The Return to Joy [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. You are the holy ones, and you are on the path of holiness.

So to say that the unclean shall not be there is to say there's only one pathway to this authentic restoration of joy, and it is through the full and beautiful and glorious and final sacrifice of Jesus wherein you are made right with God. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light.

Merry Christmas. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, Joy of Every Longing Heart, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program today, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource available right now, 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 today's special offer.

Contact us at PastorAlan.org, that's PastorAlan.org, or call 877-544-4860, 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. He's able to transform a wilderness. He can get beauty from ashes.

He can get beauty from ashes. He can take whatever wilderness you're walking through, and he can transform it. And we're going to walk through those wilderness times. Wilderness is the place in the imagery of the Old Testament where you feel vulnerable, you feel dry, you feel disconnected.

It is a place you can't fake it, you can't fix it, you can't finance it. You just feel like that you don't know where to turn or what to do, and nothing seems to work, and life seems fruitless, and you seem that everything, every turn you make all feels uncertain. A wilderness is a place like that, and God says, I'm going to make some flowers spring up in the middle of it.

And all of a sudden, when you're driest, you're going to start feeling a flow of water that's going to be refreshing. That's some promise. And this promise of great joy in Isaiah 35, I think it's important to note, does not deny the reality of our adversities. Verse three, strengthen the weak hands, make firm the feeble knees.

Verse four, say to those who have an anxious heart, be strong. So there are weak hands, there are feeble knees, there are anxious hearts. There are times in which we're weary. There are times in which we've lost our motivation. There are times in which we're disappointed. There are times in which we felt like we can't lift our hands up to do a single task.

There are times in which our knees feel like that they're knocking. There are times in which our hearts are anxious. God is not ignoring or denying or inviting us into some view of life that says that the promise means we'll never go through any troubles or face any negative emotions. That's not what this prophecy is about. Instead, what he says is I'll come to you in the midst of that. You're not going to be stuck in that.

It's not who you are. You're going to walk through some things. You can go through some wildernesses, and I can change a wilderness. And you're going to sometimes feel frail in the midst of it, and I can strengthen you. The promise of this prophecy also includes the transformation of you. Verse five and six, the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame man shall leap like a deer, the tongue and the mute sing for joy. Of course, when Jesus came, He did all these things literally and physically, but it's the imagery of our eyes being opened for every single one of us who have ever stumbled in the darkness. And then this great light, Jesus has come and opened up the eyes of our hearts to be able to see what we hadn't seen before. And you begin to see more like Jesus. You begin to see hope where you'd only seen discouragement before. And ears that were stopped up to the gospel and couldn't hear the good news and couldn't hear the direction for their life, begin to hear the voice of the Savior. And you began to be led, and you began to be filled with a sense of inspiration in the way in which that where you were lame and you couldn't find anything to leap about and lost all your energy, and Christ has come, and there's a way there's a renewal of that. What He's talking about here is a transformation both of the desert and of the one who travels the desert.

Wow. We're talking about the return to joy. And what then is prophesied is a new literal highway that will emerge. Verse eight, a highway shall be there and it shall be called the way of holiness.

The unclean shall not pass over it. So it's literally a higher path because that's what you need, right? You need a road that's higher than the crags and bogs and swamps below it. You want it elevated. You want it safer.

You want it quicker that way. So it's literally a high way. It's a higher way. And this pathway of holiness is for, the prophecy says, those that are the holy ones and the unclean shall not pass on it.

Well, what does this mean? Well, in the Old Testament, the language of clean and unclean is largely ceremonial language. So there's a whole bunch of ceremonial laws in the Old Testament. If you look through Leviticus, you'll discover some of these.

Now, some of these seem quite arbitrary, but some of them are just fantastic. In fact, for example, the Hebrew people were the only ancient people who had a practice of quarantining someone who had an infectious disease. Well, this is, most historians will say, it's part of the reason that the Hebrew people survived because nobody understood germs until somewhere away in the 19th century after Christ. But we're talking about 1500 years before Jesus. And if someone had an infectious, oozing wound on their skin, they were quarantined and were called ceremonially unclean, which meant you don't come into the presence of the people of God where you're interacting with people or into the place of God where you're at the temple in this public worship of God. So you're ceremonially unclean. And there are, for the various states of uncleanliness, there are temple rituals and sacrifices that are made. And some of it is giving time for a person to be healed. And some of it is because God gave, in the Old Testament, a temporary system of offering sacrifices so that the people could know and have assurance that at least temporarily their sin had been paid for as if the punishment for their sin was put upon an innocent animal or there were offerings that were made of gratitude to God. And God has said in His Word that He never really was pleased by this.

This wasn't His plan. But what He was doing is He was giving a shadow. He was giving a precursor of what He was going to do in the gospel. So every Passover lamb was pointing to the day that John the baptizer would look and see this Nazarene rabbi and say, behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. And the writer of Hebrews would say that one sacrifice of the Lamb of God of Jesus, that was what it was all pointing to.

Everything else was just a shadow. But through that process of those sacrifices, you were made ceremonially clean. So the clean people were the ones for whom the blood of the sacrifice had been applied.

That's what this is referencing. So who are the ones who walk on the holy path? They are the holy ones. And you know who that is?

That's you. Every single person in Christ has been once and forever cleansed by the blood of Jesus. And nothing, nothing of any stain of sin remains upon you. And not only that, not only does God not even see your sin anymore, but He also has credited you by the miracle of His grace. He has credited you. He looks upon you, believer, as if you had lived Jesus's perfectly meritorious life.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Seeing as Jesus Sees. It's the title of Pastor Alan Wright's newest book just released, and it's the giant secret of real transformation. Followers of Christ tend to focus on doing, so we've been told to ask, what would Jesus do? But even our noblest efforts to be more like Jesus ultimately fail for the same reason that pledging to keep the law never works.

There's no gospel power in our self-striving. But one of the most important things that we can do is to keep our self-striving. But what if the secret to personal transformation and victorious living isn't found in doing as much as in seeing?

Anyone who has ever had an aha moment or has suddenly discovered the truth of the situation knows that fresh vision changes everything. In his eye-opening new book, Alan Wright invites readers into a new simple spiritual practice, a little breath prayer that can be prayed throughout the day. Jesus, how do you see a prayer that the Savior loves to answer?

Because after all, Christ came to be the light of the world. Clear away confusion, win over the darkness, and open your heart to wonder and joy by getting your copy of the book right away. When you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's new beautiful hardcover book. And as an additional thank you for your support, you'll also receive a free six-week Seeing as Jesus Sees companion video series from Pastor Alan, along with a study guide and a daily reading plan. Let Jesus take you by the hand and show you a whole new perspective for your life.

As you learn how to ask Christ for his eyes, you'll start seeing as Jesus sees, and you're going to love the view. 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. This is why Paul, almost everywhere in addressing his readers, addresses it to the saints because saint means a holy one. You are the holy ones and you are on the path of holiness. So to say that the unclean shall not be there is to say there's only one pathway to this authentic restoration of joy and it is through the full and beautiful and glorious and final sacrifice of Jesus wherein you are made right with God. Again Alec Matier, the commentator who's written on this text, says the Lord never reduces His standards to match the weakness of His people.

He raises His people to the height of His standards. You've been made righteous. You've been made righteous. You've been made righteous.

So once you're on this pathway, once you have been secured in your relationship with God by simply accepting and believing on the name of Jesus and the free gift of His saving grace through His shed blood, then you're on a sure pathway. Verse 8, the second part of it, it shall belong to those who walk on this way. And I love this.

I love this line. I'd never seen this, notice this in the Bible till this week. Even if they are fools, they shall not go astray.

I love that. Here's the gospel, beloved. It is to say that when you come into the kingdom of God through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, you walk in and you've still got all your folly. And then you begin growing and you become wiser over the years, and you've still got some of your old sin habits, and you've got still some of the dumb ways that you still relate to people and the stuff that sabotage you and all that stuff, and you're growing through that. But what you can be assured of is that once you come onto the highway, on the path of holiness that is moving you into on the path of holiness that is moving you into the restoration of joy in your life, what you need to know that that path is secure, and no matter how much even your own folly, you're not going to fall off.

Wow. And as part of the assurance at verse 9, the normal foes that might usually defeat you aren't going to be there on this prophesied path to joy. Verse 9, no lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it. They shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. So we're in a spiritual battle, and we do face temptation, and we may in various ways have dark nights of the soul, and we will at times experience spiritual warfare in a pretty intense way. But there is a place in Christ, there is a place that you can know, there is a pathway you can know that is so assured of His forgiving cleansing work for you that you will have no weapon formed against you that will be able to prosper. There is a place there is a place that you can walk in, beloved, in which you are not immune from spiritual attack, but on this highway of holiness, nothing can thwart God's plan for your life or remove you from your destiny of joy, and you can know it more and more and more so that then the tempter's snares just don't work like maybe they once did.

The normal foes aren't there. The roaring lion that seeks to devour is not there up under the blood of Jesus with you. He's roaring from some craggy bottom place. So what all this means, beloved, as we lead up to the destination in this poetic prophecy is that you get to the end at verse 10 and realize our default position in this world, Christians, is joy. The ransom to the Lord shall return, the ransom to the Lord, that's you, shall return and come to Zion. That is Jerusalem.

More to say about that in just a moment. With singing, an everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. This is what you wear as your crown, everlasting joy, and you shall have gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. So your destiny as a Christian, your place, your life, your being, your brain, your soul, your thoughts, your default position is joy.

That's how He made you. And what happens is that we are a whole lot like that little baby in the video where we face really hard things, but in Christ we become more and more resilient, is the word that counselors and sociologists use. It is like if you took a rubber band and you stretch it, but then when the tense time is over, it returns back to where it was. That human health emotionally we're learning largely depends on our ability to be resilient, meaning that we have found a pathway back to joy. If you want to, in other words, measure how much you're growing, how much your soul is maturing, one of the ways you can do that is to ask yourself, how much quicker do I now return to joy than I once did? How quickly when the person pulls in front of you in traffic can you get back to joy? How quickly when my quarterback throws the ball into a sea of orange last night so they can run the other way with the ball, how quickly can I get back to joy?

And I'm not there yet. And how quickly when someone has rejected you can you get back to joy? How quickly when you failed at something can you quit feeling doomed and get back to joy? How soon after you have gotten the unsettling news that makes things so much more uncertain in the future can your soul get back to joy? That's resilience. And what we're learning about this is from every major negative emotion healthy people have some pathway in which they get back. And what Isaiah 35 is prophesying and promising you is that you've got a highway to joy. You've got a pathway and you can't fall off of it and nobody can take you off of it and a roaring lion can't devour you and pull you off of it.

You can always return to joy. That's the default position of the Christian life. The kingdom of God Paul says in Romans 14 consists, it's not a matter of eating and drinking, but it consists of righteousness and peace and joy. If you're going to be in this kingdom, the kingdom of God, it's righteousness through the blood of Jesus and joy and peace. That's the nature of the kingdom of God. If there's something that's not righteousness, joy and peace, you're not tasting the kingdom of God.

This is what the kingdom of God's like. Paul said the fruit of the Spirit. So when God is in you, this is what you get, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness.

It's through the Spirit. And there is a fullness to this joy that is altogether better and different and eternal. I think to say that everlasting joy will be on their heads is not just to say that you will one day in heaven have no more sorrows and have only the positive emotion of joy in your life. I think it is to say something of the quality of the joy, that it is eternal in its nature. Joy is God's thing. It's like love, and it comes from God. And there is no lack of it. There's no, there's a super abundance in God, because it's a super abundance in God. Because it's like, could God ever run out of love? Is there any limit to love?

No, there's not. Followers of Christ tend to focus on doing, so we've been told to ask, what would Jesus do? But even our noblest efforts to be more like Jesus ultimately fail for the same reason that pledging to keep the law never works.

There's no gospel power in ourselves striving. But what if the secret to personal transformation and victorious living isn't found in doing as much as in seeing? Anyone who has ever had an aha moment or has suddenly discovered the truth of a situation knows that fresh vision changes everything. In his eye-opening new book, Alan Wright invites readers into a new simple spiritual practice, a little breath prayer that can be prayed throughout the day. Jesus, how do you see this?

It's a prayer that the Savior loves to answer, because after all, Christ came to be the light of the world. Clear away confusion, win over the darkness, and open your heart to wonder and joy by getting your copy of the book right away. When you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's new beautiful hardcover book. And as an additional thank you for your support, you'll also receive a free six-week Seeing as Jesus Sees companion video series from Pastor Alan, along with a study guide and a daily reading plan. Let Jesus take you by the hand and show you a whole new perspective for your life.

As you learn how to ask Christ for his eyes, you'll start seeing as Jesus sees, and you're going to love the view. 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. Back here in the studio with Pastor Alan and our parting good news thought for the day. And of course, we say good theology is good psychology. And that's exactly the point of today's message. Well, I think, you know, what we're learning about from brain science is that the healthy brain, the healthy soul, we could say, is one that can return to joy. So we go through difficult things, Daniel.

Every single one of us does. But I think what we learn from Isaiah's prophecy and we learn from the gospel and the message of Christmas is that no matter what we go through, God has intended for us to have a resilience or a return to joy. And so if you're going through something difficult or sad now, that's not your default position. That's not your permanent posture. God's made you for joy. He's made you to be able to return. We're made to be resilient like a rubber band.

You pull it, it stretches, but in its tension, it returns back to its original state. And I just want to leave that Christmas thought that you're made for that kind of joy. And that's God's plan for your life. And may your joy be full. Thanks for listening today. 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.