Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Anyone who is in Christ is not only a new creation, but you have become a royal priesthood.
Your priest, I tell you, and I tell you why, because you got all the qualifications. When you accept Jesus, you're born into the Wright family. 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 Son of David, as presented at Rinaldin 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 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.
That's pastoralan.org, or call 877-544-4860. Now, more on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.
Here is Alan Wright. There's several big surprises about this. Number one is surprising that David lies, and God doesn't say anything about it, and Jesus brings up a story in which David lied.
What is up with that? And the second thing is surprise is that David is willing for him and his men to eat this forbidden bread. They're going to just wolf it down, no problem.
What about all the laws of Israel? He's just going to partake of this. And the third big surprise is that the priest gives it to him. Why would a priest do that?
His job was to guard the priesthood and guard the tabernacle. But what he does is this is David. There's something about this moment where David and who he is supersedes the law. There's something going on here that is prefiguring that it is possible that there could be a man who is somehow a higher righteousness. Now, this is just a shocking story. And again, as I said, it's a great foil in Saul who when he acts like a priest gets roundly rebuked and ultimately the kingdom gets stripped from him.
But there's something about David's heart, and there's something about this that God loved and Jesus loved and Jesus quoted. What's going on? Well, some people would say this is what you call situational ethics, that this is a situation where the situation demanded an alteration of the rules. Now, there is in life, ethics change according to a situation oftentimes.
They just do. So there is such a thing as a minimum speed limit, right? On the interstate, you're not supposed to go below, is it 40 miles an hour?
None of you know what it even is. How many people ever had a ticket for that? But there is a minimum speed limit.
Never heard of such a thing. There is a minimum speed limit. I think it's 40 or such like that. You can't go less than a certain because it's dangerous on the interstate highway when other people are going 65 and you're going 40, that's 35.
That's dangerous. So there's a minimum speed limit. But come on, if you're going down the road 65 miles an hour and a person walks across the interstate, you see him down the road, are you going to say, well, the minimum speed limit's 40, so I cannot go. I'm going to go 41. I hope he gets out of the way.
Of course not. You're going to slow down to 20 miles an hour, whatever you need to, because the situation says the right thing to do in this particular case is to go below. It's more important to break the law of the minimum speed limit.
It is more important to save this person's life than it is to keep a little law like that. And this is just true of a lot of things in life. And there is part of this that's going on. David and his men are starving.
They're on the run from Saul. He's anointed to be the new king of Israel. You could make a case for it and say, listen, come on, man, give me the bread because the tabernacle exists for the meeting of God and men and for the well-being of the people.
And so I make a case before you that this all exists for the benefit of the people, and I need this right now. And you could say that maybe that's what's going on here. But it's not what's going on here because that's not the way Jesus talks about it, is it? I look back over in Matthew and see, again, how is it that Jesus addresses this story? He doesn't say, well, David's men were hungry, and so the situation dictated that in this one case it was OK for them to eat the bread of the presence. He doesn't say that.
He says something way more radical, doesn't he? He says in the first place, he said, have you not understood that though it was only for the priest that David did that which was not lawful for him? And then he moves on to verse five and says, have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profaned the Sabbath and are guiltless? He now ramps up the whole picture. Now he doesn't just say, have you not noticed that David did what was unlawful and only a priest was supposed to do?
But he's saying, but it was OK. He said, but I want to point out something even more than that. The priests who nobody's supposed to work on the Sabbath, right? The priests work on the Sabbath, right? The priests work. They bake bread.
They're not supposed to bake stuff on the Sabbath, but they have to bake bread and put it on the, and they minister on the Sabbath. He's saying they do what is considered profane, and so they should be guilty, but they are declared guiltless. He's referring to here, if you're a priest, then you're free. And then he ramps it up further from there. He says something even more radical.
You can just see it building to a crescendo here. I tell you something greater than the temple is here. Now he's applying it all to himself. Now he's not just talking about the bread of the presence. Now he's not just talking about the priests and what they do. Now he's talking about the whole tabernacle. And he's saying there's something greater than the whole temple that's here. This is the same Jesus who you remember earlier in his ministry had said, destroy this temple and I'll raise it back up in three days because he was speaking of his own body. And he says, there's something greater than the temple that is here.
And then he goes even further than that. And he said, if you had known what this means, and he quotes Hosea six, verse six, that I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless. And now here comes this crescendo for the son of man is the Lord of the Sabbath. See everybody understood that the Messiah was a son of David.
He would come from the lineage of David. And now Jesus has identified himself fully with David. And he's saying, if David was guiltless when he ate the bread, how much more so would the Messiah be guiltless when he and his disciples eat or work on the Sabbath, because there is something that has come that is altogether new.
Do you see what Jesus is saying here is absolutely unbelievably radical. What he is saying is not just the shadow of the, of the, of the, of the bread of the presence, the showbread that always pointed to some greater reality. And he's saying, I am it. I am the bread of the presence. He says elsewhere, I am the bread of life, but he's not just saying I'm the bread, but he's saying I am the entryway into the tabernacle.
I am the narrow gate. I am the way I am the courtyard. I am the lamb upon the altar.
I am the bronze labor that washes you. I am the bread of the presence. I am the veil that has been rent asunder that opens up the way to the Holy of Holies. I am the Holy of Holies. I am the Ark of the Covenant. I am the law fulfilled.
I am the Holy of Holies. The intimate presence of God is now tabernacling in your midst. And it says the word became flesh. It means the word tabernacled in our midst.
He pitched his tent in our midst. Jesus is saying, I am the fulfillment of all of that for the son of David is here. If it was okay for David, then I want you to see something even richer and deeper and more powerful. The son of David is here. And what you saw in a little picture of a surprising story in the narrative of David has now come to pass that the son of David, the son of man is Lord over the Sabbath. And if you had understood what Hosea prophesied, then all this would make sense to you. The Lord has never ever intended for the way of intimacy with him to be a system of sacrifice. That was only a shadow that was pointing to the day that these supreme sacrifice would come behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
It was all just a shadowy prefiguring of who Jesus is and what he do for us. If only you understood this. I desire mercy, the ESV says, but the word, what's my favorite word in the Old Testament?
Chesed. This is the love that Jonathan and David had for one another. It is steadfast love. It is covenantal love. And God says through Hosea eight centuries before Jesus, I desire Chesed, not sacrifice. If you had understood what this meant, then you'd understand that the son of man is the Lord of the Sabbath. You got to understand this though. In other words, he's saying you got to understand grace. You got to understand amazing grace, sweet grace, the new covenant to which everything in the old pointed to has now come to pass and all the promises to find their yes and amen in Jesus Christ.
That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Got some giants to slay? Need some encouragement in the midst of a trial?
Wondering if God really cares? Meet David. Who can compare to him? He was the ruddy, handsome, youth tending sheep, writing psalms and worshiping God in the humble Bethlehem fields. He was the lone Israelite, brave enough to decapitate Goliath, and the sole warrior, adept enough to cut off the scourge of the Philistines.
He was the stately king who established peace, expanded the borders, and reigned in prosperity for 40 years. Who else could be a gentle shepherd, a glorious hero, and a noble king? Would there ever be another leader like David? Yes, the son of David. His name is Jesus, and he is a better David than David could ever be. He came to be your shepherd, your hero, and your king. In a 12-message audio series, Alan Wright takes you on a thrilling adventure with David in order to point you to the answer for your every need, the son of David.
Discover how Christ enables you to face your biggest obstacles, deal with your fiercest persecution, and live as an heir of grace. It's an audio series from Alan Wright. As our thanks for your donation, we'll be delighted to send you Pastor Alan's audio messages in either a digital download or a CD album format.
Son of David, shepherd, hero, king. 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. I think I have told you the story about Anne's uncle Stanley. We always tell stories about Stanley because his life was interesting. He was a Presbyterian pastor and he did lots of interesting things in his life and we loved him.
He was a spiritual father to me and he's in heaven now. But one of the great stories of Stanley's life is when his little boy, he and a buddy of his, just got really desirous of some apples from the apple tree in the neighbor's yard. And I can't remember her name, we'll call her Miss Johnson. And so he and his buddy, they snuck over into Miss Johnson's yard to steal some apples and they got these little handfuls of these little sour apples, you know, and they're gonna sneak out of the yard. All of a sudden, here comes a voice, Miss Johnson.
Boys, I see you back there. You imagine two little boys with apples caught red handed and they're just, they drop the apples. She said, you come here right this instant. And they come, their tails tucked between their legs and she sits them down at the kitchen table and she steps in the other room and they just know what she's gonna do.
She's gonna call their daddy. And Mr. Bennett was the chief of police in York, South Carolina. He was a force to be reckoned with and you didn't want Miss Johnson calling your daddy about you stealing apples.
And so they sat there waiting for their punishment. And then she came back in with a bowl full of these beautiful big red apples. And she said, I just got these beautiful apples at the store. These store-bought apples are so much better than those old wormy sour things I've got in the backyard. She said, here, don't eat those sour things. Have some of these.
They're delicious. Can you imagine those boys just sitting there like, what's the trick? You know how you feel? Like, no way. You know, somebody's gonna jump out from behind the corner and just get me for a double fine, you know, a punishment.
And she said, no, go ahead. Try them. They're really good.
Can you imagine when they finally go. And Stanley said it was there with that sweet apple juice running down his cheek. It was there he learned what grace is. Because grace is not just that gift that forgives you for your wrongdoing, though that it is.
But grace is also the gift that empowers you to change your whole way of living. Case in point, Stanley and his friend never stole apples again from Mrs. Johnson. They didn't need to because she said, anytime you got a hankering for an apple, come over here. I've got some good apples in here and I love just being around you boys anyway.
Who would want to steal a sour wormy apple when you had Mrs. Johnson's beautiful ripe red apples? See, there is a process that God has in mind for our transformation that is not the law and the fear of punishment. There is something much higher than that. And this is what Jesus was talking about. This is what Hosea prophesied. And this is what the story of David and the holy bread is all about. Jesus was saying essentially to those Pharisees that day as his disciples were rubbing the grain and taking a bite of it on Sabbath day. He's saying it's not just that I'm Lord of Sabbath, meaning that I can tell them what is okay to do and they can do whatever. He's saying I'm giving you a whole new system.
I'm replacing the whole system. The whole tabernacle system was a gift from God, but it was temporary and it was just pointing to the true temple that would come and I am that temple. I'm everything. And what has happened is a complete change of the way in which you interact with God. You see, what happens in humanity is we know that we've done things wrong and so we tend to feel like there's something we must do to make amends. And so all religions and all cultures over all history except for the Christian gospel in one way or another have been about trying to balance the scales of justice. We've done things wrong and we're sinners and therefore we make sacrifices to God. And we can balance it back out by making our sacrifices to God.
And your sacrifice might be in many different expressions, whatever your particular religious expression tells you that you must do in order to make it up and sacrifice. And so we think that we can have a balance like this. But you know the problem with it, beloved, is you can't balance that. You can't balance that. You know why?
Because when you do something wrong to a Christian you can't take it back. Can you? No, you can't take it back.
Anybody's ever been married for more than about three days knows this. I mean, you say something unkind, you do something insensitive, and you know, you're like, okay, I'll wash the dishes for the week. I'll live in the dog house for a week, you know, and then I'll kind of make up for this. I'm gonna do 10 really nice things to try to make up for it. But you know, in the truth, you can't stuff your words back down into your throat.
They don't fall empty to the ground. It's already taken place. So there is no way that you can balance it back out by any more good deeds that you do on your own, is there? There's no way.
No. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't do things in life to try to show people that we really mean it, that we're really sorry. But I'm just saying there's only one way in which the whole thing can ever be restored, right? Forgiveness.
That's the only way. You can't make it up. How much more so with us in God. God is perfect and sinless. He loved us and made us in his own image and we rebelled against him. And there's no scale here that we could ever make up. We don't have a dear enough price to pay.
We don't have a means. This is why Jesus came. Jesus came so that justice could be done. So anybody who accepts Jesus Christ, you come into a new covenant. You come into a covenant of grace and it's just not based on a system of sacrifice anymore.
It's just not a factor. Whether you do things right, whether you go to church, whether you balance out things by doing good righteous things, all this is just the wrong system. See what St. Jesus is saying? That's just a wrong system. It doesn't work. It's just a wrong system.
See what St. Jesus is saying? That's just a wrong system. It doesn't work. You're on the Mrs. Johnson's new apples changes you system. You're on new system. You're not on, come here boys, you've done wrong and I'm gonna call your daddy and he's gonna spank you.
You're not under that system anymore. You're gonna be changed. You're gonna be changed.
You're gonna grow up. You've got an incredible destiny but it is gonna come to pass in your life not because you make sacrifices but because of the chesed of God. I desire chesed, steadfast covenantal love has always been my design.
It has always been my longing. I am not delighted in petty religious sacrifices says the Lord. And this is what Jesus says and that's why he picked out the story of David when he ate the bread that only the priests are supposed to eat. Because what the Bible says is that anyone who is in Christ is not only a new creation but you have become a royal priesthood.
You're priests I tell you and I can tell you why because you got all the qualifications. When you accept Jesus you're born into the right family. You're born into the family of God. Yes because in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God and he came into his own but his own received him not but to whoever did receive him he gave the right to become a child of God.
A child born not of natural descent or human decision or a husband's will but born of God. Nicodemus you must be born again if you're ever going to see the kingdom of heaven. You have been born into this kingdom. You didn't earn your way in.
You didn't get there by being religious. You don't get into this family of God. You don't of priests by any other means except being born by the spirit of God and you have been washed. The blood of Jesus washes us because he has paid the whole price and it would be unjust for God to make two people pay for the same crime. Jesus already has taken your penalty and therefore though your sins be as scarlet they have been washed as white as snow. He doesn't even remember your sins they've been thrown into a sea of forgetfulness.
You are clean. Don't let the devil tell you otherwise you'll disqualify yourself if you think you're still stained and dirty. If you think you got to come to the communion table and make sure you list all your sins and get yourself right with God and get yourself cleaned up before you can take the holy bread then you'll miss its benefits because it's not based upon what you've done. You have been made clean by the washing of the blood of the Lord Jesus and you have been clothed. You have been clothed in fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy that we would wear the garments of salvation and be adorned with the robe of righteousness.
Paul said to the Corinthians that he who knew no sin became our sin so that those that were sinful would become the righteousness of God. You are wearing in the spirit the robes of the priest and you beloved have been anointed. Every single person in Jesus Christ receives the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The oil of the Holy Spirit's been poured out onto your life. I'm telling you you are in Christ Jesus a royal priesthood and so come boldly up to the throne room of grace and have your fill because the holy bread of the presence it might be reserved for the priest but you beloved are the priest so you might as well take and eat and that's the gospel. Helen Wright and today's teaching on you're the priest so go ahead eat the holy bread. Got some giants to slay need some encouragement in the midst of a trial wondering if God really cares meet David who can compare to him he was the ruddy handsome youth tending sheep writing psalms and worshiping God in the humble Bethlehem fields he was the lone Israelite brave enough to decapitate Goliath and the sole warrior adept enough to cut off the scourge of the Philistines he was the stately king who established peace expanded the borders and reigned in prosperity for 40 years who else could be a gentle shepherd a glorious hero and a noble king would there ever be another leader like David yes the son of David his name is Jesus and he is a better David than David could ever be he came to be your shepherd your hero and your king in a 12 message audio series Alan Wright takes you on a thrilling adventure with David in order to point you to the answer for your every need the son of David discover how Christ enables you to face your biggest obstacles deal with your fiercest persecution and live as an heir of grace it's an audio series from Alan Wright as our thanks for your donation we'll be delighted to send you pastor Alan's audio messages in either a digital download or a cd album format son of David shepherd hero king 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 pastor alan.org this comes back to finding our true identity in Christ right the the imputation of Christ's righteousness has has given us that status has given us this freedom really as we talk about so much Daniel the identity that is ours in Christ has been transformed into that of a royal priesthood and it means that the invitation today for anyone who is hungry is to come it's pictured in communion but it is spiritually about the communion you have with God without Christ we can't even approach God and his holiness but because of Christ we can come close to him today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries
