Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing, a biblical faith-filled vision for your life. May you have a little heartburn, the Easter kind. The depressed disciples on the Emmaus Road didn't know they were walking with the risen Lord on Easter Day. They were busy rehearsing all their disappointments and woes while they walked with the stranger. But after the breaking of the bread and the opening of their eyes, after realizing that they'd been with Jesus.
They said, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened the scriptures? Luke 24, 32.
So I bless your heart to warm into a glow of authentic joy. for your soul to light up with hope. for your deepest self to awaken. with a blaze of faith. knowing that is true.
Jesus. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. The spirit of the age is subtle. It just keeps moving the line and moving the line and moving the line. And it wants to try to deal with sin by saying, There's not really any right or wrong, so you can't ever tell me I'm wrong.
It's an artificial way to deal with guilt that never ever works. 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, Abide, taken from John 14 through 17, as presented at Renolda Church in North Carolina.
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More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here. is Alan Wright. He didn't know I was a Christian, certainly didn't know I was a pastor, and he hated me.
Why? Why? I wanna pardon me when I say You have no idea how nice I really am. I do not call phone people on purpose. I really, I promise you, I don't.
Sometimes it's transference. And sometimes It's just spiritual. And you must be discerning. It's a spiritual battle. These things that are happening, they're happening because.
In verse 21, they'll do to you. on account of my name. He's saying it doesn't have anything to do with you, disciples. Because I do not know him who sent me. I'll see it often, but I think it's a very good idea.
Just It'll help a lot. If you don't expect people who don't know Jesus to act like they do. And It's a spiritual battle, be not ignorant of it. One of the first Christian books I ever read was a book. That our college ministry promoted by John White called The Fight is still a good book.
And it was a good book for a new Christian. And in the opening chapter, he talks about all the things that have changed in your life as a Christian. The status you have as one who's been justified. And imputed with the righteousness of Jesus, and born again to a living hope, and all of that. And then he wrote, You have also established a new relationship with the powers of darkness.
Whatever you were before you became a Christian, straight, horoscope, reader, witch, warlock, Satanist, you're now the sworn foe of the legions of hell. have no delusions about their reality or their hostility, but do not fear them. the God inside you terrifies them. They cannot touch you, let alone hurt you, but they can still seduce, and they will try. They will oppose you as you obey Christ.
But if you're serious about Christ being your Lord and God, you can expect opposition. Resist the devil, writes James, and he'll flee from you. Life with Jesus can be an exhilarating and reassuring experience of constant triumph over evil forces, but the battle never ends.
So do not be naïve about this. And put on the whole armor of God every day and be prepared to resist the devil and don't be duped and drawn into a battle you aren't supposed to be fighting. And don't try to return fleshly responses for fleshly actions against you. And learn how to tear down the strongholds of the enemy by the power of the gospel because sometimes it's just demonic. This all raises the question, like, kind of ask like, why would this man on the airplane be so mean to me?
Yeah. It's the bigger question: why would anybody be mean to Jesus? Why'd they hate him? My mentor, Dudley Hall, told me 25 years ago something I never forgot. He said there were two primary enemy spirits.
or you might even say prevailing ideologies. That attacked Jesus. Rebellion. and religion. And I think he's right.
You can almost boil down all hatred of Jesus. to one of these two spirits or mentalities, rebellion. or religion. Rebellion says It's not sin.
So I'm not a sinner. In other words, the haunting guilt that every human being. Faces. and whether they know it's there or not, feels. that something is wrong.
And that is the inward sense of guilt. demands to be dealt with. And this is why we tell people the gospel. It's the only solution. There's forgiveness.
But if someone doesn't know Jesus or doesn't want Jesus and doesn't want the way of forgiveness, one of the ways out. a superficial way out that doesn't work and in the way in the end leads to death. is to say there's no wrong or right. and therefore I can't be wrong. This is the spirit of rebellion.
And it is absolutely the spirit of this age. It doesn't raise its head and say, look at me, I'm being rebellious. That's not what it does. Instead, it just says, You do you. I'll be me.
And let's don't judge each other. There's no real right or wrong. There's no line. There's no real standard. And so therefore, I'm okay, you be okay.
Of course, it doesn't work in the end, right? Because the people who say there's no right or wrong, all you have to do Is break in line in front of them at the DMV, and you'll find out that they believe in right or wrong. I don't talk about political issues. Very much at all from the pulpit because I think the task of preaching. is to present Jesus.
And I believe that the power of God unto salvation is in the gospel. And I believe, like Paul, to know him crucified, dead and buried, and to proclaim his excellencies is the primary task of preaching.
So It's not that I don't have views, but I do believe, just in case you're ever wondering, that It's more powerful. to lead someone to Christ. wherein the gospel takes effect and their life and most of the time. once someone is born anew. If they have errant views, they will begin to line up with the scriptures.
So I love to preach Jesus and I don't talk that much about issues. But sometimes, and this is one of those times, that for purposes of illustration, You need to have it fleshed out like an example. from the spirit of this age. And so let me use this example: that when Roe v. Wade was overturned.
And many people who Are pro-life, and our church is pro-life, our denomination is pro-life, I'm pro-life. It doesn't mean that we're judgmental. It doesn't mean that that I want Anyone to feel haunting old shame about abortion doesn't mean that we don't care about women and women's rights. But I'll just say for myself, I love babies from the time that they're conceived to the time they're born, and I think God does, and I think life. is a gift from God and I just Really, abortion grieves me.
And that's where we are as a church. I I I thought after the overturn of O V Way, with all the vitriol going on in the country, which is still going on. That there was something missing from the conversation that literally nobody talked about. while all of the conversation and vitriol about My body, my rights, take your hands off my body, and there's so much judgment flying everywhere. The one thing nobody ever mentions And I'm just, this is not to make somebody feel bad or guilty, but just this is a point I'm making.
Nobody ever mentioned only 12% of abortions in this country are to married women. Almost every single abortion is an unwanted pregnancy from extramarital or premarital sex. almost every abortion. Sex is a beautiful gift from God. made for marriage.
made for the covenant of marriage. It only really is beautiful when it's inside of that kind of commitment. That runs so contrary to the spirit of this age that that makes me sound like a prude or backwards or whatever. But here's an example right there of where like, no, this, the Bible's really, really clear about this. And then we see it living it out in all of these different kind of manifestations.
And yet, in the whole abortion discussion, have you ever heard anybody say this is almost purely a function? Almost all unwanted pregnancies are purely a function. of sex outside marriage. You don't hear it. Why?
Because the spirit of the age is subtle. It just keeps moving the line and moving the line and moving the line. And it wants to try to deal with sin by saying. There's not really any right or wrong, so you can't ever tell me I'm wrong. It's an artificial way to deal with guilt.
That never ever works. Religion is sort of the opposite of that spirit of rebellion. And whereas when Jesus would say He's the truth and the way and the life, There was a rising up of hell that said, You can't tell me what's right or wrong. Religion doesn't say it's not sin. It says it's sin.
But I'm righteous, so I'm not a sinner. It's a Opposite and equally erroneous way to deal with guilt in our lives. Part of the reason that, let's be honest, a lot of non-Christians resent Christians is they perceive them as smug and judgmental and self-righteous. If someone has experienced the spirit of religion, And they know from that, it just makes their shame worse, and they never feel the love of God.
Well, it repels people who are already rebellious into being even more rebellious. And that's when they begin to say of Christians, you're hypocrites. And some of it is justified. But the problem of religiosity, the problem of self-righteousness. is that it equally leads people away from God.
Another way that you might say this is: rebellion says, I'll be fulfilled by breaking the rules. If I could just get out from under these rules of my parents, if I could get out from under these rules of the church, if I could just get out under these rules, if we could just legalize the stuff that I want to do, if I could just look at what I want to look at and do what I want to do and eat what I want to eat and take in what I want to take in, then I'll really be fulfilled. That's rebellion. But religion says I'll be fulfilled by keeping the rules. I'll be better than everybody else.
I'll keep the rules better than you do. And then God will love me, and other people will admire me. Another way you could say this is that rebellion says, accept me. Because it's not really sin. People are yearning for acceptance.
But religion says accept me because I don't sin. because I'm so good. The problem is that neither leads us into relationship with Jesus, and Jesus didn't offer. Rebellion or religion, he offered relationship. In his beautiful little book, The Prodigal God.
Tim Keller said, the gospel of Jesus is not religion or irreligion. He could have said rebellion. It's not religion or rebellion. Not morality or immorality. Not moralism or relativism, conservatism or liberalism.
No. It's not something halfway along a spectrum between the two poles. Listen to this. It is something. altogether different.
The gospel is distinct from the other two approaches. In its view, Everyone is wrong. Everyone is loved. and everyone is called to recognize and change. When Jesus said at verse 22, If I had not come and spoken to them, They would not have been guilty of sin.
He's not saying there that there's a category of person who's sinless. We know the Bible says all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But what he's saying is that the fact that I came It exposed, it exacerbated, it brought into light. The sin. Just being around the holiness of Jesus is enough to expose sin, and you're either drawn into him or you are repelled by him.
That's just the way it is. You either love the light or you love the darkness. And R. C. Spruls said people hated Jesus because he's the ultimate curvebuster.
Anybody that ever attended a big school with big classes where they graded on a curve knows what this means. Where I went to school at Carolina, your freshman year, oftentimes you take really big classes. PolySci 41, political science, introductory class. had 450 students in it. And so you don't write essay exams that a professor is going to grade 450 of them.
You do 100 multiple choice questions. and you spit it through the computer, you get your grade. And you counted on the fact that they would grade on a curve, which meant. If the professor gave the test and the highest grade was an 85. Out of 450 students, it sort of proved the test was too hard.
And so the professor would say, we'll set the curve. The person who made an 85 now gets 100. Everybody's score basically goes up 15 points because we want to have this curve. on the graph where a certain number of people make A's, a certain number make B's, a certain number make C's, and there's a certain number who make D's and F's. But we don't want them to all be D's and Fs, so we got to move this curve over this way.
And so you always, when you had a really hard test, you'd come out of it and you'd be like, I just hope there's a good curve because that was a hard test. And that freshman year, I overstudied for everything. I overstudy it throughout my whole college career because guess what? I made good grades and then. Nobody cared.
I became a pastor. They don't even care. And I didn't need it to get into med school or law school or anything. I should have loafed my way through. I blew it.
But anyway, I overstudied. I was perfectionistic. And I don't want you to think like I'm really smart. I'm pretty good at studying and taking tests. I'm pretty good at a multiple choice test.
And so I studied like crazy for that first exam in Poly Psy 41. And I knew the material. I mean, like, I'd like to memorize the chapters, memorized all my notes. I mean, I was like, I dare him to ask a question I don't know. And I went in 100 questions.
It didn't take me very long. I filled them out. And I pretty much walked down and thought, I think I got most of those right. You know. And the next week, you know, all the kids on my hallway, they're all talking about how hard that test was.
It wasn't fair, it was so hard. And I was thinking, it wasn't that hard. You know, you guys have been playing way too much Pac-Man and poker. Which they did. They did.
Had guys flunk out because Pac-Man had just come out and there was a Pac-Man game next to our dorm and they were over there for an hour or something. But anyway, oh, this was so hard, you know, it better be a big curve on this. And so we got back our exams and the guys on the hallway, everybody was taking this class. It was kind of an introductory class people took if they're going to be a business major, all these things. And so everybody's looking at their tests and the guys had made a 62, 71, you know, some guy made a 78 and they're like, this thing, man, we're failing out of this thing.
We can get going. They say, well, you know, it's going to be a big curve, hopefully. And then one guy looks and he goes, oh, no. He said, some joker had made a 98 on this thing. I never told him what I made on that test.
Pastor Alan Wright in our good news message, Out of This World, from the series Abide. I encourage you to stay with us because Pastor Alan is back here in the studio sharing his parting good news thought for the day in just a moment. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's daily blessing.
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Back here now with Pastor Alan Wright. And out of this world is the teaching replacing the bookmark here. By the way, this whole series is taken from John 14 through 17 and really the parting words of Jesus before Jesus ascended out of this world. You see what I did there, Pastor Alan?
Well, When you become a Christian, you also gain eternity, you gain friendship with Jesus, you're every. Part of your life is different. You've been transported from one kingdom into another. But you also gain a mortal foe and all the the the principalities of evil are against you.
So their spiritual warfare. And we are going to experience this in this world where People sometimes will hate or revile us. And we don't even know why. And I think one of the first things, and this is actually good news, is to understand it's not about you. It's about Jesus.
If you've ever had someone seeming to be hateful towards you for no reason, It might just be because There's That in them that hates Jesus, and they don't recognize it, but that's really what it's all about. And so there's a spiritual battle that's going on. And I know it seems hard to think that, well, why would anybody hate Jesus?
Well, Because he Came into direct conflict with the spirit of religion and the spirit of rebellion. And we'll learn more about that in the message, but just know this: that here's the good news. that you don't have to return that kind of hate for hate because it's really not about you in the first place. It's about Jesus and there's a fellowship with Jesus in our sufferings. And that's good news.
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