Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Allen Wright. Angels stoop to long to look into such a mystery. We're fascinated with angels, but they're fascinated with us because there's some things they can't understand.
No angel can really understand what it's like to have felt dirty and then be made clean. 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 our Christmas series as presented at Rinaldo 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.
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That's pastorallen.org or call 877-544-4860, 877-544-4860. More on this later in today's program. But now let's get started with the teaching for today. Here is Allen Wright. On the outside, just wanting to see something.
I just, could I go in and get a glimpse of one gingerbread house. The angels are, this word means it's like they're on the outside of something that's magnificent and they are stooping in a sense, trying to look from heaven to earth to see what God has done. They're amazed. And what's astounding about this is that you would have to admit the angels are not easily impressed because they do not cease to look upon the very face of God. What could be so wonderful that the ones who see the face of God for eternity want to get a look at you?
They are not overawed with people in general. They've done God's bidding. In one Old Testament account, an angel slayed 185,000 Assyrians.
They weren't very impressed with Herod, wicked king. In Acts chapter 12, an angel struck him down and not so much that they were just fascinated with people. They'd seen the wickedness of the world, but this thing that happened at Christmas, it's like, I just had this vision. It's like, okay, some angel gets the opportunity to tell the shepherds, I bring you good news of great joy, which will be for all people, for unto you this day in the city of David is born as Savior is Christ the Lord. Some angel gets the privilege of doing that, but it's almost like this picture is what I kept seeing all week long. It's like the whole rest of myriads and myriads, maybe billions of angels that are wanting to just be part of it because they're so overjoyed and they just like, can we just get a peek? Can we, can we just make a small appearance? So he says, all right, and he pulls the curtains back and the angels and the whole heavenly host just begins crying out, glory to God and peace on earth. Look at this. He has found a way to bring peace on earth because they've been watching for the centuries and centuries where there was no peace and that people were distant from God and rebelled from God and they saw the mystery unveiled in a baby in a manger.
Wow. Something that angels don't know. In a sense, you could say they knew and understood Christ, the son of God, but what they were looking to see was Christmas. I don't think they, I don't think they could have wrapped their minds around that. They, they'd heard the prophecies just like the people of Israel had heard the prophecies. They, they, they knew the virgin will conceive. They knew the Messiah was coming, but when they saw this, I think in the first place, they saw something deeper about God, the son.
What was it like to see it for the first time? They'd seen the triune God. They knew God was one, but he's mysteriously father, son and Holy Spirit. But now they see the son in human flesh. The angels knew that we are in God's hands, but they were stooping to see God resting in human hands. The angels knew that God nourished us.
In fact, they had been ambassadors of such provision many times, but here was God about to be nourished by a Nazarene peasant girl. The angels knew that God wanted to make his creatures clean, but here was a Messiah being bathed by a carpenter's wife. The angels knew that God was brilliant light, a consuming fire, but here was Joseph building a fire to keep the son of God warm. The angels knew that Jesus was the eternal word, but here was an infant God who wasn't yet able to speak. The angels knew that God never slumbered or slept, but here they stooped to look at God's closed eyes and listen to the infant nostrils breathe. The angels knew that God required trust from his creatures, but here is the Christ forced to trust a teenage girl to keep them alive. The angels knew that God had dispatched them many times to lift up a Saint's head, but now they watched this baby who couldn't hold up his head without the help of a human hand, and they're stooping from heaven to see it.
Max Lucado in his beautiful early book, God Came Near said this, to think of Jesus in such a light is, well, it almost seems irreverent, doesn't it? It's not something we like to do. It's uncomfortable. It's much easier to keep the humanity out of the incarnation, clean the manure from around the manger, wipe the sweat out of his eyes, pretend he never snored or blew his nose or hit his thumb with a hammer.
It's easier to stomach that way. There's something about keeping him divine that keeps them distant, packaged, predictable, but don't do it. For heaven's sake, don't. Let him be as human as he intended to be. Let him into the mire and muck of our world, for only if we let him in, can he pull us out. So they were stooping to see something new about the son of God. And they were stooping, bending, longing to see something new and deeper about God the father. They understood God's glory, but they had not understood the way to peace, plan of redemption.
They knew the holiness of God and they knew that his love is from everlasting to everlasting. But now they're seeing something in love they hadn't seen before. You know, it's possible to know someone's love and then experience that love in a deeper way. Have you ever had that happen? It's like you knew that this person loved you and then something happened and you realize, I didn't know they loved me that much. Or maybe you've had that feeling and it's like, I love, and then I find myself loving even more. Maybe it had been through a time of adversity in your life or grief.
I have people say this to me all the time. They say there were so many expressions of sympathy, so many expressions of kindness. I never knew I was so loved. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series in a world that often feels overwhelming. We all seek moments of encouragement and hope as a heartfelt thank you for your partnership with Alan Wright Ministries. When you give today, we're excited to send you our blessing box featuring twenty four beautifully crafted cards filled with encouraging blessings from Pastor Alan. Each card offers daily inspiration and scripture on themes such as hope, strength, your identity in Christ, Thanksgiving and much more. This unique resource can be yours. Make your gift to the ministry today and get your blessing box.
These blessings are designed to uplift your spirit, providing encouragement whenever you need a boost. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from 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. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. Call us at 877-544-4860.
That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, Pastor Alan dot org. Today's teaching now continues.
Here once again is Alan Wright. So it's possible that the angels could know that God's love is from everlasting to everlasting, that it's a perfect love. And yet until you see his love in action through the mercy that is expressed through the gift of the Son of God for the sake of humanity, until you see the reality of what Paul said in Philippians about Christ, who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself and took on the form of a servant, until you see the measures that God took in order to redeem humanity, until you've seen that you haven't seen the love of God in its fullness. And I think the angels are stooping because they're seeing something happen in the Son of God, but they're also seeing something about the love of the Father.
And they're saying to one another, Oh, how he loves. What manner of love is this that he should lay his life down for these creatures? What love is in the Father? I suppose we just spend all eternity looking deeper into the love of God. I don't think you're going to get to heaven and suddenly get a glimpse of the Father and go, okay, now I've seen it all. No, I think you spend eternity coming to know the love of your Father in heaven.
That's what maturing is all about. It's about you discovering depths of love and grace that you previously had been blinded to and you weren't mature enough to see and that you hadn't grown up enough to understand it. It's what Paul wants for us. Ephesians three, for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven on earth is named that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit and your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you being rooted and grounded in love, listen to this, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God that you would know what you can't know and you will never know fully and the angels are seeing something in the Father. But mostly thirdly, I think the angels long to look into the mystery of redemptive grace that's at work in you and me. They had a foreshadowing of it because on that golden cover to the Ark of the Covenant, which was in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle visited once a year by the high priest who would sprinkle on that mercy seat, that golden lid would sprinkle the blood of the innocent animal that was the atoning sacrifice for the people of God that would temporarily cover their sin in this coming year. And then on that, on that mercy seat, on that golden lid of the Ark of the Covenant, all the angels knew that for whatever reason, God had instructed the design of it, that there would be cherubim, one on each side with wings outstretched that are looking down on the mercy seat. That's what makes sense of the Psalmist who says, we find refuge in the shelter of your wings.
Our refuge is in the place where the blood has been spilt on our behalf. And those angels had had centuries to think about the meaning of the cherubim overseeing that blood encrusted mercy seat that Paul after the birth of the church calls the throne of grace. They understood that that place where the blood was put, that place between the cherubim's wings, that was the inhabitation of the most high God, his manifest presence.
And what happened when the church of Jesus Christ was born? The blood of the one and only, the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, the blood of the son of the father, the blood of the baby that was born in Bethlehem and grew and ministered and taught and loved perfectly, but was crucified by the hate of the world. That blood, suddenly the angels were aware, was sprinkled, the writer of Hebrews says, as if in the invisible sanctuary of the heavens, once and for all. So that there is one great high priest and one lamb who takes away the sin of the world. And they began to see into the mystery of the gospel that he, Jesus who knew no sin became our sin, just like they had seen rehearsed thousands of times upon that mercy seat and the Holy of Holies. And now they saw it in its finality and its fullness. They would peer down and see this Messiah one day say, it is finished. And so they are watching it unfold the plan of the redemption of the people of God. This is no cherubim on a golden lid of an ark of a covenant.
This is the hole of heaven spilling over with joy and fascination at the plan of God to save the world through his own sacrifice. Angels stoop to long to look into such a mystery. So what it means beloved is that we're fascinated with angels, but they're fascinated with us because there's some things they can't understand. No angel can really understand what it's like to have felt dirty and then be made clean. You know, to have been a sinner and then be forgiven and had the slate wiped clean. They don't know what it's like to have had a debt and had it paid. They don't know what it's like to have been ashamed and then through Christ be honored and called sons and daughters of the most high. They don't know what it's like to have been lost and been found.
That's a particular joy. They don't know what it's like to have been sick and to have been healed. They don't know what it's like to have been exiled and then be restored. They don't know what it's like to have not known God and then come to know him. They don't know what it's like to have been banished from the presence of God, but then not only be allowed back into his presence, but listen to this, to become the holy habitation of God by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in every believer. They're longing to see how the Holy Spirit dwells inside of you. They're majestic creatures. They are mighty warriors, but they are not the habitation of God's presence on earth.
You are. They don't know what it's like to have been utterly disconnected from one another and then by the spirit united as one in the church. Paul says in Ephesians chapter three, verse 10, that it was in the church that God is revealing his manifold wisdom to the principalities and authorities. Angels and archangels are looking at the church to see the multifaceted, the word literally means multicolored, like what happens through a prism, his multicolored wisdom that is unveiled in the church where people who are so different become one body through one spirit.
They're fascinated by that. Well, the angels can revel in God's glory, but they can't revel in God's grace like we. They can sing holy, holy, holy, but they cannot sing amazing grace.
How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Beloved, we're fascinated by the angels, but probably they were more fascinated with you and that's the gospel. Alan Wright, our good news message, higher power, what angels long to see.
Hey, please stay with us. Pastor Alan is back joining me in the studio, sharing his parting good news thought for the day. In just a moment in a world that often feels overwhelming. We all seek moments of encouragement and hope as a heartfelt thank you for your partnership with Alan Wright Ministries. When you give today, we're excited to send you our blessing box featuring 24 beautifully crafted cards filled with encouraging blessings from Pastor Alan. Each card offers daily inspiration and scripture on themes such as hope, strength, your identity in Christ, Thanksgiving and much more. This unique resource can be yours. Make your gift to the ministry today and get your blessing box.
These blessings are designed to uplift your spirit, providing encouragement whenever you need a boost. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from 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. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product.
Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Back here in the studio to share Pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day and this message, what angels long to see. A great part of our Christmas celebration, we sing about angels, we decorate with angels and I love what you said earlier, Pastor Alan. These were not wimpy little creatures.
These were strong and sometimes terrifying if you ran into one. But there was something that I love there and the way you concluded that message, something that even they were confounded with and mesmerized by. Well, we've sinned and we've been redeemed. Angels have never sinned, so they don't know redemption's song.
It doesn't make sense to them. But to be redeemed and not only forgiven, but brought into a place of being co-heirs with Christ himself. I think, Daniel, there's just more that's been given us than we really walk in and realize as Christians day by day. And it's just a good thought this Christmas.
If the angels stoop to get a good glimpse of you, how great is this gospel and how thankful are we for God? As we're looking towards the end of the year, just a gentle reminder here before life gets too incredibly busy with holidays. As a listener funded organization, Alan Wright Ministries exists to proclaim the good news of the gospel, and we could not do it without your help. End of the year giving is very important.
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