Speaking Like God [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

Things that are completely opposite, male and female, in so many ways, God says this is the most beautiful. If you want to see glory, take that which seems so opposite and make it into a dynamic union, and in that, life will emerge. 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 Power to Bless, taken from Pastor Alan's book of the same title and as presented at Reynolda 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. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's 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. More on that later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. Some people think, well, maybe the key is just stay right in the middle and don't have much emotions, because you don't want to be ruled by emotions, and that's true. But science has proven, the old Proverbs absolutely, literally true, laughter does good like a medicine, and there's nothing like a good belly laugh. I'm telling you, they have proven that people who laugh are—their immune systems are stronger.

There's all kinds of health benefits. Mentally, we're completely different when we laugh, and some have proven that laughter actually helps build the abdominal muscles. That's my best exercise is just laughing.

Best thing could happen, you just get hit with joy, the Holy Spirit, and laugh until you finally get that wonderful set of abs you've been talking about getting. Anyway, we need to laugh. There are times we just need to laugh, and we need to laugh a lot. And so you might say, well, that's the whole key then is laugh and never cry.

Not so. In this world, beloved, we lose things. That's just part of life. And Jesus Himself wept, profusely wept. And He said, blessed are those that mourn, for they'll be comforted. And if you never really mourn, how can you receive the comfort that you need? Did you know that they've discovered that there are actual toxins in our tears? There actually is something toxic that gets released and out of us when we cry. Every counselor and pastor can tell you it's one of the great obstacles in life because it feels so hard to grieve that we don't want to face our losses. And instead we try to ignore them, push them down, walk around them. And there is no other way to live a healthy life except to admit what we can't control and accept what we've lost and receive the ministry of the Holy Spirit to comfort us and the comfort of the body of Christ. We don't just need laughter. We don't just need tears.

We need both if you're really going to be healthy. Every illustration in life points to this, right? You know what's interesting after all of these thousands of years of humanity, do you know what the ratio of male to female on earth is? One to one. In fact, to be precise, it's 101 to 100. There are actually more baby boys that are born by a little bit, but for whatever reason, the men die off earlier. And so it all equals out. And at any given point throughout history, the ratio of men to women is one to one. Could somebody tell me what are the chances of that happening all by itself?

There's no chance of that. Why is that? It's God's design. Things that are completely opposite, male and female in so many ways, God says, this is the most beautiful. If you want to see glory, take that which seems so opposite and make it into a dynamic union. And in that life will emerge.

Wow. Which by the way, just parenthetically, I know this is a nuanced subject and it is a painful subject in the public arena, but our affirmation of only heterosexual marriage is not just because we point to a couple Bible verses. It is because of this grand design of God.

Things that seem to be opposite come together and glory is revealed. So we mustn't try to say, well, we don't need sleep and we don't really need exercise. Let's just get in the middle of the road and just stay right here where we don't really rest much and we don't really exercise much. How foolish that would be. It would be just as foolish to say we don't really need male and female.

Let's just get everything sort of the same. And that's not God's design. Jesus came full of grace and truth and we have beheld his glory. Look at verse 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. It means literally he tabernacled among us. It's an image that reminds us of the tent of meeting that traveled with the Israelites in the wilderness. And it was the place of the meeting of God and man. And so Jesus is the tabernacle. He is the temple. He is the place where God and man meet perfectly in him. And he dwelt among us, which means he pitched his tent among us.

He came near to us. Eugene Peterson wrote in the message of his translation, God moved into the neighborhood and we've seen his glory. Glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. This unspeakably important verse speaks of the word, which is the logos, which the Greeks had in mind as the ordering rational principle of the cosmos. And John says that logos is actually Jesus.

Wow. We've seen his glory. When you think of the glory of God coming down, you must think of Exodus 33 and 34. For Moses here at verse 18 said, please show me your glory. And God said, I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name, the Lord.

And I'll be gracious to whom I'll be gracious and I'll show mercy on whom I'll show mercy. But he said, but you cannot see my face for man shall not see me and live. Moses thirsted to see the glory of God.

He was like, I want to know you more. I want to experience your majesty more intimately. And God said, I'm going to show you part of my glory.

No one could see my full glory and live. So he hides Moses in the cleft of the rock. And it chapter 34 verse five, the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. So the Lord is announcing his own identity. He is describing himself. So of all the things the Lord could speak of here to define himself as he reveals him glory, look what the Lord does. The Lord passed before him verse six and proclaim the Lord, the Lord, Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, for giving iniquity and transgression and sin. What's all of that describing?

Who am I? God says, I am grace and then says, but who will by no means clear the guilty visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation. He has said that the wages of sin is death. He has said that only those who are obedient will walk in the blessings of God. He has said those who disobey the law will be cast apart from him and have judgment on their lives.

And if God spoke that, then the truth must come to pass. So what is God? Is he grace or is he truth? Is he love or is he holy?

Is he mercy or is he justice? And so you see when he defines his own nature to reveal his glory, you have to see God as both. He is not glorious if he's only grace. He is not glorious if he's only truth, but he is altogether lovely and altogether holy. And therefore he is glorious because his grace and truth always has been and always will be.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Imagine for 99 days in a row, someone tells you, I love you. I'll never forsake you. Wouldn't you feel cherished? But what would happen if on the hundredth day that same person said, I'm not sure you're good enough for me. If you don't measure up, I don't think I'll love you anymore.

Wouldn't that one day contaminate the meaning of the other 99 days? Wouldn't 1% of conditional love poison the other 99%? Well, just 1% of law is enough to spoil grace. The tiniest bit of law can introduce an unlimited capacity for fear. What if I don't measure up?

When might I be rejected? When the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church, the apostle Paul was outraged and wrote a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of law. Alan Wright's 12-message audio series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians, and that's the gospel.

Discover the purity and power of the grace of God. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. 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. Puts Moses into a cleft of the rock so he can see the glory of God. But when you come to Jesus Christ, you're put into Christ who is called the rock. He is the rock. You are hidden in Christ so you can come near to the glories of God.

He moved into the neighborhood. Augusta Top Lady was traveling in England's Cheddar Gorge and encountered a sudden storm and found shepherd in the shelter in a cleft of a rocky overhang. And it was there he was inspired with those timeless words, rock of ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. Let the water and the blood from thy wounded side which flowed be of sin, the double cure cleanse me from its guilt and power.

It's a double cure. Okay, so how does this, let's get a visual for this, how does this work? This is something I've shared from time to time over the years.

When we have new members class, we often will share this. This is something you could understand about what we aspire to be as a church. And it really is based on something that was doodled on a napkin by a friend of mine. It references verse 17, the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. I think sometimes people wrongly think that the contrast is merely between law and grace, the old covenant is law and the new covenant is grace and we speak of it that way but really the contrast is law and grace and truth. And it is not that there's grace and some law, there's no law for those of us who are in the new covenant but there's grace and truth.

This is really, really important to understand. And you know we preach grace so much, it doesn't mean that the law is bad, the law is good. The law was given by God to show us how we should live and the law was a revelation of God's own holiness and the law was given to us to let us know how much we need the Savior because we can't keep the law. It doesn't make the law bad, the law is good, it's just we can't keep it.

That's the deal. So we preach grace all the time you know. I got so tickled this week, I was talking to a couple who had been in the church for a long time now but when their children were young they had just started coming here, been coming less than a year and their third grader came to big church with them. And they heard the message of grace and got really excited about the gospel of grace and they went back to their home state where they used to live and while they were visiting family they went back and visited their old church. And they were riding away from church that day, the third grader piped up and said of the sermon said, well now if that wasn't just law, law, law, a third grader can recognize the difference between a heavy law that's a burden on your life and the power of grace that will liberate you to become like Jesus. So I love the covenant of grace but the new covenant is really grace and truth. That's who Jesus is, grace and truth. This is what I'm saying, grace and truth are utterly, utterly different but they are connected in Jesus. He's not just 50% grace and 50% truth, He's 100% grace and 100% truth. Grace means gift and the ultimate gift in a mysterious way really is when you give somebody the truth. So there's a real sense in which grace is truth and truth is grace, right?

If someone had a life threatening disease and the doctor says I have a study that reveals a particular antibiotic, one antibiotic that is effective against this disease and I'm going to give you the antibiotic and it's going to cure you. That truth of this one specific antibiotic is the greatest grace to that patient. Truth is grace and grace is truth.

They're inseparable and yet they seem so different. I was sitting with a friend and having breakfast and he was just, this is many, many years ago and he said here I think of Reynolda and he said I think of grace and truth. He said not many churches are like that. He said really this is the aspiration of the Christian life, we should be full of grace.

And so he doodled this on a napkin I want to just show you how this works. So first he just put at the top he said Jesus is full of grace and He is full of truth. And he said what's a word for the opposite of grace and he drew an arrow over.

And I said well I would say legalism. And he said yeah okay. So what's opposite of truth and he drew an arrow and I said well I would call that deception or falsehood, something like that.

He said sure. He said the problem is that whereas Jesus was 100% grace and 100% truth most of us lean in one way or the other and often times there's a rift that comes right down the middle of this. And so the problem with it is that if we're all grace and we don't have any truth look what it leads to and it leads to a life of deception. I mean just think about that if all you are is just lovely and gracious and kind but you don't care about the truth or are filled with the truth what are you going to wind up with? Some people that seem really nice that are really lost.

Just lost. I often say to people like this say well people that don't believe in narrow truth well just let them ask somebody for directions. What if somebody wants directions to my house well I say well far be it from me to tell you any specific way to get there.

Always lead to my house. That's just what people could be wandering around lost right? People need specific truth but if you have truth and you have no grace look what you wind up with. Legalism.

And I could use some other words for this. You could refer also to legalism as a moralism. I like to think of moralism as you care about right and wrong way more than relationship. Moralism if you will like a transaction then God will.

If you will be better. Moralism likes to interpret every story in the Bible as if it's about how you ought to be a better person so that God will bless you more. So if you read the story of David and Goliath we teach them in Sunday school moralistically. Look at David he was brave. Now you ought to be brave like David.

Face all your Goliaths. Be brave. Have you ever noticed that telling somebody just to be brave doesn't make them brave? But I tell you what will make you brave is if you're one of the cowardly soldiers of Israel trembling day after day at Goliath's taunts and then one day a mediator an unlikely candidate from Bethlehem comes onto the scene and says I'll fight the giant and he runs out there with his sling and smooth stones and slays the enemy on behalf of the whole army. I tell you what will make you brave is when you see that happen. When you see what your champions done for you when you see what David's done when you see what the son of David has done when you see what is possible all of a sudden that cowardly army is brave and they chase them down for seven miles routing the Philistines as they go.

Moralism just tells you what you ought to be and doesn't give you any power to be it. Allen Wright today's good news message speaking like God. It's from the series the power to bless Pastor Alan's book by the same title and you can get that at Pastor Alan.org find out more on how to get a copy of your own Pastor Alan is back with us in the studio sharing his parting good news thought for the day in just a moment. Imagine for 99 days in a row. Someone tells you I love you. I'll never forsake you when you feel cherished. But what would happen if on the hundredth day that same person said I'm not sure you're good enough for me if you don't measure up.

I don't think I love you anymore. Wouldn't that one day contaminate the meaning of the other 99 days when one percent of conditional love poison the other 99 percent. Well just one percent of law is enough to spoil grace. The tiniest bit of law can introduce an unlimited capacity for fear.

What if I don't measure up when might I be rejected. When the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church the Apostle Paul was outraged and wrote a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of law. Allen Wright's 12 message audio series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians and that's the gospel. Discover the purity and power of the grace of God. When you make your gift to Allen Wright Ministries today we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership.

Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website PastorAllen.org. Back here in the studio to share Pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day and in this good news moment I'm reminded of the diagram that you were mentioning and that kind of a quadrant and I know on radio it's hard to describe that but there is something very practical about knowing the opposites and you talk a lot about balance in this message. So Jesus came full of grace and full of truth not 50-50 but full of grace full of truth. So if we want to speak like God and we want to be like God then our lives will ever increasingly be grace and truth not just one or the other. And I think and I've put it into a visual of four quadrants using a continuum of grace if you can imagine a vertical line that's grace and a horizontal line that's truth. And as grace moves up and truth moves greater to the right kind of you look at it as if you're looking at a graph of quadrants up in that right hand corner that's blessing grace and truth. The opposite where there's no grace and truth that's curse. But there are other forms of speech because there's a lot of speech that's truth but it doesn't have any grace with it and that's what I call moralism and that's what the Pharisees focused on right. And Jesus was infuriated at the Pharisees because they were making life hard for people tying heavy burdens around them by just being moralistic what you ought to be. Moralism to all concerned with right and wrong and never relationship.

But amoralism up in the other corner the left hand upper corner of the quadrants well that's where you have lots of grace but no truth and that's kind of the spirit of the age. So we learned about that in today's message and I just think that it's a helpful graphic if you don't it's in the book if you don't have the book hope that you'll get it but we'll be happy to send you that if you let us know we'll be happy to send you a copy of the diagram to help you with this. But you can learn and recognize okay what form of speech am I hearing right now which quadrant is it in? And it's really helpful and we do this in the book to take some different scenarios you know just think about like I use a story in the book wonder if you're a parent you got a teenager who got a ticket for texting while driving.

Thankfully nobody got hurt maybe it was a minor accident or something. How are you gonna talk to that teenager in a way that's blessing even though there's something that needs to be corrected? And how do you not end up cursing in your frustration but how do you not also just speak moralism or amoralism? And well I go over that in the book detail by detail because I think we need to be thoughtful about it and the more you think about it you can end up training yourself to have the kind of responses that are I think the way that God interacts with us. And it brings the truth which is yeah it's way better not to text while you're driving son. But grace is that you have a wonderful life in front of you and you're that important that I need to talk to you about this. So you put those two things together and you're helping shape someone's identity towards a positive future. So all of that is visualized in this simple graphic that again we'll be happy to send it to you if you don't have it. But better yet get the book and be careful to read that chapter slowly and take it in and start practicing it in your life. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.