Here's Pastor Alan Wright with Today's Blessing: A Biblical Faith-Filled Vision. for your life. Meet me in Galilee.
Well, that's where Jesus wanted to rendezvous with the disciples after Easter. If I'd been him, I wouldn't have gone back to the podunk towns or the old fishing holes or the silent hillsides of Gennesaret. Yeah. I think I'd have made an unannounced appearance at the priestly council, maybe dance a jig, spike the football in front of Caiaphas, and say, Here I am, still the Messiah Want to tear your robe again? just to see the look on the judge's face.
Or maybe make a visit to a few who would slap me in the face. or nailed my wrist to the post, or maybe Rome. Who's the real Emperor now? But, no, Jesus wanted to meet his friends in the old familiar places. because there's no place like home and you don't have to travel somewhere exotic or outstanding.
to meet with the risen Lord. May you meet him to day. In your own backyard. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. There is something powerful of the gospel that is being exposed, and that is that to be a child of God, according to the gospel, is a miracle that has to do with resurrection life, with supernatural life that comes where there was only deadness, and it comes not by human intervention or effort or works in any manner, but it comes by the promise of God.
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, The Loved, a study of Romans chapters 9 through 11. It's presented at Ranola 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. If these people that God had called unto himself in the Old Testament, Are really his people, then how could you be saying these things that are suggesting that God won't see them through all of them into salvation? And it's a good question.
And Paul is going to answer that question when he says, has God's word failed? And he says it, verse 6, it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring. But through Isaac shall your offspring be named. This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.
So what he's saying is we need to define Israel properly. That's a big part of what this chapter is all about.
Some who are of the ethnic race, the natural genetic race who descended physically, in that sense, from Abraham, are not true Israel. Because the true Israelite, he's saying, is one who believes and receives the promises of God in Jesus Christ.
So not all of biological Israel constitutes the true Israel. And the Pharisees had traditionally taken a boastful sense of pride and false security in the fact that they were ethnically Jewish. And John the Baptist had very searing words for them. You may remember from Matthew 3:7, when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees, he said to them, You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come, bear fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father. And listen to this, he says, For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.
What a very Very important and prophetic word to them is that the real children of Abraham, he's saying, is something that is spiritual and miraculous. And then Jesus was even stronger with the religious hypocrites of the day. In John 8, for example, he said, I speak what I've seen with my father, and you do what you've heard from your father, speaking to the religious hypocrites of the day. And they answered him, Abraham's our father. And Jesus said to them, If you were Abraham's children, you'd be doing the works Abraham did.
But now you seek to kill me, a man who's told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You're doing the works your father did. And they said, we're not born of sexual immorality, thinking they're saying that some other earthly father. He said, we have one father, even God.
And Jesus said to them, if God were your father, you'd love me. For I came from God and I'm here. I came of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It's because you cannot bear to hear my word.
You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. This is so strong words, but it's important because what he's saying is that it is a deception. It is an illusion to think that simply because you're of this physical race, that therefore you are assured all of these promises of God and you are somehow this elite class and you don't have to have faith in God and you don't need the grace of God. That's essentially what he's confronting there.
So John, in the prologue of his incredible, incredible gospel, he makes this very clear when he talks about how Jesus came into his own and his own people, the Jewish people, didn't receive him. He said, but at verse 12 of John 1, to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. You see what he's saying? Not everybody's a child of God, and not just because you're of ethnic Jewish ancestry, are you a child of God? He's saying.
But he gave a right to become children of God who were born not of blood, that's genetics, that's natural descent, nor of the will of the flesh, that's works, righteousness, nor of the will of man, but of God.
So there's a difference between being the physical, natural descendant Israel, and being a spiritual descendant. This is why Paul says again at verse 6: it's not as though the word of God had failed, for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.
So when God promised that all Israel will be saved, He didn't mean that all ethnic Israel will be saved. He's talking about all that is truly the true spiritual Israel, those that receive grace from God, those that have faith in God. You could think of it as a graphic of two circles, and the larger one being ethnic or the natural physical Israel, but within that, there's the true spiritual Israel. And the spiritual descendant who's a child of God by faith, that is, in a sense, the true Israelite.
So, this is something that is really important and really astounding. But what he's saying is that the children of God are the children of promise. They are not just simply of one race. Or, as theologian N.T. Wright says, what counts is grace, not race.
So all of this He then begins to point to the thing that is just so Scandalously unfair, and he uses two stories to illustrate God's grace and mercy, how he works to choose out of his own gracious good. Pleasure so that he has children whose spiritual eyes are opened. And this gets really, it can really wrap your mind around this and go, wait a minute, I don't understand. How can we be predestined and also have free will? The Bible teaches both, and there's a limit to what we can understand.
But what God's trying to do here, I think, in His Word and throughout, is not so much to get us to be able to mentally process something that might not make sense to our limited minds, but He's wanting to point us to the gospel, and that's where we're going to go.
So, we're going to get into the stories about some of this unfairness. But before we do, let me just highlight this essential principle so that your eyes will be poised to see the goodness of God here. And that is that, in the end, what is it that we need most from God? We most need from God in a real sense for Him. To not be fair, and by that I mean find a way to not give us the punishment we deserve.
I'm sure I've told sometime in the past years about great illustration of this from theologian, author, and professor R. C. Sprawl, now in heaven. Who said that when he was teaching a class one time, and he gave a syllabus at the beginning, and he gave all the requirements of the course in the beginning, and he said on day one to all the students, he said, every paper, there are three of them, is due no later than these due dates. And he gave them the dates.
He said, It's very important that you turn them in on time. He said, I do not tolerate any late papers. He said, here's the good news. He says, you know what the topics are, and you can write them in advance. You can get them done as early as you want.
But if they're so much as one day late, then you get an F. And he said, agreed. Everybody said, well, I understand, Professor.
Well, the date of the first paper rolled around and all the students came in and dutifully turned in their papers. But there was one student, I'll call him Jimmy, who didn't have his paper. And he came up to him and he said, Dr. Sproll, he said, I am so, so, so sorry. He said, I just apologize.
My grandmother died. I had a funeral to go to. And then I lost a lot of my work on the computer at the same time. And, you know, he started telling us different excuses. He said, it will never happen again.
He said, please, I just cannot afford to get an F on a paper. Could I just, if you could give me this one time, a one-week extension? R. C. Sproll professor said, Well, I never do this, I'm never doing it again, but okay, you get a one-week extension.
Oh, thank you, Dr. Sprohl, thank you, thank you so much. And off he went.
Well, the time of the second paper rolled around, and this time everybody turned their paper in, but this time about four. Students. Came up to him and said, like Jimmy on that first paper, we've had, and their grandmothers had died, their dogs had eaten their paper, their computers had crashed, or whatever, you know. And they pleaded with him and said, Please, can we get a one-week extension like you gave Jimmy? It'll never happen again.
We would appreciate it so much. He said, All right, I can't believe I'm doing this. I'll do it one more time. I'm giving you four, a one-week extension. Don't let it happen again.
Thank you, Dr. Sproul. Off they went. The third paper came due. And this time, everybody having known about these one-week extensions, about half the students strolled in and handed in their paper, and the other half strolled in and said, sorry, professor, but we don't have it today.
Our grandmothers died, computer crashed, dog ate the paper. And so, but we'll have it in within the one-week extension. Yeah. And Professor Sprull, seeing a teachable moment, said, Everybody sit down. They went and sat down.
The room got quiet. He said, please raise your hand if you do not have your paper on time today. And they started raising a hand. He started going around the room. All right.
Susan? That's an F. Carolyn F. Peter F And he started going around putting the F in his grade book.
Well, the students were up in arms. They started crying foul. They started saying, What, Professor, what are you doing? You can't do that. That's not right.
That's not fair. And he said, What? He said, You want fairness? They said, Yeah. He said, You want justice?
They said, Yeah. And he said, All right, Jimmy. He said, aren't you the one that that first paper, you also didn't turn in on time? Yes, sir. I'm going to do the fair thing.
I'm gonna give you F for that one also. And Susan, Weren't you one of the students on the second paper? You didn't have yours on time? Yes, sir. I'm going to give you an F on that one too.
Got real quiet until finally the theology professor had made his point and he said, Beloved. Do not ever ask God for justice. Ask him for mercy. What you need from God is not fairness. What you need is his grace.
And so Paul brings up two Old Testament stories that highlight this in a fairly remarkable way. They are stories that are illustrating the scandal of this unfairness. Not to teach what you could call hyper-Calvinism that says everything is predetermined by fate, Eastern religions, Islam. And a number of religions teach something like fate. The ancient Greeks believed in fate.
Everything is predetermined.
Nowhere in the Bible is that taught. What we do and what we think and what we say and how we act and what we choose makes huge difference.
So it's not a Hyper-Calvinism that says God just sat up there and eeny, meeny, miney, mo, what Pastor Chris one time called duck, duck, damned, where you're just picking out some for heaven and some for hell. That's not the picture at all. But it's also not the picture of what, in theological terms, is called Pelagianism, taken from Pelagius, a fifth-century monk, who essentially taught that every person has the ability to choose good or evil, to serve God or serve self. And so you just make a choice for God, and thus every person who's saved is saved in this same way. I mean, every person who's lost is lost by their ability to make the right decisions.
And so, in that sense, that's wrong because it acts as though we're preparing ourselves for glory or we're preparing ourselves for destruction. But there is this scandalous, beautiful, powerful middle way that embraces both the freedom and the importance of our choices and yet the incredible predestining power of God that is emanating from his love. And when you think about, well, the whole notion of predestination, when you think about it, there's something that you go, but that's not fair. Why didn't he save everyone? And there are a thousand illustrations that could be used.
Maybe the one that D.K. James Kennedy used many years ago is best. He said, imagine, he says, that there are five people planning to hold up a bank and they're friends of mine. And I beg them not to rob the bank. And I can't talk them out of this foolishness.
They're just bent on going and robbing the bank. And I'm begging and pleading with them not to. But as they go in the bank, and finally, I just go and I tackle one of them and I just restrain them from even going into the bank. And I take them in my car. And when they go in and rob the bank, they are caught and one is shot and they are all condemned in the court of law.
But one of them is free and not part of it because I had rescued him from it. Who would ever say that it was somehow my fault? That there was somebody that was condemned, or that there was somebody that died who was robbing the bank. The only reason the free person is free is because of me, because I restrained him. And so, this is why it's true in the words succinctly from Sam Storms: Therefore, no one goes to hell except those who deserve to, and no one goes to heaven because they deserve to.
And this is where Paul is going to. But he's pointing here to the gospel in a way that's incredibly powerful. Yes, it's not fair, even scandalously so, but oh, when you see it. everything begins to open up to you about the goodness of God.
So two stories that he alludes to. The first story is about Abraham and Sarah and their and these two boys, Ishmael and Isaac. God had promised Abraham, and maybe you know the story, that he and Sarah would have a son and their old age. And Sarah was way beyond childbearing age, and Abraham was old, and there was just no way in the natural it could happen. And so God promised them that they were going to have a son.
Well, some time went by, and they began to think, well, we don't have a son, and it's not possible for it to happen. And so, in order to make it happen, Sarah suggests that they get their maidservant, their handmaiden named Hagar, who worked in their house, and have her be a surrogate mother. And so Abraham fathers this son. Through Hagar, and his name is Ishmael. And God comes and revisits Abraham and Sarah.
He said, Ishmael is not what I promised you. He said, you are going to have your own biological son, the two of you. And they both laughed about it. It's impossible. But indeed, God did the impossible.
He brought life where there was no chance of life coming to be. And he brought about the fulfillment of a promise. It was rooted not in humanity's ability to make it happen. And that's how Isaac was born. And then what happened was when Isaac was growing up and Ishmael, now his older half-brother, is in the household, that there's conflict.
And especially there's conflict that happens between Hagar and Sarah. And Sarah, she wants to get rid of him. This is what we read in Genesis 21. The child grew and was weaned, and Abraham made a great feast on the day Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she'd borne to Abraham, laughing.
So she said to Abraham, cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac. And this thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son Ishmael. But God, this is where it's so scandalous. God said to Abraham, be not displeased because of the boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you.
For through Isaac shall your offspring be named.
So they send Ishmael out. I mean, Sarah's the one who had had the idea in the first place. And now they're going to kick the slave woman out and hurt all these feelings. And God actually endorsed it. In fact, Paul picks up on this later in his epistle to the Galatians.
And he says in Galatians 4: You brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. But just as that time, he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him according to the spirit, who was born according to the spirit, so it is now.
So, what does the scripture say? Cast out the slave woman and her son. The son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.
So now. Brothers, we are not children of the slave, but the free ones.
So Paul takes the story, embraces it, and says it even has a bigger meaning that's pointing to who you are, Christian, is that you're like Isaac. You were supernaturally reborn by the Spirit of God. You were born according to the grace of God and the promises of God, not by any work, any human works that anyone should boast.
So we're seeing here that in the unfairness of what happens to Ishmael, that there is something powerful of the gospel that is being exposed. And that is that to be a child of God according to the gospel is a miracle that has to do with resurrection life, with supernatural life that comes where there was only deadness, and it comes not by human intervention or effort or works in any manner, but it comes by the promise of God. Alan Wright. Today's good news message: that's not fair in our series Beloved. It's a study in Romans and Pastor Alan is here in the studio in just a moment with our parting good news.
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Take a moment today to visit pastorallen.org and discover what's waiting for you. That's pastorallen.org. Back here in the studio to share Pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day. Our teaching. That's not fair.
To say something's not fair is to touch upon Yes. deep inward awareness that we have that Everything should be fair, you know, and We're bothered if there's something that seems like Like, oh boy, you know, I didn't get what I was uh deserving. But the fact of the matter is that We've got to get comfortable with seeming unfairness because. If things were fair. then none of us would be saved.
Because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and deserve God's wrath. But Jesus came and did the most unfair thing of all. He hung on the cross in our place.
So I like to Just say to all our listeners. When life's treating you unfairly, and sometimes it really, really does, and it can hurt. Yeah. Think of Jesus. And think of The bigger unfairness in your life, and that is that you've been given the gift of eternity.
That By all standards of fairness, you never should have been given. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.
