Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing—a biblical, faith-filled vision for your life. I bless your strength in the waiting, waiting for spring, waiting for sunshine. And while you wait, God works. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted. But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.
Isaiah forty thirty thirty one. What if your waiting isn't wasted time? What if your waiting is actually waiting? W e i g h t i n g strength conditioning in God's weight training program. Bless your days in the weight room.
You're getting stronger in Christ as you wait on the Lord, and that's the gospel. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Allen Wright. What you end up being as a Christian, therefore, is not a person who grovels before God Almighty, but A child and a co-heir who more cuddles up to your father, who loves you infinitely and has completely forgiven you, so that your confession becomes: "I thank you, God. I'm forgiven. I thank you, God.
I've been redeemed." 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 this series, "Beloved: A Study of Romans Chapters 9 through 11." is 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.
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Here is Alan Wright. Hypothetically, if someone could keep all the law, then they would be righteous. They would remain in right standing with God, and they would be saved, and they would live forever. But no one's done that except Jesus. And so Paul, having taught us that no one is righteous, he moves on here to verse six, Romans ten six.
But the righteousness based on faith, as contrasted to the righteousness based on the law, he says, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?' That is, bring Christ down." Or who will descend into the abyss? That is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith that we proclaim.
Now, what's surprising is that in order to explain salvation and the righteousness that comes by faith, which Paul has been teaching us about. In all of Romans, he here makes at first what seems puzzling a reference to Deuteronomy and the giving of the law, and he's quoting or adapting verses from Deuteronomy chapter thirty. And anyone that was a first-century Jew familiar with the Torah would have immediately known he was referencing Deuteronomy.
So look at it through this eyes, and and look at it, asking as I did of this text, why, in order to explain salvation by grace, is he here quoting from the law? And this is what he says. This is what his reference, Deuteronomy thirty. Verse eleven and following, this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you. Neither is it far off.
Okay, so this is Moses speaking, the word of the Lord, telling the people about all of the giving of the law, and saying, the commandment I command you today is not too hard for you. Neither is it far off.
Well, that's an interesting thing, given the fact that. It's so hard that nobody except Jesus has ever kept all the law. Verse 12 in Deuteronomy 30. It's not in heaven that you should say, "Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us that we may hear and do it." So you can see that's what Paul was referencing there. Neither is beyond the sea that you should say, "Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us that we may hear and do it." And Paul reinterprets that and says into the abyss because sometimes the sea was thought of as the abyss.
But Deuteronomy 30 verse 14, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so you can do it. Was a little puzzling because, again, no one was able to do the law, and yet here's the Lord saying it's very near you, and you can do it, and you don't have to ascend to heaven. To bring it down, you don't have to descend into the abyss. And Paul knows the problem with the law is that no one can keep it, and yet he's quoting that section. And in order to understand it, you really we won't read all of it, but you really should look at all of Deuteronomy 30.
But look at this a little bit more closely, verse 11 of Deuteronomy 30. The commandment I command you today is not too hard for you. Though it it sounds like that that's the very thing that would be hard is to keep the law as Paul has taught us, but or make sense of this in Romans ten six when Paul says, "Do not say in your heart," there he's quoting a different passage in Deuteronomy. I know this is a little confusing, but stay with me for a second. He's quoting Deuteronomy nine four and five.
Do not say in your heart after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you. It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess the land.
Now this is so important because in Deuteronomy nine, the gospel is being proclaimed to the people of God long before Jesus, and Moses is speaking the word of the Lord to the people and saying to them, "When you go into the promised land, whatever you do." Do not say, Israel, that we got this because of our own righteousness. It's going to be because I drove the enemy out of the land and gave it to you. And it's absolutely imperative that you remember that the promised land was a gift. Though you fight battle after battle, and though you go and you take it, and you stand in the courage, it still comes to you by my word and my promise and my power. There never has been two ways that God was going to bless His people.
One, because His people were righteous, and the other, because of grace. They've never been righteous, and so it's always been by grace.
So what Paul's doing here is he's taking two familiar passages. They'd be familiar to his Jewish readers, from Deuteronomy nine and from Deuteronomy thirty. And he's putting this together. Do not say in your heart. He's quoting this and he's reminding them of Deuteronomy thirty.
And there's another section in Deuteronomy thirty. That you need to see in order to make sense of this, and that's verses five and six, Deuteronomy thirty-five and six. The Lord your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possess, that you may possess it, and He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live. This is a prophetic.
Promise that is only fulfilled in the giving of Jesus Christ. This is God saying that what I really desire is not external laws like circumcision. What I really desire, and my pledge to you, is that it's going to be a day in which the law is going to be internalized, in which you will have within you a capacity to do what is right, not because you are trying to keep a law outside of yourself, but because you have been filled up with my grace. On the inside, and he's promising this blessedness.
So this is what Paul is referencing from Deuteronomy 30.
Now look at this—an insight that I gained from a beautiful sermon of John Piper's I read this week. In which you look at the contrast between what Paul says and what Deuteronomy says, and I'm gonna put this up for Deuteronomy 30:11. Who will ascend to heaven and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it?
Okay, so that phrase that we may hear it and do it.
Well, Paul at verse six of Romans 10, he changes the language here. Who will ascend into heaven? But he doesn't say that we may hear and do it. But now he says that is bring Christ down. And then same thing in Deuteronomy thirty verse thirteen: Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us that we may hear and do it?
But when Paul quotes it, Romans ten seven: Who will descend into the abyss? He changes language and says to bring Christ up from the dead.
So where Moses speaks of obedience to the commandments, Paul puts in Christ. It only means this: that when God says the commandments are not too hard for you, and that this is very near, He's pointing to Jesus the Messiah. Is pointing to the fulfillment of this great promise of when the Holy Spirit will have come, and it's a radical and beautiful and powerful thing to think that fifteen hundred years before Jesus, that Moses is saying this is doable and it is near, but the only way that is doable and it is near is by the gift of Jesus Christ, and that when Moses says you don't have to ascend to the heaven and try to bring it down so you can do it. And you don't have to descend into hell and bring it up.
So you have to do it. That Paul comes back and reclaims this text, and he says, "You do not have to, by your righteousness, climb up to heaven as if you need to bring Christ down to bless you. And you don't need to wallow in your shame and go into the abyss of hell and try to bring blessing back up out of your own remorse. But instead, it is very near you." Salvation itself and every blessing of God, He's saying it is not off in some distant heaven, and it has not been lost in hell, but it is here now in Christ Jesus. Wow, this is near as your own breath and your own heart.
Every blessing of God and salvation is so near. Oh, I wish everybody could know that. It's not. They're not hurdles, and obstacles, and puzzles, and great odysseys and journeys that must be made. They're not enormous sacrifices, and weeping and gnashing of teeth, and wallowing in shame.
These are the things of religion. But the salvation of God is at hand. The second surprise that might be a surprise to some of you, and I think would have been a surprise to his readers, is really twofold, and that is when he says, "Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord." That, in the first place, he calls Jesus Lord. And that salvation is received through the acknowledgment of the lordship of Jesus, and this is so powerful and scandalous to the Jewish reader because when Moses was called by God and said, "Who shall I tell them sent me?" God said, "Tell them." Yahweh sent you. He gave a personal and covenantal name that was considered thereafter by the Jews too holy to even utter, and it means "I am." It is signified just by four Hebrew letters that come across translator a Y H W H.
Yahweh, we would say, and in your English Bibles. When you see the Lord, and it's in capital letters, that's our English translation way of designating that is where those four letters Yahweh are used in the Hebrew Old Testament. And when this very important translation of the Old Testament came into the Greek, it's called the Septuagint. We learn a lot because whatever words in Greek were used to translate Hebrew are very instructive to us about how everyone thought about those words, and so in the Greek Septuagint, where it is Yahweh, that becomes Kyrios, the Lord, Lord.
So when Paul says. If you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord. This is what's so scandalous and powerful. He's saying if you confess that Jesus is Yahweh, that Jesus is the same God who spoke to Moses from a burning bush, that He's the same God who created everything that exists and flung the stars into their places and put planets in their orbit and made human DNA. Jesus is that God.
And this is the mark of what it is to be a Christian. Christians are people that believe Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, and anything less than that is not Christianity. By the way, if you ever want to know what distinguishes Christianity from every other form, or or pseudo Christianity, or a cult, or whatever it might be. Just look and see what they say about the divinity of Jesus Christ. Is he God in their eyes?
See, Son of God, who's been raised from the dead, God in the flesh, and so that's beautiful. And when he says, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord," he is referencing directly Joel two, verse thirty-two, a prophecy that says, "It shall come to pass." That everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved, not just the chosen Jewish people. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved, and Paul takes that and says, "This is about Jesus." Wow!
So to say Jesus is Lord is to say Jesus is God.
So Anne and I were talking about how do we tell this for the little kids, and I finally we just said, why don't you just tell them, if you want to accept Jesus, if you want to really be a Christian, then you say, God, I, you're the real King, and I want you to be in charge of my life. You're Lord, you're everything, and what is also beautiful, beloved, and may be surprising to you here is that. When Paul says what we are to confess, we are to confess that Jesus is Lord. That salvation is rooted in confessing the lordship of Jesus. But there is not here in this definitive passage anything about confession of sin.
There is, of course, plenty in the Bible about confession of sin and repentance. But when Jesus said, when he preached and he told his disciples, "Preach, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand," he did not mean go tell the people to come up and list all of their sins. He meant tell the people to turn, to change their way of thinking. They always thought the kingdom was off in the future somewhere, but I want them to know it's at hand. The Messiah they've anticipating is now.
So what you're preaching is it's time to change all your thinking. The Messiah has come. And there is a text in First John that says, "If we confess our sins, He's faithful to forgive us." Some of this has led people to believe that the confession of all your sin is a prerequisite for salvation. But let me put you at ease about this. It can't be, if for no other logical reason, you don't even know all your sins.
In fact of the matter, the more I walk with God, I have to admit, I probably don't know one percent of my sins, and I'm not exaggerating. I'm really not exaggerating. And if we were to spend all our time. Trying to figure out, ferret out, and confess all our sins to God. We wouldn't do anything else, and God would be up in His heavens going, "My, my, my!
I have some important mission for you, and here you are groveling before me again." To confess is wonderful Greek word, homologeo, and you recognize that prefix homo that means same. Homogeneous and logeo to say with.
So to speak, rather logeo to speak or to say.
So homologeo is to say the same thing, or it is to speak in the same way.
So to confess in our minds has taken on the meaning of the litany of our sins, but that is not. What the primary emphasis of the New Testament concept of confession is? Confession is to agree and say with God. It is to agree with what God has said and to say the same thing. When you are saved.
And you confess that Jesus is Lord. What you're doing is you're saying, God, you've said that Jesus is Lord, and now I say Jesus is Lord, and we're saying the same thing, and that's my confession. Allen Wright. Today's good news message is saved. It's in our series, Beloved: A Study of Romans.
And Pastor Alan is back with us in the studio, sharing his parting good news thought for the day. In just a moment, Allen Wright Ministries is more than just a daily radio broadcast. Here are Daniel and Pastor Alan explaining another layer. Pastor Alan, we love putting resources into the hands of believers and those who are looking for ways to improve their life through the good news of the gospel. And those resources show up in a variety of ways.
One of the coolest ways I think, though, is every day a resource called the Daily Blessing pops in my email inbox, and one. Way to start our day. This is absolutely free. It's the best way to start your day or to pillow your head at night. Put this down into your heart.
The sound of a blessing, and by that we mean a positive biblical vision spoken in faith over your life that helps shape your identity for who you really are, and with it fuels you for a positive future that God has intended. It's a world that's real quick to curse. You don't have to go very long into your day before somebody is ready to speak negative things over you. We need the true word of God spoken over our life, and so Daniel, I write a daily blessing every day, and would love to send it. All you have to do is just give us your email at pastorallen dot org, and we'll get you signed up and start including you.
Pastorallen dot org is your next step. Simply drop by on your. Tablet or computer today. That's pastorallen. dot org, and be blessed with a fresh word from the Lord today.
Back here now with Pastor Alan in the studio, sharing his parting good news thought for the day, and the teaching is saved. And that, if you're not careful, that can be a an inside baseball kind of word for Christians.
So it's good to unpack this word and the glorious meaning that it is. What's your good news thought for the day here? To to be saved means there's something we need to be saved from, and we are saved. I think more holistically than a lot of us ever realize. We're not just saved from hell, so that we get to go to heaven.
Though there is that, and that is worth praising God now and forever. But we're also saved from all the pathways. To destruction that comes through condemnation and shame that follows after us when we're in our sin, and so it means therefore that anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord is offered a kind of holistic salvation, something that is. Full and fruitful and and shalom producing and healing and and wholeness is offered to you.
So call upon the name of Him. If you don't know Him, call upon the name of Him. And if you do know Him, All upon them again today. If you only caught part of today's teaching, not only can you listen again online, but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching, delivered right to your email inbox, free. Find out more about these and other resources at PastorAllen dot org.
That's PastorAllen dot o r g. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.
