The Peace Brought by Fire [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. That's Pastor Alan Wright.

Welcome to another message of this message go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org or call 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860. That's Pastor Alan Wright. That's Pastor Alan Wright. That's Pastor Alan Wright.

That's Pastor Alan Wright. I've done this with so many couples over the years. And it's amazing to me of all of the counseling principles that I've seen it work spiritually in people's lives.

This brings the most wonderful sudden fruit of anything I've ever seen. And the reason is because you know how it is if you have a misperception about somebody and then it gets cleared up and you see it in a different light within everything changes almost instantly. That's how powerful it is to get free of a judgment. And the reason that we judge, we've got these wounds that create insecurity in our heart. Nobody's been perfectly loved. In healthy homes, there's lots of love and so you get real secure.

You get real secure. You're not worried so much about whether you measure up. But most people in the world have big doses of shame which means I'm always feeling like maybe I don't quite measure up.

And what those wounds do that create that shame make us think we don't measure up, what do we do to try to feel better about that? Well, we're anxious. I might not be good and I might not be good enough. I might not be smart enough.

I might not be acceptable enough. And so those terrible feelings of angst demand to get masked. And so if we can just make ourselves better than somebody else, call them a name, judge them, put them here, then we feel a little bit better about ourselves. It's just that simple.

It just doesn't work. Because when you judge, you just reap more judgment. And what happens is that you can just get polarized of people just judging each other. I've told you, I've got a little problem here that I grew up, big Carolina fan, everybody in my family went to Carolina and I got a son who's a Duke Law student and actually had to see some good things about Duke.

It's been a real problem. See, what happens if you develop a rivalry like this is that from the time you're young, a Carolina fan is trained, you gotta hate Duke. It was so funny. Years ago, I was watching after the Carolina had won national championship and I guess 17, they'd beaten, I think it was Gonzaga, and they interviewed a boy who was from Winston-Salem, one of the Winston-Salem reporters was there on scene and he found a boy from Winston-Salem who went and interviewed this little Carolina fan after the game, and they interviewed him and they said, how do you feel? And he said, great.

And he said, what are you most excited about? And he said, this means Carolina has more national championships than Duke. And I just was laughing, I was like, we didn't even play Duke, we played Gonzaga. But you're more excited that this puts us one ahead of Duke.

But it goes the other way, too. I was over visiting, been into law school one day and he told me to show me at Cameron Indoor Stadium, their basketball rams, looking around the lobby and they've got all these, I mean, they gotta admit it, they got championship stuff and everything. I mean, okay, they're pretty good at basketball. But there's one case over there that's got a basketball in it and I thought, you know, signed, ooh, this must have been a game, you know, like from a game they won a national championship. And I went and looked at the ball.

This is no lie, a little ball. It wasn't a national championship ball. It wasn't ACC championship.

It was a ball signed by Coach K and the inscription below said, the ball that was used in the game that Duke won that gave Coach Mike Krzyzewski one more win than Dean Smith, all-time, lifetime win. That's how this rivalry's right there. But see, what happens is you'll see something and what we do is we take it and we'll take something specific like, you know, as a Carolina fan, like maybe I'll bring up Christian Laettner who stomped, who stomped on a Kentucky player, stomped on him in the game. There's no disputing that. And so then you say, well, that's Duke for you right there.

No, that was Christian Laettner in that moment. But it's ridiculous for me to say, see there, everybody at Duke stinks. They're all stomping on people and they're all prideful. Look, Duke stinks, everybody Duke. And then I got a son at Duke Law School and what am I gonna say?

Well, everybody's terrible except there's one good guy who's there. It's just ridiculous, right? It's just ridiculous when judgment reaches that level in a society. And Jesus came into a polarized world as well to set us free from this diabolical cycle. Look again at this strange text, Luke 12, 49.

Here's what he's done to set us free. I came to cast fire on the earth and wood that were already kindled. And then a statement that follows it, notice it. This is the way it's often done and a form of writing, a grammatical structure to reinforce the first statement is repeated but in different imagery. So the second repeats the first. I have a baptism to be baptized with, which is parallel to I came to cast fire on the earth and how great is my distress until it's accomplished, which is parallel to and wood that were already kindled.

What's he talking about? And remember, fire is most often in the Bible associated with judgment. Sometimes fire has a powerful, beautiful image like at Pentecost but most of the time through all the prophetic literature, most places that you'll see the fire mentioned, it is the fire of judgment. And so Jesus is alluding to the fire of judgment and is saying I came to cast the fires of judgment on the earth and yet he also said he came not to condemn but to save and spend his whole life ministering and loving people who should have just been judged. He said I wish it were already kindled. And then he parallels the statement saying I have a baptism, which means an immersion.

He's saying there's something I have to be immersed in and I'm in distress until it can happen. Yes, Jesus came to bring fire and judgment. But what makes the gospel so wonderful, beloved, is that he brought the fire and judgment on himself at the cross. The baptism that he had to be immersed in was his own suffering to bear up under the weight of your sin and mine.

It's the best news the world has ever heard. Because without the cross, there is no justice in the world. It could be confusing especially in the spirit of the age that people go well why couldn't God, why do we have to have this bloody cross?

Why do we have to have Jesus dying on this cross? And people would say well couldn't God just overlook sin? Couldn't he just forgive? He's a big gracious loving God. It's because that's not the way justice works. Forgiveness is not free, it's never free.

That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Prayer, as a Christian you know it's important and you want to make it a priority. But if you're like most, your prayer life can slip so easily into routine, lacking fervor and passion. Maybe you're wondering what is the key to praying with real power? In Ephesians chapter six, the Apostle Paul has a clear answer, pray in the spirit. But what does it mean to pray in the spirit?

Some would say that Paul is referring only to the spiritual gift of a supernatural prayer language. But in Alan Wright's unique series, Praying with Power, Pastor Alan reveals five different ways of praying in the spirit. Discover how praying God's word is praying in the spirit. Learn how to listen to the spirit as you pray. Come to see Jesus as your prayer partner.

It's practical, it's powerful. Get Pastor Alan Wright's Praying with Power and discover the power of praying in the spirit. Change your prayer life and you'll change the world. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.

When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. 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. By way of example, so I mentioned about my daughter and somebody back into her, it was a good friend of hers. Well, a few years back, another good friend of hers opened his door and real strong right into that side of Abby's door and left a big crescent-shaped dent in the side of her door. And at the time, we talked about it and the kid was very apologetic and Abby's car is a 2004, it's not a real valuable car or anything like that and we just said, well, let's just not worry about it. In other words, we forgave it. So you said, well, that was free.

No, it wasn't free. We paid for it because the car was devalued by whatever, if you took it into a dealer and said, I want to sell it, they said, well, you got a big dent here and they're gonna deduct, right? So we paid for it.

And so then this week, somebody backed into her. Now the door won't close in the back and I know it's gonna be expensive and we hate asking our friends insurance to pay and the insurance will go up and we just wish we could forgive this but the door won't close and it's gonna be expensive and what are we gonna do? So I said, Abby, we're probably gonna have to let her insurance or let her family pay for it and I hate it but you gotta have your car, otherwise you don't have a car. And so in this case, they're probably gonna, but if we just said we forgive you, then I would go buy a new door. But forgiveness isn't free. That's not the way justice works. You can't just overlook sin and say, oh, we've got justice.

That's not the way it works. So God came in the person of Jesus Christ so that through the cross, the Bible says, God can be both just and justifier and he took upon himself the judgment that you and I should have deserved. So the one person who had perfect morality and perfect knowledge and could have judged everybody he met instead became the friend of sinners and he himself took the fire of judgment upon himself at the cross and through that, we were saved. Well, if you think about that very much, it'll change your heart. And it'll not just change your heart where you'll go, well, Jesus didn't judge, he took it, so that should motivate me.

No, it'll do more than that. What it'll do is if you think about how much God has done to forgive you and if you would think about the fullness of what the work is that's been accomplished when Jesus said it is finished, then you will begin to receive a revelation of the perfect love of God. You will begin to understand that you in Christ are so completely forgiven that your sins are just washed away from you as far as the east is from the west and God will never remember them, never bring them up, he has no anger against you, he's your father, he loves you, he loves you perfectly, so you can come into the throne room of God's grace boldly in your time of need and just snuggle up in your daddy's lap because he's a good God and a good, good father. And you know what happens when you experience perfect love? First John tells us, perfect love casts out fear. In the presence of perfect love, your heart loses its insecurities and insecurities once gone away create a heart that's secure. I don't have to measure up, so I don't have to put anybody down, I'm already perfectly loved.

And when that happens, oh my, the things that you can do when you are just full of the love of God and can let go of that stinky judgment that makes you think, well that people are never gonna be anything, miracles can take place. The sports world attention this week is on East Lake Golf Course in Atlanta, Georgia for the final PGA event of the year, but the real story is not that golf tournament, the real story is East Lake development all around, that historic Bobby Jones Golf Course. They built on what used to be the second course at East Lake, a public assistance housing complex that by 1995 had become one of the most crime ridden neighborhoods in the United States. The crime rate was 18 times the norm.

The employment rate, not unemployment, employment rate was 14%. Nobody was working, gangs had taken over, drug deals were made in the open streets, so many people were being killed, the police called it Little Vietnam, bullet holes literally were riddled through brick and windows, trash was everywhere. The students were just failing, and one time they measured fifth graders for how many of them had met state standards for math aptitude and only 5%, 5%! Met just the basic state standards, and even local authorities were just giving up on it.

My wife and I lived in Atlanta for a period of time, and through seminary I did some work in the inner city, and then later worked at a church that was in the city, and volunteered at the women's shelter for several years there, and so we knew some of the different neighborhoods. I didn't go to East Lake, it was just too scary. The police barely wanted to go there. Everybody had given up on it. They just said that nothing could happen, and a quiet philanthropist, a wealthy man named Tom Cousins became aware of it, and he and his wife drove through the neighborhood and said they couldn't believe something like this existed in America.

Couldn't something be done about this? And he learned that the old stately golf course was nearing bankruptcy, and he decided to buy it, and of all things, imagine that, to use the golf course to try to leverage it to redo the neighborhood. It was unlikely. Everybody was skeptical, but he convinced 100 business people to invest $20,000 and buy into the club, and he said, we're gonna take every bit of it, 20 million, and put it into the neighborhood around us, and then he put about 25 of his own million dollars in there and worked with the Georgia Housing Authority and a resident leader at East Lake Meadows who was very skeptical of Edmond Mitt First, and y'all, they completely transformed that neighborhood. I heard an interview with Tom Cousins, and I loved what he said. He said, I just wanted to see what would happen if the kids growing in that neighborhood could just see something different.

Listen to what he said. I don't know if he's a Christian or not, but he said, I drove through there, and I thought, if I'd grown up here, instead of being who I am, I probably would have been on drugs and maybe in jail, and I wonder what would happen if kids could see something different. So the vision was a mixed residential neighborhood. Half of the people are on public assistance. Half are paying market value for the apartments, and they live next to each other, and so kids that had never seen it before are seeing hardworking parents get the newspaper, drink their coffee, go to work, come home, help their kids with their homework. They built a charter school right there in the neighborhood, and within 10 years, the employment rate had grown to nearly 90%. The crime rate had dropped to almost nothing, and it became one of the finest achieving schools in the state, because somebody, instead of judging, believed it was possible, and it just blessed me.

I was watching the golf this week, and they did a story, and they said, and the charter school there, the boys' team just won the Georgia State Championship, and they said, as far as they can tell, it's the first time in the history of America, an all African-American boys' golf team in high school won a state championship, and three of the guys are gonna go into scholarship college next year, two on golf, one on academic. How can it not just stir your heart and say, God, help us in this. Let us let go of judgment by receiving the perfect love of Jesus, wherein then we can be instruments of your peace to the world, judge not, and you will not be judged, but instead, you will be used by God to change the world, and that's the gospel. Alan Wright, our good news message today from the series Peacemakers, the teaching peace brought by fire.

We wish there was an easier way sometimes. Pastor Alan is back joining us in the studio sharing a parting good news thought for the day in just a moment. Prayer, as a Christian, you know it's important, and you wanna make it a priority, but if you're like most, your prayer life can slip so easily into routine, lacking fervor and passion. Maybe you're wondering, what is the key to praying with real power? In Ephesians chapter six, the apostle Paul has a clear answer, pray in the spirit. But what does it mean to pray in the spirit?

Some would say that Paul is referring only to the spiritual gift of a supernatural prayer language but in Alan Wright's unique series, Praying with Power, Pastor Alan reveals five different ways of praying in the spirit. Discover how praying God's word is praying in the spirit. Learn how to listen to the spirit as you pray. Come to see Jesus as your prayer partner.

It's practical, it's powerful. Get Pastor Alan Wright's Praying with Power and discover the power of praying in the spirit. Change your prayer life and you'll change the world. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, pastoralan.org. Back here in the studio, Pastor Alan, you're parting good news thought for the day, not only at the end of today's teaching but the entirety of this series on peacemakers. Well, Daniel, in some ways, I wish we could just spend months and months on this topic of Blessed Are the Peacemakers for our times, there is nothing more relevant than the search for peace and how peace can come. And when we see the amount of hate and the amount of pain that has come through the polarization of a culture, I hope that it leaves us all just yearning, oh God, show us the way of peace and show me, Lord, what it means for me to be a peacemaker in the midst of it. And what a fitting way to conclude the series to say let's let go of our judgments, leave all of that to God and remember that God came to us to take the fire upon himself.

The fire judgment came upon Jesus so that we would not be judged by God, that we would be found righteous. If you are in Christ, rejoice in the gift of your justification, the righteousness of Jesus has become yours. And if you've yet to accept Christ, if you have come into our broadcast today and you know that you have a lot of strife in your life and a lot of problems that you're facing and you're wondering what are you gonna do with it, I believe God's brought you for this moment that you could say yes to his saving love. To simply say yes, God, I don't have peace and the peace that I need can come only from you. Invite Christ into your life today and discover him to be the prince of peace. Today's good news message is a listener supported by the production of Alan Wright Ministries.