Nothing....but the Blood [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

One after the other, Hebrew home after Hebrew home, regardless of whether they'd had a good day or a bad day, wherever there was the blood of the Lamb, there was celebration and salvation in that household. 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 God Moments 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's Pastor Alan's book by the same title, God Moments, and it can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you a copy of Pastor Alan's book, God Moments, our special offer today.

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. But right now, let's get started with today's teaching on God Moments.

Here is Alan Wright. You know how that can feel where you're just living and wondering and what's going to happen. It's one of those days and you wander not only amongst the Egyptian merchants and amongst their residential homes, but you also make your way down through the Hebrew slave quarters and you see how oppressed they have been and you see how great their toil is and how great their sorrow and that has been years of oppression.

They've grown up as slaves, they don't know anything other than being slaves and now they've been beaten and abused and they're tired and they're worn out and you see and you hear things that are going on on this afternoon. And then with the suspicion of the events of the night to be ominous indeed, you find a place to just watch what will happen. Maybe you find yourself behind a corner of some little shop or some little building in the corner of an ordinary street back up against an alleyway and you look and you can see Egyptian residences down to your left in the marketplace a little further and you can also within your eyes view see the slave quarters amongst the Hebrew people and right around twilight you notice the strangest thing that the fathers in those Hebrew homes they begin to come out one after the other at twilight and they dip this leafy plant, this hyssop, they dip it down into a basin as if it were a paintbrush and so they dip it in the paint and then they paint this red pigment over the door and over the sides and you see this one after the other. If you had known what a cross looks like you would have seen they were painting this picture of a cross and one after the other they come out and they paint this over their door and then they go back in their homes and no one comes out and you're so curious that you go to investigate what is this and you touch it and you realize it's not paint, it's blood.

It's blood. You return back to watch the night unfold and sometime late into the night when it grows so very very dark and midnight approaches. You have a sense of a darkness that is darker than the darkest night.

You hear maybe, you hear it like is it horses and chariots? It is like thunder but it is not. It is like the beating of a thousand bats wings.

It is no description what you hear and what you begin to sense and what you begin to see. But it is approaching. It is approaching and you can feel it. It was like it was in the air. You could feel it was old. It was timeless.

It is ancient and it is awesome and it is deep and it is weighty and the force of it. No one you could sense. No one could stop it and it starts rolling in and then at midnight you begin to hear it. A sound you'd rather never hear ever again in your life. The shrieks of mothers in great mourning. The wails and moaning of men. Fathers falling with their face to the dust as one after the other. You see Egyptians coming out of their homes and they are crying out into the darkness. What has happened?

My son is dead. What can we do to stop this darkness? What can we do? And then as if it comes down the corridors of time and through every alleyway of the Egyptian hamlet a low voice rumbles and speaks and says you can do nothing. Nothing.

There is nothing that can deliver you. Nothing but the blood. I imagine on that ominous night on that day of judgment I can imagine an Egyptian man who comes out of his home and he begins to call out to the darkness as it encroaches upon his home knowing that firstborns are perishing all around his neighborhood and he pleads out to this darkness. Pleads out to this ominous force and he says I want you to know something about me and my household.

We are different. I'm a moral man. He said I do not abuse my slaves. He said in fact I have written Pharaoh.

I'm seeking legislation that would lift this edict about the bricks without straw. He begins to list out his righteous acts. He is indeed a moral man. He lists and he calls out all of the things that he reckons to be good about himself and he says so surely you will pass over my house because of my own righteousness, because of my own good deeds and the darkness just keeps coming.

Can you imagine it? And he says what then if not my moral standing, what then could deliver me? And the voice rolls down through the corridors of time and echoes once again nothing nothing can save you but the blood. I imagine a religious man, he comes running out of his household.

He says to the darkness, he says please pass over my household. I worship all the different deities. I study theologically. I even believe in the God of the Hebrews. I believe in all of these. I practice so much religion.

I'm probably the most religious man in all of Egypt certainly because I am so devout. You'll pass over my home and the darkness keeps approaching and he says what then if not my religiosity if not my devout life, what then can deliver me? And the voice says nothing nothing, nothing but the blood. I even imagine, I even imagine a woman who comes out of the house and she's holding her baby boy and she says I have lived such a hard life.

One mistreatment after the other. One miscarriage after the other. So much sadness and she is truly to be pitied and darkness keeps coming and she says surely if not my pitiful condition what could save me?

What could save my household? And the voice says there's nothing, nothing that saves but the blood. Home after home, whale after whale, shriek of terror after shriek. You cower and take in the day of punishment. And soon you see that this same ominous foreboding presence is moving towards those Hebrew hovels and you tremble for them.

You tremble for them because you have made your way throughout those neighborhoods amongst the slave quarters. And it was not a pretty sight. In fact earlier that day you had just seen just the first house on the corner that you could still see right from your point of view that in that very house that day, that very day a teenage boy had done the unthinkable in a Jewish home. He had gotten so stressed he cursed his mother and the father went ballistic and beat that boy mercilessly and you heard the screams in that household and you heard the fight and you heard the blasphemies and you heard the hopelessness in their voice. You saw it all.

You heard it all. And now the darkness comes encroaching upon that blasphemous house. That house in which a family had been at their worst. And I imagine that family huddled in the middle of their little living room and I imagine that darkness coming and they could sense its presence and it comes and suddenly it as if licks past the blood on the door leaping over the house and instead of a darkness coming in and engulfing them a cool light comes underneath the door. It is, I imagine, the Shekinah glory of God that comes and envelops the whole family. And what I envision is that they begin to experience pure love. They feel the affections of God.

That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. God's always been there. In every moment you narrowly escaped from danger. In every moment you were surprised by a blessing.

In every moment you just knew the direction to take. God was there. Your life is defined by countless moments of God's grace. Perhaps they've been covered by the sands of time or have just gone unnoticed in the rush of life but your life is full of God moments. When you make a gift today we'll send you Pastor Alan's heart-stirring book, God Moments, that will lead you on a spiritual treasure hunt to uncover your God moments. It's Alan Wright's timeless book, God Moments.

Discover your God moments in the past and be filled with fresh faith today. 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. Today is the final day we're offering this special product. We're offering 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. In those moments there is love that erupts in their heart for one another and there is forgiveness that just begins to spontaneously flow not by an act of the will but by a generous change of the heart that makes a real contrition turn into a real mercy, the same mercy that they were shown. It begins to flow into one another's lives and they begin to embrace one another and they're forgiving one another and then I just imagine it, that teenage boy, a tear begins to fall down on his face and he stops everything. He silences the family. He says, but Daddy, I don't understand. I don't understand, Daddy.

Why? Why have we experienced this saving grace? What did you do? What do we have that sets us apart? What is so special that you did?

What do you have? And the Father pauses and He quakes with the gratitude within Him and says, Son, we have nothing, we have nothing but the blood. We have that blood and the darkness moves on. I imagine there's another Hebrew household in which there is weakness, frailty and infirmity. Slavery will do it to you.

Slavery can take what was once a robust flame and make it into a flickering candle on the edge being snuffed out. And you'd seen that father begging some of the Egyptian merchants for some of their so-called medicinal cures because his daughter had such a fever that she was barely hanging onto her life and that family is gathered in their little Hebrew slave hut and they're holding onto the hands of their feverish daughter and anybody's life is gonna end that night, surely it would be hers because she barely had a breath to breathe anyway. And the darkness comes and they tremble within but then that darkness leaps over their house and the cool light of glory comes into that room, I like to imagine it, and as that light of the presence of the goodness of God comes there's a fever that lifts and a girl that sits up and she smiles and she says, I'm hungry, I'd like to eat something and the family begins to laugh and they begin to celebrate and they get out the roasted lamb that they hadn't finished and they feed her some and they begin to celebrate that she's feeling better, in fact there's a strength and a vitality that seems to come into everyone until suddenly that daughter who had been on the edge of death, she stops everyone and pierces the air with her words, but what happened daddy? What did you do?

What did you have that made this happen? And the father pauses and smiles and he points to the door and he said I had nothing baby precious girl, I got nothing but the blood and one after the other one after the other, one after the other Hebrew home after Hebrew home, regardless of whether they'd had a good day or a bad day wherever there was the blood of the lamb there was celebration and salvation in that household Do you see it? To say nothing but the blood is not just to say nothing but the blood can save you it is also to say nothing in addition to the blood is needed.

There's not one thing that you can do to make God love you more than He already loves you. There's not one thing that you could do to add to the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ See I think back on this story and we can look backwards 3,500 years ago and what we realize now looking at that story is that though probably those Hebrew families were nervous that night and could hardly enjoy their lamb chops that in actuality they were so secure they might as well also been popping popcorn and playing board games or maybe just dancing and singing and praising the Lord. And what it says to me is that if they by us looking backwards could have been so utterly confident that they might as well have been celebrating on the day of judgment just cause they had put the lamb of a goat or the blood of a lamb or a goat over their door how much more we who are in Christ should be celebrating then with the very thought of the day of judgment. What it is to say is that the answer for all of your past regret and all of your guilt is in the blood of the lamb and all of your hope and certainty for the future is in the blood of the lamb. For what has been practiced for 3,500 years in Jewish homes is nothing more than a drama playing out thousands and thousands of times with thousands and thousands of Passover lambs that was prefiguring the day that would come when John the baptizer would announce to anyone who would listen behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

And that even the angels had never imagined it though they had seen what had happened at the Passover that Jesus God in the flesh would come to be our Passover lamb, the one who was without blemish. And what the story tells is not just how a Hebrew people that were enslaved were set free and evil was judged but it's also a story if you were to read on that tells about a people who had been promised an inheritance. And God told them I want you to celebrate the Passover every year and tell your children this story because I want you to remember what the Lord has done for you because you'll never take your inheritance if you don't keep remembering the blood.

And they had an inheritance that was symbolized even as they exited Egypt they started by God's command plundering the Egyptians and taking their gold and silver because God's plan was not just that they would be set free but that they would be made rich in every way. The good news of the gospel is that by simple childlike faith you in effect are placing the blood of Jesus over your heart and over your life and that blood and nothing but that blood can save you but beloved believe the gospel it also means that there's nothing in addition to the blood that is needed for you to go ahead and start celebrating the goodness of God. It means that there is nothing in addition to the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that is necessary for you to receive the fullness of the inheritance that God has lavished upon you. This is why Paul said we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus. And I for one as we celebrate communion again today if I think about the Jewish families at Passover time that are remembering what God did for them in Egypt by the blood of a little lamb or goat and they're celebrating and dancing I sure think that when we come to the communion table of the Lord that when we remember it and we remember it on the night of the Passover Jesus took the bread and reinterpreted everything and He said really what this is all about it's about me. This is my body and it's given for you. This is my blood shed for you. And if there could be for 3500 years Jews celebrating a Passover how much more should we celebrate the grace of God. Nothing but the blood can save you and nothing more than the blood is needed for you to live in the fullness of the promised land and that is the gospel.

Allen Wright. Wow it's the dramatic conclusion to the teaching nothing but the blood and we've got Allen here in the studio at our conclusion of the entire series of God moments with a final word for today and the series in just a moment stick with it. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement get Allen Wright's daily blessing it's free and just a click away at pastorallen.org God's always been there in every moment you narrowly escape from danger in every moment you were surprised by a blessing in every moment you just knew the direction to take.

God was there. Your life is defined by countless moments of God's grace perhaps they've been covered by the sands of time or have just gone unnoticed in the rush of life but your life is full of God moments. When you make a gift today we'll send you Pastor Alan's heart stirring book God Moments that will lead you on a spiritual treasure hunt to uncover your God moments. It's Allen Wright's timeless book God Moments.

Discover your God moments in the past and be filled with fresh faith today. The gospel is shared when you give to Allen Wright Ministries. Today is the final day we're offering this special product. 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 Allen Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860 that's 877-544-4860 or come to our website pastorallen.org So Allen we've made it here to the end of God moments and through it all we have heard good theory backed by the truth of scripture. We've heard practicality of things you can do externally to remember God moments and even just internally just some mental call them hacks or what have you that you say this is a good way it can trigger me to remember the God moments both now and in the past. But we have this conclusion that says it's all because of what Jesus has done and the shed blood on Calvary. The cross of Jesus Christ and His finished work is our ultimate God moment. Every other God moment appeals in comparison to the moment in history that God in the person of Jesus Christ died for you so that you could say nothing but the blood has saved me and nothing in addition to the blood is necessary for my salvation so you can absolutely have your faith rest in this and the more the more you meditate therefore on the gospel the more your faith is going to grow nothing nothing nothing but the blood. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.