Your Declaration of Indepedence [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. We don't want to spend the rest of our lives telling you when to get up and when to go to bed and how many green beans to eat. Be free! Your life's about more than that. Go out there and live your destiny.

Produce something. Be a blessing to the world. 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 Galatians 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. It can be yours for your donation this month made to Alan Wright Ministries.

So as you listen to today's message, you can go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. I'm not really afraid of heights, and I like being up in that tall building and seeing all this, but I'm going to tell you this is one of the weirdest feelings I've ever had. To step up to this place, I know it's going to hold you because there are other people out there on it.

Of course, then your mind goes, I wonder what the weight limit is on this. But I know that you can step on it, and so I'm going to do it. And I get up to the edge where the carpet ends and then the plexiglass begins and you're out over the street. And everything in my entire being, every biological instinct, every psychological, neurological, emotional, physical reaction of my body was screaming at me, whatever you do, don't leave this perfectly good ground here on this building and step out onto that that looks like air. Whatever you do, don't step there. It was so funny that when I stepped out there, I was having to go against everything in my nature to do it. And it was funny, I caught myself, I was willing to step just one foot onto it, but I wasn't willing to go all the way four feet out there as if it was going to break and I was going to catch back onto the wall or something.

But it was just weird. I say this because here's part of what I think Paul's saying, is that isn't it a good thing that everything with Emmy would scream, don't step off of a 103 story high building. You want everything to say, there's a line, don't step over that or you die. If there's something that could tell you, if you step over that, it's going to destroy you. That's not bad, that's good.

Right? This is what Paul's saying. The law is no way bad. It is part of God's revelation to us of who He is and it is part of a big story of God's redemptive plan. So it's good if somebody tells you you've got a spider on your collar and it's good if there's somebody that says don't step over this line.

If you miss this mark, it's going to be destructive to your life. Those things were good, they're not bad. But they did not empower anyone to get rid of the problem. And what Paul's saying is that you need to look at the whole story. Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ. If you just see Moses and you think it supersedes the promise, you're going to miss Jesus. Don't let the false teachers tell you, Galatians, that you need to come under the law as if this is the limit of your life. But appreciate that the law points you to your need for Jesus. What he's saying is that the law was added in order to reveal transgression.

Even when you didn't know that you had transgression, the law was showing it to you. My favorite example of this, of course, told in years past is author and teacher and mentor to me, Dudley Hall, who when his boy David was a little boy, he had a birthday party and he invited these boys over and they were going to play in the backyard. And just for fun, Dudley got all these boys together before the party started. And he said, now, guys, you see this backyard, we've got a nice big backyard.

You can go back, you know, throw ball, you can kick some soccer, you can play on the swing set, whatever they had back there. And he said, but there's this one thing, I got a rule. He said, you see that garden over there?

And I said, yeah, a flower garden or something. He said, whatever you do, don't spit in that garden. And then Dudley went back inside in the living room and hid behind the drapes to watch what would happen. He said those boys started playing and they'd kick them ball and then the ball kind of rolled near the garden. The boy went over to get it and he looked at the garden. And then a little later he looked at the garden again and then somebody else looked at it. And finally one boy went over and he looked at it a second time.

He looked this way and that way. He spits in the garden and Dudley's inside laughing. And he said, by the end of the party, every boy had spat in that garden. And what that law had done was it had revealed to them a transgression they didn't even know existed. He didn't really need to have a law about spitting in the garden. But since he did put a law about spitting in the garden, what did it do? It revealed the wickedness rebellion in the child's heart that you didn't even know was there. The law is good in this sense.

It shows you that without Jesus you can't even keep yourself from spitting in the garden. Unless you overcome the addictions and the personality disorders and the obstacles and anger and lust and everything else, you're not going to be able to overcome all the law does and say look at this big problem and you can't seem to do anything about it. Why then the law? The law was added for the revelation of transgression so that you in seeing your great need would turn to the seed of Abraham who is Jesus Christ. Hallelujah.

So it's good in that sense. I love this quote from British theologian of the 19th century Andrew Jukes. Satan would have us to prove ourselves holy by the law which God gave to prove us sinners. Don't ever look on the law Christian as your opportunity to prove yourself holy. Just look on the law as the opportunity to prove that you can't be holy save for Jesus Christ.

Martin Luther said it this way, The principle point of the law is to make men not better but worse. That is to say it showeth unto them their sin and by the knowledge thereof they may be humbled, terrified, bruised and broken and by this means may be driven to seek grace and so to come to that blessed seed Jesus Christ. We need the promise that was given to Abraham and the law came along as part of the redemptive history to show us how much we need Jesus.

Now Paul continues this with two images to point out a secondary role of the law. He says at verse 22, The scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise of faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Verse 23, Before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, verse 24, the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we're no longer under a guardian.

What he's saying essentially through two different images, he's saying the same thing. That you were not ultimately designed to live like a prisoner under a guard, nor were you ultimately designed to live like a foolish child under a guardian. But the law has acted like a prisoner guard or like a guardian in order to constrain, to guide, to discipline. One of the things that we do as a society, rightly, is that when someone is harming society, breaking laws, hurting others, we arrest them, give them a trial, hopefully a very fair trial and a jury issues a verdict, and if it's guilty, then they are condemned and sentenced by a judge who gives that sentence. And while they're held behind bars, they are imprisoned by the law, literally. And while they're imprisoned, they are prohibited from hurting people in the same way.

So the law has served a function in that sense. But none of us would say that that is the aspiration of life, or even for a society, is just to put people behind bars. What we want are people that are rehabilitated, released, that live productive lives. What we all long for, of course, is such freedom, and even as a society, while someone may deserve his due, the prisoner, our goal would be, ultimately, that you become fourth out of prison, maybe on parole, or maybe you're released when your time is up, and you have been rehabilitated and you live a productive life. The law and condemnation and imprisonment cycle that people experience when they're under the law is not the ultimate plan of God for a man or woman's life. God's plan is for freedom, productivity, and legacy. This is what Paul is saying. He said, in the same way that you could understand a person who is in prison, the law acts like a prison guard.

What you can do, what you can't do, and as long as you're under the law, in that sense, you're like a prisoner to it. But keep an eye on this. This is not what you were made for. You're made for something more than that.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Imagine for 99 days in a row someone tells you, I love you, I'll never forsake you. Wouldn't you feel cherished? But what would happen if on the 100th day that same person said, I'm not sure you're good enough for me. If you don't measure up, I don't think I'll love you anymore.

Wouldn't that one day contaminate the meaning of the other 99 days? Wouldn't one percent of conditional love poison the other 99 percent? Well, just one percent of law is enough to spoil grace. The tiniest bit of law can introduce an unlimited capacity for fear. What if I don't measure up?

When might I be rejected? When the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church, the apostle Paul was outraged and wrote a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of law. Alan Wright's 12-message audio series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians, and that's the gospel.

Discover the purity and power of the grace of God. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. 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. How foolish it would be for somebody to say, who is in prison, yeah, this is what I was made for, and this is what I want to keep. I want to just stay this way because I can't control my sinful nature, and so I just need to stay behind bars. That's a very low aspiration just to remain a prisoner. And Paul's saying that in a sense, if you stay under the law, that's where you're staying.

And then he shifts the image to make a similar point. He says it's like the law is like a guardian or a custodian. Some of your translations, the King James I think said a schoolmaster. That's not really the accurate word here because the guardian in ancient Rome was a person, sometimes a slave or sometimes who was hired to do this, would govern and watch after a child but would not educate the child. In other words, the guardian was someone who would make sure the child went to school and would also discipline the child for doing wrong. And ancient Roman pictures of these custodians or guardians, they were usually pictured with a rod or a cane in their hand because they were often known as very harsh and sometimes cruel to the kids. And the whole point of this image is that the child, while being foolish and disobedient, needs a guardian who is sitting there saying, go to school, get up, go to bed, eat your green beans, clean up your room, quit hitting your sister.

You know, whatever. And it was symbolized by this rod or this cane in the custodian's hand. And what Paul's saying is law is kind of like that. It's like a guardian in an ancient Roman home. But the whole point of having a guardian is that you're not supposed to live the rest of your life under a guardian. The whole destiny you have, and every parent who's healthy wants this for their children, is to grow up. Grow up! And be free! It's not that you're going to grow up and be free so that now, oh, I'm free, I can break all the rules that my mom and dad wanted me to have.

No, grow up and be free. See the value in a life that is lived obediently and productively. But be free!

We don't want to spend the rest of our lives telling you when to get up and when to go to bed and how many green beans to eat. Be free! Your life's about more than that. Go out there and live your destiny. Do something. Be a blessing to the world. But if you choose to live under the law, it's like you're saying, I'm going to stay under a guardian my whole life.

I need somebody to tell me when to go to bed and when to get up and how many green beans to eat and when to clean up my room and when not. And Paul's saying, no, it's a lot more than that, beloved. The law is just like a guardian, but it was growing us up. It was showing us our transgressions so that we would see how much we need the promised seed, the Lord Jesus Christ, so that ultimately there is a great drama that is unfolding. It is though, as John Stott had said, Paul was talking about three great peaks in a mountain range, Abraham and Moses, and then there is the Everest that's Christ.

And see them where they are and how it all fits together. If you are not in Christ, you are under law. This is what the Bible teaches.

And to remain under law is to remain under inevitable condemnation for failing to keep the law. And God's plan was not that you live your life as a slave or a prisoner under law. You see it in the beginning of his redemptive story with Abraham.

God's plan was for you to live by faith in the promise of blessedness. And it started with a promise to Abraham that was greater than what Abraham could comprehend. He made a promise to Abraham that Abraham took in faith and yet Abraham could not have possibly seen all the magnificent ramifications of this.

It's like we have taught in past years. If a father made a promise to his son somewhere near the turn of the century that he would buy him when he turned 16 the best horse and buggy. But in the meantime as the child grew up someone invented an automobile and instead on his 16th birthday the father gave his son a car. We would say that the father had not broken his promise. He had fulfilled his promise but in a way that no one could have envisioned at the time. God made a promise to Abraham.

It was greater than what he could count because you can't count the stars. And he couldn't even comprehend the fullness but somehow in his heart what Paul is saying is that Abraham saw ahead and he believed. The seed of Abraham Paul is saying is not just this physical lineage of the people of Israel. The seed always was pointing to Jesus Christ.

And when you come to faith in Jesus Christ you're saved by his grace and by his grace alone you're justified by that grace through faith in Christ and therefore you're in Christ and if you're in Christ you're in Abraham and if you're in Abraham then the promises of Abraham are promises to you and the blessings to Abraham are blessings to you and so don't think that Moses could ever supersede this act of grace because God's promise will always stand. Hallelujah! So I think that just as our nation had a point in time in which we realized we had to not only believe in our freedom we had to declare it. So it is in our spiritual lives.

And this is what came to mind. I want to just read these words because I'd like to give you a chance to see if maybe you want to declare this. This is my declaration of independence in Christ I'm free.

I'm in Christ not under law. As such I'm no longer a guilty prisoner under guard. I'm free.

I'm no longer a foolish child under a guardian. I'm free. I'm free to live, to love and to leave a legacy. I'm free to enjoy God, follow God, obey God and be filled with God. Because I'm in Christ I'm fully qualified to receive the promise given to Abraham to be blessed and to be a blessing. In Christ I declare I'm free.

In Christ I am blessed and I am a blessing forever. You might have your own words but I thought those words were what came to me. And sometimes in the announcement of something there's something powerful that takes place that it begins to penetrate your heart more. So I'm not asking you to announce something that you don't believe but I am asking you to announce it even if you don't feel it.

But you believe it. So I'm going to invite you to stand and if you want to you can say this with me. This is my declaration of independence in Christ. I am free.

I am in Christ not under law. As such I am no longer a guilty prisoner under guard. I am free.

I am no longer a foolish child under a guardian. I am free. I am free to live, to love and to leave a legacy. I am free to enjoy God, follow God, obey God and be filled with God. Because I am in Christ I am fully qualified to receive the promise given to Abraham to be blessed and to be a blessing. In Christ I declare I am free. In Christ I am blessed. And I am a blessing forever.

That's our declaration of freedom in Christ and that's the gospel. Imagine for 99 days in a row someone tells you, I love you, I'll never forsake you. Wouldn't you feel cherished? But what would happen if on the hundredth day that same person said, I'm not sure you're good enough for me. If you don't measure up I don't think I'll love you anymore.

Wouldn't that one day contaminate the meaning of the other 99 days? Wouldn't one percent of conditional love poison the other 99 percent? Well just one percent of law is enough to spoil grace. The tiniest bit of law can introduce an unlimited capacity for fear. What if I don't measure up?

When might I be rejected? When the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church the apostle Paul was outraged and wrote a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of law. Alan Wright's 12 message audio series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians and that's the gospel.

Discover the purity and power of the grace of God. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website pastoralan.org. So Alan, I think this is one of the most clear portraits that we can have when we want to see our identity as God sees us.

We are His kid, right? Yeah, what a beautiful thought just to invite your listeners just focusing on the heirs of grace. You know, that being a Christian is about not just being saved for all eternity, as glorious as that is, but also having an inheritance. And what that inheritance is, it's rooted and established. It is in the grace of God. It is receiving some spiritually rich and powerfully glorious riches that we never, never could have earned or deserved. That's all in this inheritance. We are heirs of grace. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.