Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. The angels are still sounding the trumpets.
The saints are still shouting, Holy, Holy, Holy, and the dance floor is still open. 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. I'm sorry, all I got is basketball illustrations today. I apologize.
I'll get something next week. I've watched too much basketball, but just bear with me. What I'm saying is that if Jabari Parker of Duke were to get a game-winning slam dunk against my Carolina Tar Heels, even if it was a 360 around the back, through the legs, dunk, jumping from the top of the key, what I would do is I'd probably go, yeah, that's 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. 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 carnated as king. The Jebusites were in there. And in chapter five, if we would go back and look at it, you'd 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 and even the lame and the blind will defeat them. And then it just sends the scripture and 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, until you've been 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 is 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 to 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, he is modeling for them, demonstrating for them, this is the nature of what, 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, 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. He, the beauty that's in God got expressed into the whole of creation. He, 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, and then He, here's another day He makes some vegetation and, and it's, it's not finished yet, but He says, that's good. Every day He, He pauses to say, I want to 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, 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. It could be that every daisy is saying He made one and He said, do it again.
Do it again, like a child. He continues and says, the repetition in nature may not be a mere recurrence. It may be a theatrical encore. In our Wednesday night encounter a few weeks ago, it beheld something I've never, never, never seen happen in nearly three decades of ministry, being in church. And I've never seen this happen in a service before. We'd kind of finished the main segment of praise and worship and we'd divide it up as we normally do to go and pray in different stations or different people. And I was with my prayer partner and we were praying with somebody. And then the music, I heard them and they were bringing it down. And there's a group of worshippers out there. And the worshippers, when the music stopped, they wouldn't let them stop.
I think somebody just said encore. Or maybe they just said, no, don't stop. And I've never seen this happen before.
They wouldn't let the band quit playing. I'm trying to pray with somebody down here and I'm hearing all this going on. I'm saying this is the first time I've ever heard this. This is encore. And maybe, maybe we were just made. When there's something to celebrate, there's something else that just wants to keep on rejoicing.
And God's like this. The kingdom of God, Jesus said, is like a wedding party. It's a wedding party. It is the image of the biggest celebration in all the world to a mid-easterner.
It doesn't matter. You pull out all the stops. Even if you're poor, you're going to have a fantastic wedding. You'll spend everything you got.
Borrow money if you have to, but you're going to kill the fatty calf. You're going to celebrate for a long time. And he said, if you want to understand the kingdom of heaven, this is what it's like. So here's David. He wins the battle for the people and then he dances before the people. He is the lead one in the celebration. And if you really see Jesus, then what you'll see is that this is what Jesus is doing. It is a mystery and I don't have words to explain it, but Jesus is the one who is celebrated and Jesus is inside of you celebrating Jesus.
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 worshipping 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. 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. That's who the Holy Spirit is. He's the Spirit of Jesus and He's inside of you. You are caught up in an eternal chorus of praise in the heart of the triune God. And then there's one more thing that David does that pictures Jesus for us as praise leader.
And that is that He not only dances before them, He dances with them. He had appointed the priest to stop after six steps and offer a fatling, an offering to the Lord, a thank offering. What scholars are not sure about is does this mean that every six steps they stopped and offered a sacrifice to the Lord? We don't know for sure. But this much we do know for sure that from the household of Obed-Edom, a Gittite, up to the city of David on the mount called Jerusalem at Zion was 10 kilometers.
This is over six miles. And probably David wrote a number of Psalms for this, Psalm 132 most surely and maybe some others in preparation for this day. And David had made plans that all the people were going to be included and people were going to be fed and he was going to bless everybody. In other words, what stands out to this is that this was such a corporate experience. He danced with them.
They were fully and completely welcomed into the dance with the king. Did anybody read about this guy Danny who was a big, he's a college age guy, a big fan of UVA, Virginia fan. And he was at the Coliseum for the semi-finals of the ACC Championship. Sorry, one more basketball illustration, I promise.
I'll move to golf for the rest of the summer. But he's sitting up in the nosebleed section and Virginia makes it to the finals. They're going to play Duke in the finals of the ACC Championship game. And he gets this big idea because he noticed that all the people that are down on the court and sitting all around Virginia and everything, he said he was just studying it and he said notice that the ushers at the Coliseum would just let these people go by. And it was only one reason.
They weren't showing any identification tag. They all had on a blue suit with a white shirt and a bright Virginia orange tie. So that night he took about 120 bucks and went to Walmart and he bought himself a blue suit, white shirt and an orange tie. He got a $30 ticket in the upper deck from StubHub and he went to the championship game, the ACC Tournament. And about five minutes before the game started he proved that if you just look like you know what you're doing that people will let you do amazing things.
And so his orange tie, he just came walking down the aisle right down to the floor. The usher without asking opened up the gate for him and he went down and he sat behind the Virginia team. At different points during the game there are photos of Danny at different spots. He's collected all these photos. There are spots where he's directly behind the basket, directly behind the team. You're not going to believe this.
But this guy, this guy. At one of the time outs the team moves out onto the court and they're all huddled around with coaches down there giving instructions. And there's a photo, you can see it. And there's Danny standing there with the team. Orange tie. Standing there with the team.
Gets better. And so it is at the end of the game. End of the game.
And Virginia wins. And so everybody, the players all jump out in the middle of the court. You know, just the celebration we were talking about. Confetti's flying and everything.
Guess who's there jumping around with them? Danny. The team manager comes over, gives Danny an ACC Championship t-shirt and hat.
He pulls it on. What you can't believe is this. And then the teams line up to shake each other's hands. Danny gets in the back of the line and there's a video of him giving his condolences to Mike Krzyzewski.
Unbelievable. Finally, finally, finally there's some UVA official administrator who comes in and says, are you with us? Danny said, yeah. And he looked at him and said, no you're not. Danny said, well, alright.
I'm with the Coliseum. So he lies again. And he said, what's wrong with a little fun?
And he kind of walked away. But Danny didn't leave the court before he got who he thinks was ACC Commissioner John Swafford to take a picture of him standing next to the ACC Championship trophy. And I'm just going to say to you, my beloved congregation, if Danny can get in on a celebration just because he put on an orange tie, how much more can you get in on a celebration because you have been adorned with the righteousness of Jesus Christ? This isn't just anybody's celebration. This is yours in Jesus.
He's celebrating not just in front of you, but with you and in you. Michal, she looked down with derision from her window. She was the daughter of the king. She thought she knew what kings were supposed to be like. And she didn't like this display of childlike praise.
And David, he said to her, you may be despising me, but I'm going to tell you everyone who is humble in heart, who really sees into the goodness of God will have a spirit of praise within them and they will exalt with me. I grew up Lutheran. I went to a non-denominational church that my pastor, he was, you could tell when he was on fire because he would, I still do this. You'll see me sometimes. I start doing like this, you know.
That's it. Man, the spirit's on me. I'm doing like this. I've been Presbyterian for many years.
And so I've been trained to not be looking too silly and to do things decently in order, you know, like the last thing I want to be is one of those people that's wild and reckless and all that. But I tell you, there's one thing more than that that I wouldn't want to be, and that would be someone who looked with derision on the dance of the gospel because there would be something that would dry up on the inside. And I just thank God to have a family that when you want to celebrate, you can celebrate. When you want to shout, you can shout. When you want to clap, you can clap. It's not that God is looking at how loud you clap or how much you shout. He is looking at the heart. But it is to say this, beloved, that David's great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson who was born in Bethlehem raised up in obscurity like David was.
When he began to dance his dance, the religious snobs and political authorities looked down upon him in derision. But the humble and the needy and the disenfranchised and those that knew they needed a Savior, they danced with him. And I'm here to tell you on this Palm Sunday as we go into this beautiful week leading to Easter that the Son of God has won the decisive victory on our behalf. It is an eternal victory.
It is so awesome what He has done for us that any last minute buzzer beating half-court shot can't hold a candle up against the glory of the light of our gospel. And I just want to tell you that the angels are still sounding the trumpets. The saints are still shouting, holy, holy, holy.
And the dance floor is still open. And that's the gospel. 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 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. 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. What a way to wrap up a series, The Son of David we've been in and in a discussion and a teaching here on celebrating the good news of the gospel and what has been done for us on Calvary. We have real cause for ongoing celebration and the whole series of Son of David in the end reaches this crescendo. Jesus has won the victory and he's won it for us. We are in a world in which we face trouble. We have walked with David as he has walked through his times of being persecuted. We have seen the disappointments. We have watched the persecution, all of that. But I think it is, Daniel, it's a fitting end to this wonderful journey with David to just simply celebrate and to say thank you, Jesus. Thank you, God, for all that you've done in my life. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.
