Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. In the end, if you want to know how to praise God, then it's not based on any technique that you might learn. It is instead like everything else in the Christian life.
It is fueled by a vision of Jesus, by seeing Him, seeing who He is, seeing what He's done for you, and seeing the celebration that's in the heart of God. It'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. We're going to be today in 2 Samuel chapter 6. We're going to get a picture of David who is dancing before the ark and coming into Jerusalem. And this is, as we've seen all along, really a foreshadowing of the nature of who Jesus is.
And we're going to talk about praise today. I just wanted to put the clips up of those buzzer beaters because it seems like that this year, well, first place, I watched too much of the March Madness. The March Madness is what we call the NCAA month of playoffs and craziness. And it is crazy things happen, Cinderella stories, underdogs that defeat the storied basketball programs, and a seventh seed who has to have overtime just to make it through their first round can end up winning the whole thing. Amazing things can happen. Duke can lose in the very first round. I mean, unbelievable.
Sorry, granddaddy. But anyway, all kind of things have happened. But this year, it seemed like maybe, maybe there are always this many, but just seeing as there were a lot more of these buzzer beaters where just at the last second, somebody makes an unbelievably miraculous shot that you just, when you think that it's all over and there's no way that you could possibly, possibly win, just at that very moment, you just realize, I can't believe it just happened. And I've been watching this in the kind of amazement in this year, kind of studying what happens once one of these miraculous half court shots go in because I've been fascinated by the celebrations that take place afterwards. And I've noticed that several things happen as soon as the celebration happens. As soon as the buzzer beater goes in, the first thing that happens is that everybody loses all sense of normal decorum. You know, teams are supposed to go over there and line up and politely shake one another's hands. Good game, good game. You know, nice, you know, glad we won, glad you lost.
But you know, just be like that. But, but when the buzzer beater goes in, when there is one of those moments, everybody just loses all normal sense. I mean, they're just, and it's not because they're trying to snub the other team or gloat. They just can't help it. And so it starts normally, you know, when we're watching it and we get to hear the announcer, and the announcer starts going crazy. Oh my God, it went in, it's unbelievable, it's in there.
Oh my goodness, the snoozies of Podunk have defeated the Giants of Gath. How could this possibly have happened? They won the game, oh my goodness. I can't, and then the next thing that happens is that it's just all just, everybody just starts storming and just going, going crazy and, and nobody's even thinking about, about what anybody else is thinking about in that moment. In other words, point number one of this whole deal in introducing my lesson for you today is that isn't it possible that there's a celebration so great that you forget caring about what anybody else thinks about you? I'm just saying there could be a joy that could overtake your life that could be so great that it, it, you don't, you're not thinking, what are other people thinking right now because you've just gotten wrapped up into something that is transcendent and it is, it is so happy and it is so unlikely and it is so amazing that you become reckless.
Hallelujah. And that's just a basketball game I'm talking about. But the second thing that I've seen, and this goes far to say why we're all together today, but the second thing that I've noticed in studying these celebrations is that as soon as, as soon as the people start going berserk like this, what they immediately want to do is they want to touch somebody. And the, and the team mainly wants to go out and touch the hero that just made the game-winning shot.
And by touch, what I normally mean is they go and they jump on the poor guy. I worry about these people. I worry about them getting, you know, dislocated shoulders and, and stuff. But they go out and there's this, this pile on.
And I mean, and, and everybody that's allowed to goes out there and jumps into the fray. And I mean, the, the water boy's there, the towel girl is there, the assistant coach is there, the trainer's out there with his, you know, clipboard and stuff. And, and sometimes the coach just runs around just looking for somebody to hug. It's funniest of all to watch the coach because, you know, the coaches usually got on a suit and everything and they're supposed to be like this. But I mean they just, I mean they were getting ready to lose the game and all of a sudden they won it.
And even the coach is, is, is, is looking for somebody. Which goes far to prove a second point about this. And that is that when you've got something to be excited about, it's better together. That celebration, there's something in the design of who we are that we're not just designed to celebrate, we're designed to celebrate with other people who are excited about the same victory that we're excited about. This is why you can't do church by yourself at home. I, I, I'm incomplete.
If I can't be with you, if I can't find somebody to be excited about what Jesus has done, then I, I, I, you have to just go, go dig somebody up from the highways and the byways. Because, I mean, I'm just saying, imagine at the buzzer beater, your team just wins and everybody says, no hugging. You know, no touching.
No, no, you know. Listen, they, they, they'll let you, if they'll let you storm the court, you're out there on, on, on the court. The third thing I observed in the way these celebrations go, is that they kind of then, the shouting, you know, subsides a little bit and then they all just kind of circle around the hero and they're just kind of, you know, jumping and it sort of turns, especially this year, this has been a big thing, it sort of turns into a dance, doesn't it?
And the coolest thing of all, the best thing of all, there's been some press about this year, is if you could get a, a, a coach, you know, in the locker room or something on video and they all circle around and he's, he's doing a little dance in there and, and the, the players are just going wild with this. In other words, there is a, a sort of, of movement to, to want to exalt the person who was the hero, even though everybody knows it wasn't, you know, just this one thing, but you want to, you want to circle around him, you want to get him on your shoulders, you want to, there's something inside of you that when somebody's won something big, you just want to praise him. I think you see where I'm going, don't you? Second Samuel and it's chapter six. David's already had an, an attempt to bring in the ark and it met some real failure because they, they, they brought it in improperly. Uzzah touched the ark in violation of the, of the specifications of God and because of this, he died, he perished and David got kind of mad. They sent the ark over to the household of Obed-Edom where it was for about three months and David observed that everything that was going on in Obed-Edom's household was a blessing and so God was prospering. Just the presence of God's ark meant prosperity to that family and David said, alright, we'll take the ark back after all. And this is the account we get as we come to the end today of 14 or 15 weeks of talking about David so that we could see the Son of David.
I want to show you today David, the praise leader, so that we can show you Jesus, your praise team leader. This is 2 Samuel, it's chapter six, verse 12. It was told King David, the Lord has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and all that belongs to him because of the ark of God. So David went and brought up the ark of God from the household of Obed-Edom to the city of David with rejoicing and when those who bore the ark of the Lord had gone six steps, he sacrificed an ox and a fattened animal and David danced before the Lord with all his might and David was wearing a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting and the sound of the horn. And as the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal, the daughter of Saul, looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord and she despised him in her heart. And they brought in the ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it and David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord. And when David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord of hosts and distributed among all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins to each one. Then all the people departed each to his house and David returned to bless his household but Michal, the daughter of Saul, came out to meet David and said, how the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants, female servants, as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself. And David said to Michal, it was before the Lord who chose me above your father and above all his house to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord, and I will make Mary before the Lord. I will make myself more contemptible than this and I will be abased in your eyes. But by the female servants of whom you've spoken, by them I shall be held in honor.
And Michal, the daughter of Saul, had no child to the day of her death. 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 riding 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 forty 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. 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. Today's teaching now continues.
Here once again is Alan Wright. The story is fitting for us on Palm Sunday because Jesus rode in in what we call the triumphal entry. And as he was drawing near, according to Luke 19, 37, as he was drawing near already on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen saying, blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven and glory in the highest. And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, teacher, rebuke your disciples. And he answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out. The whole world is designed to celebrate the power and goodness of God. So we've seen David over all of these weeks.
And it's hard for me to leave him behind and move on. But what we've been watching is really a shadow, a picture of how it is that David on the landscape of history is giving us a portrait of who Jesus is, who he would be in fulfillment of David and thus called Son of David. We've seen David as the youthful shepherd that was anointed and to have the Holy Spirit rush upon him. We have seen David as the giant slayer who was heralded as a hero. We have seen David also as the one who is persecuted, who is on the run for his life and hides as if in exile in the caves of A'dalim and how there is giftedness in this ragtag assortment of men that gather around him. We've seen him at some very low valleys. We've watched how when he became coronated as king, at first it was only partial.
And he had to go into overtime. It was seven and a half more years before he would actually take the throne. We have seen all of this with David. He is shepherd, hero, and king. But I can think of no more fitting picture to leave you with of David than David, the praise team leader, the worshiper who loved God in such a way that despite all the mistakes that he made, to the very end David remained a worshiper.
Seventy-eight of the 150 Psalms are attributed to David and he probably wrote more than that. David is a man after God's own heart partly because he just loved to be with God in praise and in worship. And I want to show you today first just how counter-cultural that celebration was for David and how counter-cultural praise is for us. But then I want to just show you quickly the three ways in which David, like Jesus, is the celebration leader, the praise team leader, because in the end if you want to know how to praise God then it's not based on any technique that you might learn. It is instead like everything else in the Christian life it is fueled by a vision of Jesus, by seeing Him, seeing who He is, and seeing what He's done for you, and seeing the celebration that's in the heart of God. Well, praise is something that is utterly and completely counter-cultural for at least two reasons. It is counter-cultural in the first place because when you are praising the Lord you are, according to the natural mind it makes no sense because you take a break from doing things that might seem productive in order to celebrate something.
And the reason that this is scandalous and maybe part of the reason that Michal was looking down with disdain upon David is because the world, the sinful broken world has always been obsessed with productivity, has always been consumed with what it is that you can do by way of performance in order to produce something. But see the very nature of gratitude, the very nature of celebration flies in the face of that because what celebration does, what praise does, what thanksgiving does is it pauses simply to celebrate something that has been accomplished. And see the one who is just consumed with always wanting to produce more has no time to stop and celebrate. This is why in most shame-based homes there is very little celebration because it seems like there is no time to celebrate.
We haven't finished the work yet. We haven't accomplished enough yet to celebrate and so praise is scandalous because it celebrates instead of for those moments producing something. But what anyone who gets in on the giant secret of praise realizes is there is nothing more productive in your life or more fruitful than praising the Lord. This is why, this goes far to explain why Judas became so pridefully and disdainfully object to the fact that Mary, Lazarus' sister Mary poured out a year's worth of wages upon Jesus' feet.
You remember that story? Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead and first time Mary saw him she went back to her room and she got this expensive bottle of perfume that she was, probably her life savings and maybe should have been reserved for a wedding date or for, and she goes, and she doesn't just put a few drops on, she dumps the entire thing out on his feet and so $30,000 or whatever her year's wages would have been to just pour sours out into the mud at Jesus' feet. And what Judas says is why wasn't this perfume sold so that it could be given to the poor?
He wasn't actually interested in the poor, it was just his greedy heart. But what he was appealing to is our obsession with productivity that praise doesn't make sense. The reason that it doesn't make logical sense is that the miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead had already happened, right? So if Lazarus was still dead and Jesus said to Mary, if you'll pour out $30,000 of expensive perfume on my feet then I'll raise Lazarus from the dead, that would have been a good deal.
It would have been a solid bargain and it would have made sense to pour it out. But see that wouldn't have been a praise, that would have been a purchase. And so what Judas was objecting to was appealing to the wicked human heart that doesn't understand that we were designed for praise. We're not just designed to just produce, produce, produce, produce, we're designed to praise. And this is modeled in the fact that God created a rhythm at the beginning in which there was a Sabbath and the Sabbath became misused and abused and Jesus had to finally say the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. That this is an opportunity for you, like God, to look back and say this is good.
I haven't finished everything in my life but I want to celebrate this part. So praise is counter-cultural in that sense but it is also counter-cultural in this sense that it flies in the face of self-absorption. And the culture is constantly bombarding us with a message that you need to think about yourself all the time. You need to think about how you look, you need to think about what you have, you need to think about what you've accomplished.
You need to think about how long you're going to live, you need to think about your relationships, you think about what you're missing out on, think about the mistakes that you've made, think about the shame that you have to bear in your life, think about all that you need to do to make up all your mistakes to other people, on and on and on and on and on. It's just putting us always on our mind. And the thing that's so incredible and so important about praise that flies directly in the face of that is that when you really get caught up in a celebration, when you really see a hero, when you really see what Jesus has done, when you see the magnitude of this victory, what happens is that you suspend all thoughts of self and self-absorption is lost in the wonder of the celebration of something that is greater than you. And it's the best vacation you can ever get is just be off of your own mind for a little while.
You know, just a vacation from self-absorption. And so it is that it is just an incredible thing to be able to just lift up the name of Jesus without having this inward look that really is the definition of pride. And this is what is so important about this story about David. If you want to understand who Jesus is and you're seeing it in David, what you're seeing here is this unbelievable humility and childlikeness. This is the way Jesus was. I have a friend who passes a church down in Durham, and he had a parishioner, maybe he's still in the church, but this story came from years ago when he had a parishioner that every single week would come up to him and say, Pastor Ray, when are we going to sing a holy, holy, holy? Allen Wright.
And today's teaching on why we clap in church. 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, Allen 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 Allen 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 Allen 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 Allen Wright Ministries. 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, pastorallen.org. Back here in the studio to share Allen's parting good news, thought for the day, and why we clap in church. I suppose it depends on what church you go to, but there is great rejoicing. It's why we call it good news, right? That's why we call it good news because, and I think just coming off the heels of basketball season and watching fans go crazy when there's a buzzer beater and all of that, it just reminds us that the figure of David, who prefigures Jesus, he was this noble king and a warrior, but he was also the praise team leader.
He really was. He was the one who loved to celebrate in a very childlike way. And praise and celebration, it's really counter-cultural when you think of living a lifestyle of this because there's so much bad news around us. But if you think about what Jesus has done, then you're very much like seeing Jesus has won the game for you. And what do you do with that? You didn't win it. What do you do is you cheer. So whether you physically clap or not, it is to say that life with God is a life of celebrating what Jesus has done. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.
