"If Only I Could Remember It All" [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Oh, thank you, Lord, for these groceries that you brought me. And he jumped out from behind the bushes and said, aha, that didn't come from the Lord. I went to the grocery store and brought it to you. And she turned her head towards heaven and said, thank you all the more, Lord.

Not only have you brought me some groceries, but you made the devil pay for it. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new life. 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 only really get it when you see that your life, your sinful life, justly deserves God's displeasure. But instead, in Christ, He's shown you mercy. You only really get it if you realize that everything that you count dear is in danger at every second except for God's gracious sustaining sovereign power.

I am convinced this entire cosmos would come apart, would fall apart, and the world would spin off its axis, and we would perish in an instant if not for God's sustaining grace. There's only one time in which the Israelite's offering of thanksgiving was mandated. Every other time, it was completely voluntary. But there's one instance in which they said, you have to make this offering, and it is when you had been spared from a life-threatening situation. Ann's uncle, Stanley, many, many, many years ago was flying with his brother, Bill, a small plane, and they didn't have good equipment on the plane. They were surprised to find the darkness was settling in quicker than they had planned to get to their destination. They had limited fuel, and it became dark, and all they knew was the general area where they thought there was a landing strip in a rural location, and so they began circling wondering how in the world they were going to be able to land, and all of a sudden runway lights came on beneath them, and they were like, thank you, Jesus, pulled in safely on this grass runway, jumped out of the plane and ran over to the man at the little airport and said, thank you so much for putting out these, turning these lights on for us.

I guess you heard us circling overhead. The man said, no. He said, I don't know what you're talking about.

He said, these are just temporary lights that we use from time to time, and I had just, tonight was the night I had brought to lay them out and test them. Stanley and Bill said, could you tell us where the closest church is, please? Because if your life was about to end and then you got miraculously saved, you can't help yourself. You've got to give somebody thanks. You just got to thank God. You just have to thank him.

Gratitude is so important because it is more important to the person that is giving the gratitude than to it is to the one who is being thanked. My kids, I liked them when they were little to thank me. What do you say? Thank you, Daddy.

Okay. Doesn't that just warm the parent's heart after you've given your life's blood for them and you say, what do you say? Thank you, Mom. Yeah, it just warms your heart, doesn't it?

No, it doesn't. What you're doing is you're trying to teach them to be thankful because gratitude is essential for a soul's well-being. It's the one sacrifice that remains because it is essential for you. Let me tell you the first thing that was absolutely unique about the peace offerings, the thank offering of which was one of the peace offerings, the thing that was different about this than any other offering. There were some offerings like the burnt offering. You came, you presented the animal, and it was consumed on the altar.

Nobody ate any of it. But along with your grain offerings, when you brought your thank offering, and if you brought lamb, then there were portions of the fat and entrails that were burned up as a sacrifice to the Lord. There was a part of the thigh, some other parts that the priest would be able to eat, and then the rest of that lamb, the worshiper ate.

You bring yourself in a lamb or something on a thank offering, and you and your family eating leg of lamb and lamb chop that night, what I'm saying is it was the one offering in Israel that the worshiper was nourished by. Every other kind of sacrifice is for somebody else, but the sacrifice of praise is for you. The thank offering is delicious to the one who gives thanks. God loves your praise, and he inhabits the praise of his people, and he mandates your praise, and he mandates your thanksgiving to him, but it's not because God is needy. Thank you, God. It's because you are wired, designed to find joy and peace only when you are grateful.

Gratitude causes a cycle of peace and joy, whereas entitlement causes resentment and depression, because when you are grateful, by necessity there is someone to whom you are grateful. Some wit has said the atheist's darkest hour is to be thankful and have no one to thank. I've told you one of my favorite funny stories at least once a year, and I got to tell it again.

The lady who didn't have much, but boy she loved Jesus, and she'd go out on her front porch every day and sing songs of praise and just thank the Lord. Thank you for this day. This is the day you've made, and I rejoice in it. Thank you for you've been so good to me. Well, the next-door neighbor was an atheist, and he grew weary of all this, coming over and telling her all the time, why are you thankful? You don't even have very much, and there's no such thing as God. You're just thanking nobody, and she'd keep thanking the Lord anyway, and one day she came out and got on her front porch, and the neighbor was hiding behind the bushes, and he heard her praying, and she was saying, Lord, I got no food in the pantry.

Please bring me some food. Well, the atheist neighborhood decided he was going to play a trick on her, goes to the grocery store, gets her a big bag of groceries, sneaks over, puts it on her front porch, so that when she comes back out, there's a big bag of groceries, and she steps out, and she said, oh, thank you, Lord, for this groceries that you brought me, and he jumped out from behind the bushes and said, aha, that didn't come from the Lord. I went to the grocery store and brought it to you, and she turned her head towards heaven and said, thank you all the more, Lord. Not only have you brought me some groceries, but you made the devil pay for it. Somebody gets filled up with gratitude. You can't stop them from being happy because they're so thankful.

When you're grateful, it means you're grateful to a person. Let me move on to tell you why this offering in the life of Israel is so fascinating. It's fascinating because in the first place, it was the only offering that the worshiper would eat a portion of it, but secondly, and this is the more intriguing thing, it was the only offering listed in anywhere in Leviticus 1 through 7, the only offering of all those five categories and all the different kinds of, everywhere you look, if you were to read in Leviticus 2 all about all the grain offerings, what you're going to see over and over and over is that none of the breads, none of those grain offers could have any leaven in them.

Why? Because when the people experienced the Passover and they were coming out of their Egyptian slavery, the instruction of the Lord was to roast this lamb, but for their bread to put no yeast in it, it was to put no yeast in it. He said, you're going to leave quickly? You don't have time to wait on the bread to rise, so be ready to leave in haste. And so there was no leaven in the bread. So when the Passover is celebrated today, it is with unleavened bread, matzo. Leaven becomes this really important symbol of sin and corruption.

It's a really important symbol because it's a vivid image. You put a little bit of leaven or yeast into some bread and it works its way into the entire loaf. Once you put it in, you can't get it out and it works its way all the way through it. That's what sin does. It's like it's in, I can't get it out and it's touching every part of my being. Another analogy that I've often, it has often helped me when it thinks about, when I think about the nature of our sin, is if you had a glass of water and you drop one drop of red food coloring dye into it, it taints the entire glass of water. Every part of it's touched.

You can't get that drop back out. And it's touched everything. That's the way leaven does.

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. 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. The Reformed theologians said that the picture of our sin is total depravity. It doesn't mean that everything you do is depraved. It doesn't mean that everything you do is sinful by no means.

But what it means is that even the best things that you do are at least a little bit tainted by sin. This is the nature the Bible teaches of the human condition we're born into the world. We're born in sin. We're born and we have as if we have these sin tainted spectacles on and everything we look at is through this lens of our own brokenness, our own selfishness. So we see everything through this. This is why it's so important to understand that God goes first. This is love, not that we first love God, but that God first loved us. If I've got sin tainted spectacles and everything I see is through the filter of my sin, how could I ever choose that which is good and godly and holy and wise and true and noble and right?

God's got to come with a light into my darkness. Well, because leaven becomes such a symbol, you'll see it over and over throughout the scripture mentioned as no leaven allowed. In fact, for seven days leading up to the Passover feast Israel would celebrate the feast of unleavened bread. And what this means is that for seven weeks in the spring they would have the original spring cleaning. That every single crumb in that house had to be swept out of there. It had to be completely spotless because you didn't want to have one single bread crumb that had yeast in it.

It gets your house clean. And what would happen on the eve of Passover is they play a little game. They hide a little crumb of leavened bread somewhere and send the children out to go look for it. And the children go look for the crumb and when a child finds it, he doesn't touch it, but he comes and he reports it to his father. And the father goes symbolically to remove it. But what he takes with him is a wooden spoon and a feather. And he goes down with the wooden spoon and he feather dusts that little leavened crumb onto the spoon and he takes it outside of the house and burns it. The child can't get rid of the sin.

The father feather dusts it, takes it outside of the house and burns it so it's all gone. No leaven. And all throughout the Old Testament, leaven is this picture of inward corruption. So in all the grain offerings in Leviticus 2 and all the other offerings that you would offer, any bread offerings, no leaven. And all throughout the Feast of Unleavened Bread, no yeasted cakes, no muffins, no sourdough bread, none of that.

Just drowed matzo because it's a symbol. And you get to the New Testament and the symbol of leaven continues. Jesus talks about the leaven of the Pharisees.

He's talking about their hypocrisy and how it works its way inside the soul. He talked about the leaven of the Sadducees who were so rationalistic, who had it all figured out. He said it's like a leaven that's in the soul. But even in the New Testament it talks about the leaven of Herod, King Herod, and those that would follow Herod, the Herodians.

And it was like a leaven because they were so enmeshed in the things of the world. Paul talks about leaven and he comes to the point in Galatians and he compares leaven to the legalism that he saw in the Judaizers and he said you get a little bit of law in your gospel and it spoils the whole thing. So no leaven except in the thank offering. For some reason in the thank offering that we read today in Leviticus 7, you'd have hardly noticed it. You're just reading all this tedious information about the offering. In the thank offering the worshiper is told to bring not only the animals that would be sacrificed but to bring unleavened bread and also to bring loaves of leavened bread.

Bring some rolls or something that's got some yeast in it. Why in the thank offering all of a sudden would this image of sin and corruption be on display when every worshiper would bring his thank offering and have some leavened bread along with the unleavened bread because of everything I've said today. Gratitude only grows in context. There's no such thing as being grateful for the gospel unless you realize how much you need the gospel. The leavened bread, the picture of sin and corruption, sins in me and I can't get it out and it's affected everything.

That's the picture of leaven. That is brought alongside of the unleavened bread. My unrighteousness is brought alongside of the righteousness of Jesus. My sin is the reason that I'm so grateful that this high priest is going to be able to take the unleavened bread and offer it unto the Lord. In other words, the picture of the thank offering is to remember how much I deserve God's displeasure, the leaven, and that's what makes me so thankful that he has found me through Christ pleasing in his sight. There was something fascinating in the attire of the priest. The high priest had this turban and across it there was a gold plate at the forehead that said holy unto the Lord.

Charles Spurgeon in his famous devotional wrote about this amazing symbol in reference to a text, we won't turn there, in Exodus chapter 28 that refers to the iniquity of the holy things which is a reference to even in the holiest of offerings that someone would bring there's still the taint of iniquity with it but it's given to the priest who's holy unto the Lord. What a veil Spurgeon's right is lifted up by these words and what a disclosure is made. Our work for the Lord is emulation, selfishness, carelessness, slackness, unbelief, what a massive defilement there is. Our private devotions, their laxity, coldness, neglect, sleepiness, vanity, what a mountain of dead earth is there. If we look more carefully we should find this iniquity to be far greater than it appears at first sight. Dr. Payson writing to his brother says my parish as well as my heart very much resembles the garden of the sluggard and what is worse I find that very many of my desires for the amelioration of both proceed either from pride or vanity or indolence. I look at the weeds which overspread my garden and breathe out an earnest wish that they were eradicated but why what prompts the wish it may be that I walk out and say to myself in what fine order is my garden kept this is pride or it may be that my neighbors may look over the wall and say how finally your garden flourishes this is vanity or I may wish for the destruction of the weeds because I'm weary of pulling them up this is indolence so that even our desires after holiness may be polluted by ill motives under the greenest sides worms hide themselves we need not look long to discover them how cheering is the thought that when the high priest bore the iniquity of the holy things he wore upon his brow the words holiness to the Lord and even so while Jesus bears our sin he presents before his father's face not our unholiness but his own holiness oh for grace to view our great high priest by the eye of faith in other words the thank offering was the one offering in which you acknowledge even if I brought my best sacrifice to you I have to admit it be tainted by my own unrighteousness and I remember that but I focus instead upon the righteousness and the right standing of the priest and I bring the unleavened bread and the high priest will take and represent this before the great judge and it is only because of this that I am spared and therefore I am thankful here's what Christian gratitude is I've got the leavened loaf yeah I know that I justly deserve God's displeasure I know that even at my best moments it's still tinged and tainted by the selfishness that worked its way into me before I was ever born into this broken world but praise be to God I got a great high priest who came and he is my offering he is my Passover lamb he is my sacrifice he is everything he's every one of Israel's offerings the only thing left for me to do is give him a sacrifice of praise there's nothing left so how do you become a grateful person do you sit around all day and just go well I'm a miserable old sinner I'm just stuck like this might as well keep sinning because I'm just such a miserable sinner no you just take your awareness of how much you've messed up and you just say okay there it is leavened all the way through but unleavened Jesus righteousness of Jesus I would have died but he came and died in my place and what he's done beloved is that he has made God favorable towards you when you should have experienced his dis-favor he has made God accept you perfectly when instead you should have been punished and so you don't have any sacrifice that makes any good before the Lord any good before the Lord all of them been satisfied in Jesus except this one thing keep on giving him thanks because if your life has been spared it's mandatory to give him praise and that's the gospel Alan Wright wow that is the response of the Christian right we're going to hear more from Alan in just a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a final word from our teaching today if only I could remember it all stay with us unlock the power of blessing your life discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing if you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement get Alan Wright's daily blessing it's free and just a click away at pastor alan.org 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 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 so Alan the natural response to the sacrifice of Jesus is thanks and it's ongoing things and would this be appropriate to say even when you go in your maybe the God moments of your life are being formed in this moment yeah something you're going to look back on later but you're going through it right now even in this moment is it appropriate to still be thankful when you're going through tough times absolutely in fact we may need the power of gratitude in the difficult times more than we do in the in the happy times yeah just remember it was like one of the letter I wrote to mom so many years ago that if I could have known everything she did for me when I was little that I don't even remember I would only be more grateful so how much more important is it that in our own spiritual journey that we stay consistently on the treasure hunt of our God moments so that we can see them highlight them bring them to mind often so that we could practice an attitude of gratitude and it changes everything in your life when you have ongoing thanksgiving today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries