Alan Wright, pastor, Bible teacher, and author of his latest book, The Power to Bless.
If there's something in your life you treasure, try to expand in your imagination that in an infinite proportion to how much God treasures you. 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, Belonging to God, 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 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 or call 877-544-4860.
877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.
Here is Alan Wright. What do you really treasure? You can know those things by what you would want more than anything else, and what you would protect, and make sure you don't lose. Your God's, which means you're not ordinary, you're different. And it means to be holy, you're treasured.
Will you think about that? He treasures you. He treasures you like the thing He wants the most, and what He wants to absolutely make sure under no circumstances does He lose, but cares for, watches over, and protects you. If there's something in your life you treasure, try to expand in your imagination that in an infinite proportion to how much God treasures you. It means also to belong to God in this way and be treasured by God. It therefore means you are exclusively God's, and this means therefore that you're not to be contaminated or shared. You don't belong partly to God and partly to some other God. You don't belong to God and to some other ideology. To say that you are holy means you belong to God, and therefore it means you belong totally to God. It means there's not partial ownership of your life by some other entity, deity, idol, personality, or ideology. You're God's.
And if you let that read, the more that becomes deep in your consciousness, I guarantee you the more you see yourself that way, the more you're going to live that way. I think I've told you this before, I'm so embarrassed that it happened, but it's true. It was one of the worst things I ever did as a kid.
It was one of the worst things I ever did. So I go to a sports camp every year with my best buddy Bob, and one of our campers that was with us at the sports camp was Richard Petty's son Kyle. And at the end of camp, Richard Petty pulls up to pick up his son from camp. Well, everybody knows Richard Petty's pulled up, and all the kids line up to get his autograph.
And he's ready for it. He's got these postcards out there with his picture of his car, number 43, and he signed an autograph for everybody. I got one, and my buddy Bob got one. I have no idea why I did this. I don't know what got into me. But the autograph didn't mean that much to me for some reason.
I don't know. I'm not into car racing. I didn't, you know. And Richard Petty's signature has got a lot of curly cues in it and stuff.
It's a really fluid thing. And when Bob wasn't in the room, I went over and got Bob's autograph of Richard Petty and took a pen and started extending the autograph with more curly cues and stuff. I can't believe I did that.
But I did. I thought it was like a joke. I thought, is Bob even going to notice? Oh, he noticed. And he started going berserk. He started tearing the room up.
Where's yours? He was mad at me. We saw each other some years ago, and he said, I'm sorry about how mad I got at you about that autograph incident. And I said, I'm so sorry I did that. But the point of this thing was, you can't have an autograph that then somebody else all curly cues on there because now it's no longer exclusively that person's signature.
Right? I ruined it by making it something other than the actual autograph of Richard Petty. I think that's what it means to be exclusively God's. It means this, that at some point, what happens is you start seeing your life totally differently. You start waking up in the morning, you're saying like, I belong to God. I'm His treasured possession.
I'm His. And what this does is it starts building within you this idea of, therefore, I'm not going to let anybody contaminate the imprint of God on my life. I'm not going to let somebody else come up here and try to add to God's signature on me. I'm not going to let somebody else come in here and try to tear up this wonderful thing that God has made of His own power and of His own choice and God is treasured. You're the signature of God in the world.
Don't let anybody else try to make you into something else. It's a precious thing to be His image in the world. You're His autograph. So to be holy means you belong to God. It means you're different. It means that you are treasured, treasured by Him. It means you are exclusively His.
And then it means this. And beloved, this is the part that's probably the trickiest of all to say in the modern era where too much of the modern era and the spirit of the age, the sensibilities, this can sound wrong or sound offensive, but it's clearly the teaching of the Scripture of what it means to be in Christ, in covenant with God. And that is because you're His, you enjoy the presence of God and indeed the favor of God and the watchful, sovereign care of God in a way that others do not. Now that's tricky because God loves everybody infinitely. If you're not a Christian, God loves you infinitely. It is not to say that God doesn't treasure every one of His creatures.
He does. But it is to say that there is something so powerful about coming into relationship with God through Jesus Christ that the Scriptures call you God's Holy One, a saint. And not everybody is a saint. Not everybody is a Holy One of God. What it means therefore is that when you are in covenant with God, just as He declared in Exodus 19, there are going to be special privileges, favor and benefits that are upon you that when you're in Christ that you are the recipient of the unmerited favor of God. There is something that happens that is distinct and palpable. God is everywhere so in that sense He is with everybody. And thank God for His grace that is common to all.
The rain falls on the just and the unjust. That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. It's called Good News for Parents, Raising Grace-Filled Kids in a Pressure-Filled World. The eight DVD video sessions are chock full of humor, deep gospel insight and loads of practical advice.
Use them for personal growth or with your spouse and they're also perfect for use in your small group. The DVD album comes with a detailed step-by-step study guide as well. When you make your gift this month, we'll send you the DVD album as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Make your gift today and start raising kids by the power of the gospel. 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 shows mercy every day. I'm convinced that there wouldn't be a human being on the earth that would breathe a breath without God's sovereign care. Scientists don't even understand what holds this cosmos together. And no one can explain how it got here in the first place. It's all by God's grace. So God has set love upon every one of His creatures. And yet when you are God's, when you belong to God, He is with you in a way that can only be described like a father to a child.
Like you have become His heir in this extraordinary thing. Years ago when our kids were little, we'd go to the beach and we would dig a big hole. I don't know how, it's one of those things like I don't even dig holes, you know, back home if I have to.
I'd hire somebody to dig a hole. But down at the beach, dig a big hole and fill it with water. And the kids, the little kids love to play in a big hole at the beach. I remember one year we dug this big hole down near the surf, it filled up with water. And meantime some other people in the family, they were down using these little nets and they're scooping up little minnows out of the surf. And they bring the little minnows up and they put them down into the hole. And so now we had our own minnows swimming around in this hole.
Which was just fine until the tide started going out and our holes started drying up. And for some reason, instead of just scooping them up in a bucket and delivering them back to the ocean, one of the kids suggested, why don't we try to build a canal from our hole all the way down to the ocean so that then the minnows can swim their way back to freedom. And we spent like the next two hours sweating and digging and sweating and digging and making a canal so that the minnows could swim down to the ocean for their freedom. And I thought, what is wrong with this picture? I said, I'm sitting the whole afternoon in the hot sun digging trenches to try to set free some minnows when there are 10 million minnows right out in the surf.
And think of this irony, I'm hopeful that night to eat a big seafood dinner. So anyway, what's the difference? The difference is that we had invested in those minnows. And the more we'd invested in those minnows, they were our minnows.
They were holy to us and therefore we're treating those minnows with an attention that is altogether different than every other minnow in the ocean. Did you know that God has numbered every hair on your head? Did you know that God is attentive to every detail in your life? Did you know that God is your Father and as such, He cares about every aspect of your life?
Have you ever as a parent ever been in those moments of anguish where you're concerned and troubled for the well-being of your child? Could you imagine what it is with the infinite love of the Father's heart towards you? To be holy unto God means that because you belong to God, you have become His heir. And as such, He is far too invested in your life, even by the death of His only begotten Son. He is so invested in your life that you could certainly say that He who began a good work in you will bring it to its completion. He will not let any of His children ever fall away from Him or be plucked from His hand. He is a God and God supreme and everyone who belongs to Him is safe with Him now and for all eternity so you don't have to worry and you don't have to fret.
Your Father is working on your behalf right now. It's a good thing to be holy. It's a wonderful thing to be holy.
Because if you're holy it means you belong to God, it means that you've been treasured by the Most High God. You're treasured by Him. It means that you are exclusively His.
He's not going to be satisfied and neither should we to let anybody else extend or modify, contaminate, or otherwise mix the signature, His autograph on our life. It means that you are the recipient of His favor in an extraordinary way. It means this also. He said, you shall be to me a kingdom of priests. You understand the priests were the only ones who had free access in the temple to meet with God, to minister the things of God, to come freely into His presence.
You understand that this is the privilege given uniquely to the priests. And what God was saying to Moses to tell the people is that I want a whole nation of priests. He's saying it's not my heart to just have a few holy men that are the ones that can come and minister. But here's what happened, if you're going to be a priest these things had to happen. You had to be born for the right family, of the lineage of Aaron, of the tribe of Levi. You had to be anointed properly, consecrated according to the liturgical laws, and you had to wear the right clothing. So only when all those things had taken place could you be a priest and come into the holy place of the temple. And only the high priest once a year could go into the Holy of Holies and to minister the sacrifice on behalf of the people of God at the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant. And what God was saying is if you would obey all of my commands, if you'll keep your side of the Covenant, it's not going to just be Aaron and his family. It's going to be every single one of you in this Covenant. It's a covenantal promise of God that you would be like priests unto Him. People that are able to relate to the things of earth and relate to the things of God equally. This is the heart of God.
But here's the problem. All of those covenantal promises of Exodus 19 were conditional upon the people being able to keep their side of the Covenant. Moses came and he shared all these things with the people and the people said, absolutely we're going to do everything you said. But honestly when Moses went up to the mountaintop to get all the law from God, when he was gone just a little bit longer than the people were comfortable with, they began to wonder well maybe Moses is not coming back, maybe God's not keeping His promises, and so they made a golden calf and they began to dance around the golden calf. They didn't totally reject God, they just wanted to cover their bases. You know why people make idols?
I'll tell you why. What were they doubting? They were doubting whether they were indeed the treasured possession of God. They were doubting whether they really were a kingdom of priests. They were doubting whether the promise of God was true unto their lives. Because if you don't doubt that you're God's treasured possession, if you don't doubt that you are His holy people, if you don't doubt that you're His priests in this world, if you believe with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, if you believe the promises of God about who He has made you, you don't make golden calves.
And what I'm saying is that victory over idolatry does not come by us telling ourselves over and over what miserable wretches we are, but it comes instead by us being reminded through the gospel of who we are in Jesus Christ. The people doubted it, the people couldn't keep the command. God wanted this people to be His treasured possession. He wanted this people to be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.
And they couldn't keep up their side of the covenant. There was not one single human being who was righteous, not one. Even the best of human beings, the best of them still sinned.
Abraham sinned, Moses sinned, all, David sinned, the best of his people sinned. And so God, in the mystery of His redemptive plan, sent a human into the earth who was a God-man. He was God Himself, but Jesus was 100% human.
So He could fully represent us as our new mediator. Jesus was our new Moses. He's able to be fully identified with humanity because He's human. He's able to be fully identified with God because He was God.
He was the perfect mediator. And through Jesus, God established a new covenant. And this covenant, the writer of Hebrews says, is far superior than the old because it is built on such better promises. And what are those better promises? The better promises are not that God has changed the substance of His desire for a holy people.
He's always one of that. But instead the means by which you would become a beneficiary of these covenantal promises has changed utterly. Instead of it being based now upon your obedience, it is based upon the obedience of Christ. He is the true human. He is the true man.
He is your representative. And what you couldn't do, He has done for you. So the new covenant is between a Father and a Son. And it was dependent and it is kept and it is eternally sure because of the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
It is sure for you because Jesus was at every point absolutely holy. He absolutely exclusively lived unto His Father. Never once, never once did He disobey His Father. Never once did He sin. And He went to the cross and died the death that we should have died.
He took the punishment that should have been our punishment so that anybody, anybody who would believe on His name, anybody who would call upon His name, anybody who believes in His heart that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who died for us, who's been raised for us and confesses that with His mouth. Anyone shall be saved. Anyone who is becomes a child of the covenant, born again. And now you're in a new covenant. And because you're in a new covenant, you now are the recipient of all the promises that were made through Moses and are affirmed through Peter.
When he says that now you are a royal priesthood, it means that through your faith in Jesus Christ, you have been declared a royal priesthood. It means that through your faith in Jesus Christ, you have been set apart as a holy people unto God. You are God's holy people in Christ.
And it's a wonderful thing to be holy because it means that every single day that you wake up in the morning, you can remember this. I belong to God. I am therefore God's treasure. I am exclusively His, the recipient of His unmerited favor. And I am His priest in the world.
And when that is your consciousness, you probably want to live a life that matches that. That's your answer to victory over sin. That is the answer to ongoing growth in Christ. It is wonderful news to say I am holy. And that's the gospel. Alan Wright.
In today's teaching, Belonging to God, it's a teaching from the series of the same name. And Alan is back here in a moment with us with additional insight on this for your life and a final word. I don't want to pressure my kids and I sure don't want to shame them. But I do want them to try hard and be all they can be. That's the desire of every well-meaning parent. For over a decade, Alan Wright has been teaching all over the nation about the toxic effects of shame and the amazing power of the gospel of grace to heal and set free. Now, for the first time, Alan has been joined by his wife Anne to produce a video series about shame-free parenting. It's called Good News for Parents, Raising Grace-Filled Kids in a Pressure-Filled World. The eight DVD video sessions are chock full of humor, deep gospel insight, and loads of practical advice.
Use them for personal growth or with your spouse, and they're also perfect for use in your small group. The DVD album comes with a detailed step-by-step study guide as well. When you make your gift this month, we'll send you the DVD album as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Make your gift today and start raising kids by the power of the gospel. 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. Alan, we belong to God, and yet there's something inside of us that sometimes makes us wander away and feel like we've got to perform more or get better and better every way, every day in order to really be secure in our relationship. Well, I think the excellent news for us, Daniel, is that we, writer of Hebrews, says we have been made holy. We're going to be seeing this over and over in this series that I think a lot of Christians think that holiness is a goal to aspire toward, but instead, for the Christian, holiness is a reality to adjust to. It means that you're going to get a lot further in your Christian growth and sense of victory and maturity. Instead of saying, I want to be holy one day, I'm going to try hard to do so, you're better off to say what the writer of Hebrews says, I have been made holy. And then the more you believe it, the more the rest of your life is going to conform to it.
