing okay. And even after I went to seminary and I took clinical pastoral education and I learned so much, I still would have not identified that as being an issue in my life.

Until later, after having been a pastor for close to a decade and helping others, I began to take a more honest inventory of my own soul. And that's when I began to realize some things that were wrong, like warning lights on your car dashboard. One of them was, I was perfectionistic. I was driven. I was working. I was overworking. And it was out of, I realized, I realized a need that I had to never let anybody down. I had a hard time saying no to anything or anybody. And it was related to really wanting to please people, which made me realize that approval of others was way too important to me.

Why was this the case? I also had to be honest with myself and say that, in fact, it mattered. I took criticisms way too hard. I could have 200 people tell me a message, bless them, and one person write me a note that was critical and I'd be brooding over the one criticism. And I mean, nobody loves criticism, but it would set me back.

You know, I'd find myself brooding over it. Why was this the case? If I was just on a trajectory and everything was wonderful and I was moving forward, why was I feeling like that? I also had to be honest that, though I was never abusive or anything like that, I could be negative towards the people I love the most. And I realized it was, I wanted perfectionism for myself, but I would often expect it of people near me too, as if you're not perfect, that I might criticize you. And that might have bothered me most of all.

And I started wondering, why are these things the case? And that's what led me on a path of discovering the power of shame that essentially is a condemning voice that says, there's something not right about you and you've got to do a little bit more in order to be accepted and acceptable. In other words, I discovered about my life that I was exactly like those Israelites, where there's a Red Sea and I might have confidence that I'm going to be able to move forward, but there was an Egyptian army always behind me, whispering accusations. And what happens, beloved, and some of you identify with me on this, is that when you are experiencing life like that, where you might have a sense of some confidence about moving forward, you know that you're a Christian, you know you've got heaven in front of you, but there's something that's always tugging you backward, that what it does is that it causes there to be an angst in your soul. And so the picture of these people of God, that are Red Sea in front, army behind, is that they feel condemned by these voices of the former slave masters, and so it causes them angst and they begin to have all kinds of problems in their souls.

This is what happens when there is a nagging voice of condemnation, like the Egyptian army's threat over the people of God. And God, therefore, not only wants you to know He has a plan for you to move forward, but in that plan for you to move forward He also has a plan by the power of the gospel to set you free from that gnawing anxiety and the nagging voice of discontent, the nagging voice of an accusing spirit that is always hovering. God has a victory in the power of the gospel, and it's pictured in this Red Sea.

There is a relationship between healing and hope. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. The life-changing message of good news has been taught over radio from Alan Wright Ministries for quite some time now, and God has used every one of those messages. But some broadcasts have really hit home in special ways. In gratitude of more than a decade of radio, we have assembled the most powerful, best-loved messages from each year of the first ten and put them together in one special album. When you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries this month, we want to give you Alan Wright's top ten CD album or digital download.

Are you ready for some good news? Make your gift today and discover God's grace afresh with Alan Wright's top ten of the first decade. 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. 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. If you have healing but you don't have hope, you may be well nurtured but without destiny. If you have hope and a sense of destiny but no healing, you will move forward only with angst.

And if you're like me, you'll often feel like an imposter and something will be withheld in you. And what spiritual warfare comes down to essentially is this. The Bible calls the Prince of Darkness Satan because the name Satan means accuser.

And I want you to understand this. You're in a spiritual battle and the principal weapon of hell is the voice of accusation. And only if that accusation can find some place of connection in you will you have any suffering in this battle. Because in as much as you know that the voice of accusation has no substance against you, then you're free from it. This is the visual of the army being drowned by the sea is the voice of the accuser being drowned out by the cross of Jesus Christ. Because what happened in that ocean is what happened in the cross. Through the cross of Jesus Christ, what the Lord did was He paid the penalty Himself for your sin and for mine.

It's not a popular concept in today's culture and it runs contrary to the spirit of the age. But our predicament is that we are born in sin and all sin deserves punishment. And everyone whether consciously or unconsciously is aware of this that we are therefore under a penalty.

And in some ways we're trying to make ourselves right. Ask most people why do you think you should go to heaven and they'll say because I'm a good person. In other words if my good outweighs my bad then somehow I'll escape the penalty. It just proves the fact that we feel that we're under some sort of penalty because of our flaws. And what God did in Jesus Christ was He said yes humanity must pay the penalty and so a human being will pay it. Jesus the Son of God was a human being, God in the flesh, and He paid that penalty. And when you know that and accept it, you are forgiven and your sin is cast as far as the east is from the west. And that forgiveness puts you in a new position in the cosmos. But there's something else that God does.

It's something that I emphasize to you all the time. He didn't just put the penalty upon Jesus. He put the blessing that should have been reserved for Jesus upon the believer. So in this exchange He became your sin and you were given His righteousness. What this means for us is that the voice of the accuser is defeated through the cross of Jesus Christ because we no longer have a penalty due to us. So when the accuser says look you're stuck and the reason is because of your sin. Look you're doomed because you're a failure.

You don't measure up. You haven't done enough and therefore the torture of our soul causes us to be paralyzed in fear. The answer of the gospel has to be simply put, I have been forgiven. There is no penalty that remains. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

That is the answer. But the accuser also has another threat and that is that you can't be blessed because you've done nothing to deserve being blessed. You think you're going to be able to move forward through a red sea? You think you're going to be able to take territory?

You think you're going to be able to go into another relationship and have it succeed when you failed in the past? You don't deserve to be blessed. And our answer to the accuser comes from the cross again because the first part of our answer is I have no penalty over my life so I can't be condemned. And the second part of the answer is I have been reckoned as the righteousness of Jesus Christ and that is the right of me to be the righteousness of Jesus Christ and therefore I must be blessed. I am blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus and so the reason that I am moving forward is not by my merit but by the merits of the Lord Jesus that has been imputed to me and I have been made holy and I belong to God. Hallelujah! And when you have that answer down deep in your soul you become victorious in the spiritual battle.

Let me show you something beautiful in the midst of this blessing that we're speaking over one another this new year. When Moses said to the people do not be stand still he then said and see the salvation of the Lord. And I want you to know that the word for salvation in Hebrew is Yeshua. I want you to know that the name Jesus is a transliteration that his actual Hebrew name was Yeshua. The name Jesus means the Lord is salvation. What Moses said to the people in Exodus chapter 14 was literally do not be afraid stand still and see Jesus. Do you realize if the people had wrongly misunderstood their battle and thought that they were going to win it out of their flesh if they had turned and tried to fight the Egyptian chariots by their own strength they not only would have lost because their flesh could not have withstood the chariots of Egypt but they would have missed the very miracle that God had brought to them. The battle belongs to the Lord and he's fighting for you. The call upon the believer's life therefore in the day of spiritual battle is instead of getting panicked on the inside is to stand still to in a real sense grow quiet before the Lord and say Lord I want to see Jesus in this. I want to see Jesus. You know when they went walking through and the Bible says there's a wall of water on the left and a wall of water on the right some of those Hebrews might have been going oh this is awesome look what the Lord's doing now man he first he delivered us out of slavery and now there's a big wall of water and it's going to swallow up the Egyptians this is the coolest thing I've ever seen and they're just skipping through but don't you know there's some other Hebrews that are going there's a wall of water on the left and a wall of water on the and a wall of water on the right are we gonna die we're gonna die in here are we gonna die I don't know but they just kept following Moses see the the need was to see their mediator Moses and they just move on to just move on that really is the way faith operates it is not about you having mental certainty about every doubt in your life it's not about you pulling up yourself by your own bootstraps and saying I will believe you know what it's about it's about a revelation of Jesus Christ this is why Hebrews says that Jesus is the author and the finisher of our faith because when you see Jesus you have faith when you see what Jesus is doing you have faith and when you are reminded through God's word through the revelation of the Holy Spirit through the the prayer of the saints through the laying on of hands through prophetic utterances through the gifts of God through the stirring up of the Spirit of God within you through all the means of God's grace when you have a reminder a revelation that the cross of Jesus Christ was full and final and finished and that Jesus has been raised from the dead and he is praying for you and he's alive and he is sovereign over all things when you see Jesus you have faith and so that's why we want to bless your life and bless one another instead of simply saying it's a new year and let's all try harder to have more faith and let's just try harder to fight off the Egyptians that's not the word of the Lord the word of the Lord is don't be afraid stand still see Jesus see Yeshua for the Egyptians whom you see today the voices of condemnation that have haunted you they're not going to be there forever in fact the time is coming you'll see them again no more you'll be free because the Lord is fighting for you and you shall hold your peace that's our blessing and that is the gospel alan wright in today's teaching the seed that swallows and saves the life-changing message of good news has been taught over radio from Alan Wright Ministries for quite some time now and god has used every one of those messages but some broadcasts have really hit home in special ways in gratitude of more than a decade of radio we have assembled the most powerful best love messages from each year of the first 10 and put them together in one special album when you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries this month we want to give you alan wright's top 10 cd album or digital download are you ready for some good news make your gift today and discover god's grace afresh with alan wright's top 10 of the first decade 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 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 pastor alan.org alan if someone is listening right now and they feel condemned they feel full of shame they they feel like there's nowhere to turn no place of belonging as we're learning about with this red sea situation there's freedom that's found here sometimes in the least likely of places and if you can envision if you're in one of those places in your life right now you hear those voices of condemnation envision yourself there at the red sea there there never was a time in which the taunt of the egyptian this feeling of doom the sense of condemnation was greater for those israelites than right at that moment where is a sense of you think that you've been set free and now look at you look how stuck you are but what they didn't understand is that god was getting ready to do his greatest miracle what if right at the moment where you're feeling the most condemned this is the moment god is ready to do his greatest miracle in your life god still parts red seas it's like the ultimate blessing in disguise it looks like you're doomed and yet it's your salvation what might be going on in someone's life right now that looks like this is going to be my end and yet god's already got a plan in mind if you only caught part of today's teaching not only can you listen again but you can 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