And God Knew [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Allen Wright. Jesus was the true son of Abraham.

He was the true Israelite, and we have been engrafted into this family of God. And all of the promises of God are to us, yes and amen, in Christ. 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 our series called Moses, 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'll be yours for your donation this month to Allen Wright Ministries.

So as you listen to today's message, we encourage you to 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 this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Allen Wright. There's something inside of God that responds, therefore, to the cry of his people, but there's something else that God hears. We are told point blank in Psalm 34, but many, many other places throughout the Old Testament were given similar scriptures. When the righteous cry out for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all of their troubles. And this is particularly good news for all who are in Jesus Christ, because what this means is that all who are in Christ have been reckoned as righteous and are clothed with the righteousness of Christ. So when you pray in the name of Jesus, you are praying in the name of the righteous one, and you are praying as one who has been put into right standing with God.

He is moved with compassion for those that are in need, and he is moved by the righteous, and we have been declared righteous in Jesus' name, and therefore, God is moved by your cry. He heard. The second verb is zacher.

Say that with me. Zacher. Zacher.

Zacher. To remember. Another hugely important Hebrew word. And again, it's not like, okay, God had forgotten that he had a covenant with Abraham. No, he knows all things.

He's omniscient. He doesn't forget something. So what does it mean to say he remembered? It didn't mean he jogged his memory. It means really in Hebrew to remember, and I think we can understand this, it means to have in your thoughts.

It is like it can be used to think of meditation even. So when Exodus 20 begins the Ten Commandments at the beginning, it says remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. It's not so much that God was given a command because he's afraid that people would forget that there's such a thing as a Sabbath.

Nobody would ever forget that there was such a thing as a Sabbath, but he was saying remember the Sabbath day. What he's saying is I want you to keep this in the foremost part of your thinking. If you say to someone, if they bring you a gift, they've been on a trip, they bring you a gift, and then you say thank you for remembering me.

You don't mean that if you hadn't brought me this gift that you had forgotten that I existed. My wife's love language is gifts, and this is my wife. She loves to give, and this is her love language. This is how she shows love. She gives. So if we're on a trip somewhere, and we're shopping, and these two things almost always go hand in hand.

Somewhere they're shopping on the trip, and she's walking around the store, and she says, hey, Alan, come look at this. You've got to see this. Look at this. 90% of the time, 95% of the time, what she's saying is come look over this. Wouldn't so-and-so love this?

I'm thinking about getting this for such-and-such. Wouldn't so-and-so like this? I said, well, honey, is it her birthday?

No. Well, no, I just think she loves it. In other words, what's she doing? She is remembering a friend. She's remembering a family member. She's remembering somebody, and it's going to be expressed through gift-giving. Gift-giving is not my love language, and see, this is part of the problem.

Side point for marriages is one person's love language is, and another is that. She assumes that you show love by giving gifts. I don't.

I don't, and so I have to work more at this, and I've got a long way still to go after this will be 30 years this May. For example, we prepare stockings for each other on Christmas Eve, and we get up on Christmas Day, and we open the stockings from each other. The stocking I open up that she's prepared for me is full of little precious things that she has accumulated all throughout the year from all over the place, and the stocking she opens for me... There have been times where it's been from Walgreens after the third Christmas Eve service, but this isn't my wife because her love language is gifts, so here's what her first question is when she opens up something from you. Oh, I love this.

Where did you get this? Now, she's not saying that because she cares so much about the brand awareness of it, but when she's asking, she asks me, where did you get this? Because she wants to know that I was somewhere doing something, traveling or doing something, but I was thinking of her, and so Walgreens does not bless her. But see, if I'm on a trip, I am thinking of her. I am remembering. I just don't remember with gifts, and so all this is to say when you say you remember somebody, it doesn't mean that you forgot that they were on planet earth, and then suddenly you remembered that they existed.

It means that you have them in your meditation of your heart, right? So the text then says God remembered. It wasn't that he'd forgotten, but this is what preoccupies the heart of God.

Oh, do not miss this. This is one of the most beautiful things you could ever see about who God is. He remembered what? His covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. What God remembered, and remember, this is before Jesus has ever come.

This is before. This is our God. What he remembered when they cried for help was not the sin of Adam and Eve. The text doesn't say, and he remembered the sin of the world and why he sent the flood.

It doesn't say he remembered the people that created the Tower of Babel. It doesn't say he remembered Abraham and Sarah and how they had become impatient, brought in Hagar, and produced Ishmael. It doesn't even say, and he remembered how many good things Abraham had done. It says he remembered his covenant with Abraham. And the covenant with Abraham was especially powerful because this was a unilateral agreement.

This was a covenant wherein God called this random man up out of the Ur of the Chaldees and told him, I'm going to bless you and make your name great, and you're going to be a father of a nation, and people who come against you, I'm going to be against them. And he didn't ask anything of Abraham except to believe him. And when Abraham believed in the Bible says it was credited to Abraham as righteousness.

What did God remember in the midst of the people crying out to him? He remembered his promises to Abraham that were for the generations to generations. For it was a covenant with Abraham that was passed on to Isaac and to Jacob. It was a covenant then that was still alive through Joseph who had gone to Egypt and his family. They had moved to Goshen and the people of God that had swelled to such great numbers in their slavery.

These were the people of whom God spoke of when he promised Abraham that he would be a father. And Abraham's long gone, but these people are alive. And what does God remember? He remembers his own word. God will not let his word fall to the ground empty nor return to him void. God is moved by the compassion of his heart for the people, but even more so God is moved by the word that he has established for all eternity. And the blessings that he promised Abraham would come to pass no matter what. He was not going to allow his covenant to fall apart because he'd spoken it.

It's all clear. He's a covenantal God and he remembers this is what is important to him. And it trumps whether you've been good or bad. He remembered the man who had been declared righteous because he believed the covenant.

And when you bring your request to God, you come in a superior covenant, a new covenant that was made and kept in the person of Christ Jesus who was the righteous one. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Ever feel like something's holding you back, as if you lack an important key that could change everything?

Is there someone you love who seems stuck? You'd like to help them, but how? What's missing? Blessing. We all need a positive faith-filled vision spoken over our lives. You can learn how to embrace the biblical practice of blessing through Pastor Alan Wright's new book, The Power to Bless, which quickly became an Amazon number one bestseller after its recent release. Until now, the hardcover book has only been available through retail sales, but this month, Alan Wright Ministries wants to send you the book as our thank you for your donation. Make your gift today and discover the power to bless. 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. God has said to the Son, If you will obey me even unto death upon the cross, then all of my covenantal blessings will be poured out upon you and all who are in you. In other words, Jesus was the true son of Abraham.

He was the true Israelite. And we have been engrafted into this family of God. And all of the promises of God are to us, yes and amen in Christ. We are blessed with every spiritual blessing because God is a God who remembers His covenant.

What I'm saying is when you bring your prayer to God, He doesn't remember all your sin. He remembers the righteousness of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for you. God heard Shema, God remembered Zacher and God saw Raah.

It can mean to regard, to perceive, to feel, to understand, to learn or enjoy, but Raah is the word for see in Hebrew is also the word for provide. The most important place that this word is designated as provide is in Genesis chapter 22 in the incredible story when God asked the unthinkable of Abraham for him to go and offer his son, his only son whom he loves, Isaac, and put him upon the altar as a burnt offering. And Abraham takes Isaac and they take wood and take fire. And Isaac says to his father, he says, I see the wood, I see the altar, I see the fire.

Where is the lamb? And in Genesis 22 verse 8, Abraham said, God will provide for Himself the lamb. And the word for provide is this word Raah. Literally it says God will see for Himself a lamb.

You could look at it this way, God will see to it. In other words, in Hebrew, the idea is that if you could see ahead about something, if you could see something, then you can provide for it. And God in this sense is in our future. So God provided a ram in the thicket that was sacrificed instead of Isaac in the same way that God always saw Jesus who would be the sacrifice for His people, the one true sacrifice for all time. He had already provided Jesus even though Jesus wouldn't come until a millennium and a half later.

He'd already provided Him. And God's in your future because God's not limited by time. God's outside of time. He's in your past, He's in your present, He's in your future. If He's in your future, He already knows what you'll need in the moment that you'll need it and He's there getting ready. He's getting ready.

He's there in your tomorrow and He's getting ready for your tomorrow. He's getting ready. It's like parents who are expecting their firstborn child.

And what are they doing? They're preparing a nursery. We need to get a crib. The baby's going to need some diapers. We need to get a little changing station.

We're fixing up things. What are the parents doing? They could say in a sense they are providing pros before video to see. They are seeing beforehand what the child would no way be able to see. The child's not even born yet, hadn't even seen the world yet. And yet the parents who know so much more and can see so much further down the road are in the child's future preparing for the child before the child ever arrives. If we as earthly parents out of the love of our hearts, sinful though we may be, can provide for our children because we can see further than they can see, how much more so can your God who sees all things, who is not limited by time, can go into your future and provide for you what it is that you need in your tomorrow. And God saw.

Let me just tell you something beautiful about this. And God saw the people of Israel. It says literally He saw the son of Israel. He saw.

When they cried, He heard their cry, He remembered His covenant. And then what did He see? He saw a people that He'd called unto Himself.

And the people He saw were not a bunch of slaves who were under bondage in Egypt. What He saw were a people that were His own people, a holy nation, a royal priesthood. Let me tell you what God saw. When Israel cried out in their bondage, God saw you.

He saw me sitting here today. He saw us surrounded by this word. He knew that He was going to have Himself a people and He saw to it. And then this last beautiful verb is God knew.

And there's no object for it. It just says He knew. Yada, yada. I reformed you in the womb, I yada you, I knew you. You know when I sit down and when I rise up, Psalm 139.

You know. The word for yada, it is a very intimate word. It's the word that is used to describe the marriage union of Adam and Eve. Adam yada, Eve, he knew Eve. It is a word that again is not in any way of course implying that there was something outside of God's knowledge base. You can't speak of an omniscient being having something he doesn't know about. So when he says God knew, it is referencing the nuance of this word that has to do with intimate sharing. And this means shared experience.

In other words, yada means that you have experienced what someone else has experienced. In the award winning film Good Will Hunting which is about a math genius named Will who is a janitor at MIT and has huge anger issues in his life that have resulted, have come mainly from the abuse he experienced from his foster father that would beat him mercilessly. And the interactions between him and his counselor Sean played by Robin Williams are incredibly poignant. And a climactic scene, Will is meeting with the counselor.

The counselor is looking at a folder that has pictures of Will's bruised body as a boy when he was beaten by his foster father. And Will says to the counselor, have you had any experience with that? And Sean, the counselor says, yeah, after 20 years of counseling I've seen some pretty bad stuff. And Will said, no, have you had any experience with that? The counselor said, you mean personally?

Yeah. And Robin Williams' character, the counselor said, yeah, actually I have. He said, my father was a mean drunk.

And when he'd get drunk he'd come home and he'd have to wail at somebody so I would provoke him so that he'd hit me rather than my mother or my little brother. Moments later, Will falls into the counselor's arms and weeps for the first time and his healing begins. Because it's one thing for somebody to know, but it's another for somebody to know experientially. Because God himself could go into the future and God himself was not limited by time and God himself would see to it that there was a lamb, God already knew what it was like in Jesus Christ to be oppressed, to be tormented, to be beaten, and to long for liberation.

God knows. He knows what it's like when you're in the good times. He knows what it's like for you when you're in the hard times. In the next chapter, next week, coming weeks, we're going to see a burning bush and a deliverer, Moses, is going to be called and soon the people are going to be free. But that passageway to the Promised Land began when they cried out to God and found out that God is the one who hears, who remembers his covenant, who sees his people, and who really knows. That's the gospel. Allyn Wright, in today's teaching, And God Knew.

Is there someone you love who seems stuck? You'd like to help them, but how? What's missing? We all need a positive, faith-filled vision spoken over our lives. You can learn how to embrace the biblical practice of blessing through Pastor Allyn Wright's new book, The Power to Bless, which quickly became an Amazon number one bestseller after its recent release. Until now, the hardcover book has only been available through retail sales, but this month, Allyn Wright Ministries wants to send you the book as our thank you for your donation. Make your gift today and discover the power to bless. The gospel is shared when you give to Allyn 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 Allyn Wright Ministries.

Call us at 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, pastorallyn.org. Allyn, if I'm in a period of my life where I feel like even my prayers to Almighty God are not getting past the ceiling, what truth of Scripture can I hold onto? What promise from His word can we glean from this? Well, it's amazing that the people of God were just crying out in their pain, in their slavery, under the heavy hand of oppression, that were just given these four verbs, so strong, of what is God doing when you're crying out to Him?

And this is what you can count on. God's hearing you. God's remembering His covenant promises in Christ. God is seeing. He's seeing ahead of time. He's seeing what you need, and God knows. He knows what you're going through. He knows what you need. And you can be assured He's right there with you. He heard, He remembered, He saw, He knew, and He does the same for you.

Allyn, as we continue in this series on Moses, knowing that God knew, knowing that He came to us and He was fully God and fully man, with someone we could both relate to but at the same time respect as the authority of the world, what's your takeaway? It's such a beautiful verse that at the heart of it is God knew. God hears, God remembers, and God knows, God sees. This word for know is a word of intimacy, a word of closeness.

It is a word of identification. And it's a powerful image to think of the people in their slavery that are calling out to God, and God hears, God remembers, God knows them. It's so encouraging to us. No matter what we're going through, God knows. He understands. Today's Good News message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.