Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing, a biblical faith-filled vision for your life. As Jesus, the firstborn of all creation, slowly suffocated on a Roman cross, the Father did the unimaginable. He took his strong right hand of blessing from the firstborn's bleeding head and moved it toward the head of the undeserving younger siblings. That's you. That's me.
God crossed his arms in grace. It means that you can walk in the favor of God. A blessing that should have rested on the sinless Savior alone. With such a gift in mind, there's no limit to the favor of God on your life. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright.
To understand the majesty and power of grace. It must begin with understanding the poverty of human life without such grace. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Happy Easter and 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 our Easter series as presented at Renolda 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, which can be yours for your donation this month to Allen Wright Ministries.
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More on all of this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's Easter teaching. Here is Alan Wright. You ready for some good news? I give it to you in the words of classic preacher Charles Spurgeon.
If a dying Savior saved the thief, my argument is that he can do even more now that he liveth and dies. Raineth. Luke chapter 23. I want to talk to you. about the cross.
Luke 23, verse 32: Two others who were criminals. were led away to be put to death with Jesus. And when they came to the place that is called the skull, There they crucified him. and the criminals. One on his right.
and one on his left. And Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And they cast lots to divide his garments. And the people stood by, watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, He saved others, let him save himself, if he's the Christ of God, his chosen one. The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering sour wine and saying, If you're the king of the Jews, save yourself.
There was also an inscription over him. This is the king of the Jews. One of the criminals who were hanged railed against him, saying, Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us. But the other rebuked him, saying, Do you not fear God?
Since you were under the same sentence of condemnation, And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong. And he said, Jesus, Remember me when you come into your kingdom. And he said to him, Truly, I say to you, Today You will be with me. in paradise.
There are two kinds. people in this world. Those who receive God's grace And those who miss God's grace. It's always been this way. ever since sin entered the world.
We saw it in the first brothers. Cain cannot grasp grace. Couldn't understand how to do it. How it could be that God would Thank you. Would would bless The gifts that Abel brought and And and not his and Cain Like all who miss grace.
He becomes a killer. In his case, literally, and he killed his brother. The contrast of Noah and really the rest of the world was ultimately a contrast in. grace and ungrace, one man, Who's given a gift and all the world that misses it. Abraham The air who divided ways with lot.
Isaac, the son of promise, the The demonstration of God's grace. And his Supernatural arrival on earth.
Son of laughter. contrasted with Ishmael, who was A human construct, a a product of the of the plans of man. Joseph the boy of favor and grace. contrasted with his brothers, the haters. of grace.
David, the man after God's own heart, the one to whom God said, I will never, ever remove my steadfast love from you. And Saul His predecessor A man of ungrace. hater of grace and the hater of David. In all the stories, if you were to sum them all up, all throughout the whole Old Covenant narrative, in one way or another, they seem to point to the fact that there are those that miss grace and there's those. The get grace.
Because the gospel is being unveiled one story at a time through. The people of God, through the law of God, through the prophecies, through the wisdom. through the apocalyptic literature through it all, it is pointing to the story of redemption. It's pointing to it. And when Jesus comes and he teaches...
His stories are about Ungrace and grace. And where he gets his most angry is where there are people that hate grace. Religious people that hate grace. This is what angered Jesus. And Jesus.
Looked with so much love and mercy upon those that were ready to receive grace. He said he came not for the well. But for the sick who need a physician, for those that are in touch with their inward. Need for grace and who are ready to receive such grace. When he rebuked, it was for those that were standing in the way of grace.
And when And when he flowed, In the unction of the Holy Spirit for any sort of ministry, it was an expression. to those who were receiving his His grace. And when he came to, I think, his most pivotal. parable, the story he told of two sons. Both sons who at first were missing grace One by rebellion, one by self-righteousness, but both missing grace.
And the younger, you remember the story, goes off, he squanders all of his inheritance and riotous living amongst the pigs and the prostitutes. And when he comes, the Bible says, to his senses. He realizes, he said, even the servants in my father's house have something to eat, and here I am nearly starving to death amongst the pigs. He said, I'll go back to my father's house and I'll say, I'm not worthy. But maybe I could be like one of your servants.
But the father runs to meet him, and he shows him this extraordinary, lavish grace: a robe on his shoulders, ring on his fingers, sandals on his feet, and they kill the fattened calf. They have this huge celebration. And you realize that just as important in this story is this older brother who doesn't ever get grace. He won't come into the party. He says, I've been slaving for you for all these years.
In other words, it's a story about one man who comes to the end of himself and realizes I can't even feed myself. And another man who is so consumed with his own righteousness that he can never enter into the celebration. It is a story from Genesis all the way to the end of the book. A story about those who just can't get grace and they hate grace and they want to make a deal with God and they want to hold the law supreme and they want to operate by shame and they want to manipulate their way through the world and then there are those Those that come to the realization that they can't save themselves, they can't feed themselves, they can't deliver themselves, they can't do anything for themselves, all they can do is receive grace. And it's as if to make this portrait plain, Right at the Close of Jesus' life on earth, literally his last breaths, God paints for us a portrait on Golgotha.
Jesus at the center of history. On that cross. But there were three crosses. there that day. Ungrace.
and shame on one side. And the recipient Of the lavish, unmerited favor of God. On the other. The cross. The modern Christian church.
So quick. to move past the cross with all of its blood and Ugliness. Remember the story of the boy, the elementary student, he was doing so poorly in math. That And finally, his parents pulled him out of his traditional school, put him into a private Catholic school, and thought maybe the little more. Order and discipline and different environment might help.
And sure enough, within a couple of months, the boy is doing so much better in his math. He's brought all his F's and D's up to A's in math. And finally his parents come to me and they said, son, he said, this is amazing. He said, is this school, are these teachers just so much better? I mean, what has happened that all of a sudden you're doing so well in math?
He said, oh, no, it wasn't the teachers or any of that. He said, when they took us to chapel that first day, and I looked up there and saw how they nailed that guy to the plus sign, I knew they were serious about math here. I don't know. People they are aware of the cross, but they think it's a piece of jewelry. It's a popular symbol, but was it popular early on?
Cicero said no Roman citizen. Should ever have his body come near a cross. No early Christian leader. suggested that the cross be the emblem For Christianity. In fact, not really until the fourth century.
Did you start seeing the cross become a symbol for Christianity? That was when Constantine, who had a vision of the cross, banned it as a form. of execution. Yeah. C.S.
Lewis put it this way, the crucifixion did not become common in art. until all who had seen a real one had died. Because it was so terrible. Phil Yancey. tells the story of a A Jewish rabbi and the Pre-war years of Nazi Germany, who was one day picked up by the police.
For fun. And they had him come to their police headquarters and stripped him totally naked. and demanded that he preach the sermon. that he was going to give at that weekend Shabbat service. And the rabbi asked if he could wear his yarmulke.
And they put the little covering on his head just to add to the mockery. And so the little Jewish rabbi Trembling. as he was prodded and mocked and jeered. preached his message on what it means to walk humbly with your God. It requires us to envision some emotional scene like that before you can even begin to.
Get a small Distant glimpse. of the sheer emotion emotional torture of the cross. Its physical torture is better known. It was not a death by bleeding. It was a death by suffocation.
gravity would take over. It could no longer breathe eventually. And there were three crosses. on the place of the skull. Three men who in the same way In the same way those three men would suffer and suffocate.
And each of those three men As they began to breathe their last breaths, in those dying breaths, would speak words that reflect What had been distilled in their own character and ideology. It was there in the center of those three crosses. That Isaiah 53 was fulfilled, that Jesus would be numbered with the transgressors. He was stretched.
However, between those two crooks. For a bigger reason, I believe. For there in the center of those crosses, There with his arms stretched, He was reaching as if In love. to say I want you both In my kingdom. But one who I imagined to be to his left, who had never received the grace.
and one I imagine on his right. who would join him and paradise. On each side The crook. was guilty and missing The opportunity to save himself, but one. Refused grace, missed grace.
and couldn't see Jesus even though he was dying next to him. and the other Guilty but forgiven, was guaranteed paradise. With Jesus forever. Imagine that day. In Luke chapter 22, after Judas betrays Jesus, Jesus said to these soldiers who came armed, He said, am I leading a rebellion?
that you have come with swords and clubs. The question Jesus literally was asking was, Have you come out against a robber? The word robber is the Greek word lestan which can also refer to a revolutionary A leader of political insurgents, a Rebel against Rome. Ironically, this Greek word lesten is the word that Mark and Matthew use in their accounts to describe the two criminals that are flanking Jesus. The first irony is in Luke 22, Jesus says, am I a robber that you come like this?
and he will be numbered amongst the robbers, the revolutionaries. You can only imagine what those two crooks, those two criminals, had experienced that day. It was ironic that on the day of their execution, there was very little attention that was being given to them. Even in the day of their death, There was no notoriety that were given to these heinous criminals. Though the form of execution The cross was the worst known to all of Roman civilization.
And though their lives had obviously been notoriously evil, on this day, ironically, no one's even paying attention to them in their death. Because this Nazarene named Jesus had been the centerpiece of the Fuhrer. and all of the controversy. And Jesus was beaten and scourged, flogged worse than they. And they, while they were While they were making their way with their crosses to Calvary.
They they would have had all of this the stirring through their minds. How the crowds had chanted, Give us Barabbas. Instead of Jesus. Give us Barabbas instead of these two other Criminals that would be executed that day. They had seen Jesus, how he was like a lamb that was led to the slaughter.
They had heard the mocking. They saw that the centerpiece of history at that moment was this man Jesus. What was all of the controversy about? What was all the fury about? These these two men Like Jesus, who are strapped To this Cross And they are Nailed there.
and lift it up. They have seen Jesus all day. In many ways, You could say On Good Friday. There was no one closer to Jesus. than these two men.
Master Alan Wright. Our good news message from this Easter series. And I encourage you to stay with us. Pastor Alan is back here in the studio sharing a parting good news thought for the day in just a moment. Unlock the power of blessing your life.
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Alan, do you believe that good news is in direct proportion to how bad the bad news really is? And and one has to have the foundation of the bad news. You got to understand that before the good news even seems necessary. Good news is good news because it stands in contrast to the bad news. The idea of being joyful at um say being healthy Becomes altogether more powerful, doesn't it, for the cancer patient whose doctor says you're now healthy.
because they they had come to understand that life was was frail. And so, often in the way we present the gospel, we tend to move over. of the bad news of our predicament apart from God. And uh we must not because It's like the bitter herbs in the Passover meal celebration that remind you of your slavery so that you, when you taste freedom, it tastes sweet to you. That's the way it is with our salvation.
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