Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. If you're going to really have praise in your life, it's not just a recognition that a victory has been won.
It's a recognition that the victory has been won for 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 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. 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's very little celebration because it seems like there's 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. And she goes, and she doesn't just put a few drops on it.
She dumps the entire thing out on his feet. And so $30,000 or whatever her year's wages would have been to, just pours 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 is 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 are 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 countercultural in that sense, but it is also countercultural 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 gonna live. You need to think about your relationships. You need to think about what you're missing out on. Think about the mistakes that you've made. Think about the shame that you, 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, 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, and 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 gonna sing Holy, Holy, Holy? And he just loved Holy, Holy, Holy. And every single week coming to him, Pastor Ray, when are we gonna sing Holy, Holy, Holy? And Pastor Ray did not mind this because Holy, Holy, Holy is a great song, but he also didn't mind it because there's a story behind this.
The parishioner, his name was Josh, and Josh was a child with Down syndrome. And Josh might be confused about a lot of things in his life, but one thing he wasn't confused about was exactly where Holy, Holy, Holy was in the old red Presbyterian hymnbook. He knew it was number 11. Actually, he didn't call it number 11 because it was confusing because in the bulletin, they would print it as N-O period 11, Holy, Holy, Holy.
You know, the abbreviation for number, N-O period. But Josh always just called it no 11, Holy, Holy, Holy. So every week, he'd say, Pastor Ray, when are we gonna sing no 11? And he'd say, soon, Josh, soon.
Well, one day they were gonna sing no 11, Holy, Holy, Holy. And Ray didn't wait for Josh to come find him. He went and found Josh and said, Josh, catch what we're gonna sing today. Josh said, what?
He said, guess what we are gonna sing today. Josh said, what? He said, Josh, today, we're gonna sing Holy, Holy, Holy. He said, Josh got this big grin, came across his face, his eyes grew wide, and he just threw his fist up in the air and said, yes. Ray later told me that Josh, for all his love for God, his theology wasn't exactly spot on.
It was kind of a blend of Jesus and Indiana Jones. But I'm just here to tell you that there's no finely tuned, 100-person, red-robed choir that could sing in perfect harmony, that could bring more pleasure to the heart of God than Josh's simple, yes. There's a picture of praise in David that there is something that is beautiful to God and something that he loves, and it is something freeing, and it is something that makes you find out why you're created and what life's all about when you forget yourself and you get lost into a celebration. When you praise the Lord and you forget not only the things that you're worried about, but you forget about whether you're doing it correctly because it becomes an expression of the heart. And so it was that David was dancing and leaping and leading the people in praise. Praise, the subject I'm speaking about today, I draw a distinction between praise and worship in this sense that praise is the celebration and the exaltation, the magnification and the exalting in what God has done.
But there is a worship that is more related to the intimacy of relationship that has to do with communion. I remember some day we were at the beach, having been there for a while, and Abigail was very little, but she was still young enough to hold in your arms and rock at night, but old enough to speak of bed and to understand things. And we'd had this great day on the beach, and that night, it was my privilege, I was putting her to bed. And so I was just holding her to bed, and I was just kind of reliving the day and talking about, wasn't it fun when we built that sandcastle? And I had so much fun playing with you today, and we went swimming, and we were just reliving the day at the beach. And she just, in the middle of it, she just blurted out, took the thumb out of the mouth, and just blurted it out, and said, you're great, Daddy.
And that's praise, that's praise. But then, as I was trying to get her to calm down and go to sleep, and I started singing over her. I had a little song I'd always would sing over Abby, her little unique song that I would just sing over her there will never be a time that you will lose this love of mine, it'll always be. There will never be a day when my love will go away, it will always be.
I was getting quieter, and just about the time I thought she was gonna be asleep, I looked down and her eyes were just wide open, and she just reached her hand up, and she just stroked my face. And I felt the Holy Spirit say to me, that's worship. 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. 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. Today's teaching now continues.
Here once again is Alan Wright. There is something that is so powerful about simply celebrating your father that opens up the way to an intimate communion of worship with your father. We got to praise him. So what happened on this day was David wasn't thinking about it.
Great leaders don't, I don't think, always think about all their moves that they're making. They're just who they are and you want to follow them. And this is what David was doing this day. And so David leads the people in this great procession of praise. And essentially there are three things I think that are happening here. The first is that they're celebrating because David had won a victory for them, but then David danced before them and they realized also David was with them.
And I think this is what Jesus does for us. The first is that He had won this celebration for them. And what this means is that if you're going to really have praise in your life, it's not just a recognition that a victory has been won, it's a recognition that the victory has been won for you. I'm sorry, all I got is basketball illustrations today. I apologize, I get something next week, but I've watched too much basketball, but just bear with me. And so what I'm saying is that if Jabari Parker of Duke were to get a game-winning slam dunk against my Carolina Tar Heels, you know, even if it was a 360 around the back, through the legs, dunk, jumping from the top of the key, you know, what I would do is I'd probably go, eh, that was pretty good. I might admit it, I might say, you know, that's kind of awesome, but I'm pretty sure he's going to the NBA next year, so have a good career, you know, because it would be a victory and it would be something awesome, but you see, I wouldn't bring about a praise or a celebration, why?
Because it wasn't for me. See, two things are happening. The revelation of what God has done in Jesus Christ and the revelation that He has done this out of the vastness of His love for you and that it's yours. See, the people that get all excited about God, they not only realize that God is awesome, they not only realize that God has won a victory, they realize I'm on the winning team.
That's when you want to storm the court. And so David had won the victory, they had gone into the city of David, as he would call it. Zion, the walled area of Jerusalem, and the Jebusites were in there. David was coronated as king, the Jebusites were in there, and in chapter five, if we would go back and look at it, you see the Jebusites made fun of David, he said, well even the blind and the lame will defeat them.
That's a pathetic army he's got. But evidently, according to scripture, what David was, he led some men through what is now known as Warren's Shaft. There is a spring, the Gihon Spring, that is just outside of the old city of David. And you can still go there and see this, and there's a tunnel that had been dug around a natural fissure in the stony hillside that would go up under the walls.
And this was important in warfare because it enabled them, even if they were under siege, they had a secret way to get down to a spring and keep water coming into the city. But evidently, David used this strategically, and they sent their men in through the tunnel, and they got inside by the city walls, and they took, it just says, they mocked David, and the Jebusites said, even the lame and the blind will defeat them, and then it just sends the scripture, it says, nevertheless, David took over Jerusalem. And then, in the next paragraph after that, what you realize is he does something even more astounding, and that is he goes and he defeats the Philistines, they were the arch enemy of Israel. But the victory that had been won and what was being celebrated was not just those recent victories, but all the victories of David. And the people were celebrating because they realized that these victories that David had won by the unction of God were victories for the people of Israel.
It was for them. See, this is where you start realizing how much you have to thank God for. It's only realizing in how desperate your situation is, how dire it is without God. See, this is why we don't have a gospel that we can adequately announce with any measure of good news to the culture unless it is first accompanied by all are lost and without hope except for the sovereign grace of God.
Until you've been through the hard times, you've been through some low ebbs until you've seen what it's like without God, you can't really fully appreciate. But when you see what God has done and this is a victory that's been accomplished for you, that's when you begin to say, if God's for me, who could be against me? This is when you begin to say, death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting? Sting of death is sin, the power of sin, the law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus, gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ who shall separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger or sword, no, in all these things, you're more than conquerors through him who loved us, for I'm sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things that come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. The victory was for the people. But then David, he dances in front of the people. He goes before them. This is part of being a leader is he celebrates before them. He is modeling for them, demonstrating for them, this is the nature of what my reign will be like, a celebration. See, the thing you must understand about God is that God made us to celebrate him because God himself is a celebration. The mystery, we're going into mysteries here, but God is one, but he's Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And you must understand that the Son celebrates the Father, the Father celebrates the Son, the Spirit lives inside of us, causing us to exalt him. There is a celebration that is going on in just who God is. And the whole of creation is an expression, not of God's loneliness, not of God's emptiness, but of the overwhelming, overflowing joy that is already in God.
The beauty that's in God got expressed into the whole of creation. He celebrates, you see, the opening chapter of the Bible, where God creates light and then he stops, he pauses for, he says, you know, that's good. And then he has another day, he makes some vegetation and it's not finished yet, but he says, that's good. Every day he pauses to say, I wanna celebrate what I have created.
That is good. See, even God didn't have to get to the finished result before he celebrated. The celebration was part of the means by which all was created. The whole earth and you being made in the image of God, you were designed to praise him. The Westminster Divines were right. The chief end that God has given you is to glorify God and to enjoy him forevermore.
G.K. Chesterton was reflecting on creation and his reflections in the book called Orthodoxy. He says, because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit, fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, do it again.
And the grown up person does it again until he's nearly dead. For grown up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, do it again to the sun.
And every evening, do it again to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike. It might be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. Alan Wright and today's teaching on why we clap in church.
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? 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. 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 Alan's parting, good news, thought for the day. And so here we are, why we clap in church. And you know, I think of phrases that we hear all the time, Jesus paid it all. Well, that's a past tense thing. But we can look forward in faith and knowing that the battle's been won and there is victory to come, even though we're sitting here today in the flesh looking and saying, how, how's this gonna happen? And that's the good news. It is, I mean, in other words, when Jesus said it's finished, he was announcing games won. Yeah, right, right. But we are in the midst of still playing it out.
But it has been won. And here's the thing we've learned from David, and we'll see more of this tomorrow. Jesus celebrates before you, he leads the processional, like David did. But he also celebrates with you. He's with us in the midst of this. And that's a powerful thought. So he says the kingdom of God is like a wedding party. And we're all invited into this celebration. That's the nature of being in the kingdom of God. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.
