The Grace Decision [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Would it be a sin to wear the Carolina t-shirt on the Duke campus? Of course not. But would it be sensitive?

No, it would not. When I go preach in someone else's pulpit in some other part of the country or on the other side of the world, I like to ask the pastor, what do you wear when you're preaching? 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 Unlimited as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I'm going 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. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Now, more on this later in the program. But right now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. He believed that the Bible, like a practice that still goes on in Appalachia, believed the Bible said that in order to prove that you're full of the Holy Spirit, that you should handle serpents. And if you're bitten, you should trust in God to heal you.

And so on his birthday, as a young man, it was a Saturday. All he wanted more than anything else was to have his family members come and worship and praise the Lord and to pick up a yellow timber rattle snake and worship the Lord. And it bit him. And not long thereafter, all the festivities halted, and they carried him out unresponsive to a relative's house. And soon they called the emergency vehicles, and the paramedics took him to the Blue Field Medical Regional Hospital, where not long thereafter, he died. His father had died by being bitten by a rattle snake. And he had been interviewed in a Washington Post article not long before his own death. And he said when he got bit, speaking of his father, he said he wanted to die in the church. He said, I hated to see him go, but he died for what he believed in.

Really? What does snake handling have to do with the Jerusalem Council? Everything. I just carried it out to the ocean. I've just taken something and said, let me show you where it goes. If you say that you need faith in Jesus plus something else to really be powerful in the Holy Spirit, let me show you what happens if you say you need grace plus you need your own performance. Carry it all the way to the tributaries run into the ocean, and what you'll find is death, and the devil knows it.

The devil knows it. The primary way that we are tempted is not to abandon our faith in God altogether. The primary way that we are tempted religiously is to try to add to a gospel that cannot be added to, so that our joy would not be complete, and that we would miss out on our spiritual inheritance, and we would miss on the love and the affection of God, and that we would worry about our acceptance in the beloved, and we would not have the hope of our assurance of heaven forever, and that therefore we would live lives of constantly trying to prove ourselves, but grace is so much more. I came upon a quote from my New Testament professor Charles Kauser in his Galatians commentary, and I was so taken by it, I googled to see if Charlie was still alive, and he's in heaven.

I'll have to tell him thank you there, because I thought that's the way it should be said. He wrote, grace is more than a doctrine. It is an experience. It's an experience.

It's an experience. Faith is not a way for humans to get God on their side. He's already for them. See, your faith doesn't get God to love you more, or like you more, or favor you more. He already loves you, and likes you, and favors you in Jesus Christ. Faith is what receives it.

He's already for them. In faith, they change, not he. The gospel is more than a set of propositions about Christ. It is a divine activity by means of which people are drawn into the realm of God's grace. In it, in the gospel, an energy is released to change the plight of people and circumstances. It is the power of God for salvation. Hallelujah.

Well said, Charlie. So they're meeting in Jerusalem on this all-important question. I want you to just see, it was so important, they felt like they all had to come together and answer this question. Now you're sitting here today, well of course they should easily answer this question. No, there was a vigorous debate.

There was an open, honest forum to answer the question, do the Gentiles need to be circumcised? So the first one to stand up, oh Peter, you got to love Peter. He's always the first.

He wants to jump up. Peter jumps up and says, well, here's the first proof that they don't need to be circumcised. He said they weren't circumcised, and they received the Holy Spirit. Look at Acts 15, verse 7, what Peter says. And after then much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, brothers, you know that in the early days, God made a choice among you that by my mouth, the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. He was saying, you remember, I had a vision.

God let down this big sheet. I saw it had an unclean animals. He said, rise and eat. And then he used it to teach me that the Gentiles can be clean by God, just the same way we are. And so we've seen that the Holy Spirit is moving. He said, verse eight, God who knows the heart bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did us. And he made no distinction between us and them having cleansed their hearts by faith. So the first point of the debate, Peter said, is that God doesn't make a distinction.

Why should we? And then he says more than that. He says, we're saved in the same way they are. Verse 10. Now, therefore, Peter said, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? The yoke he's talking about is the law and what Peter's saying here, you'll get this.

It's really, really rational. He says, we, the Jews grew up under the law. We've got the Torah. We've got all the law of Moses and we've never been able to keep it. It's a yoke that we have not been able to bear. So why would we want to do all we can to introduce Gentiles to Jesus and then take this big heavy yoke that we couldn't bear and put it on their necks?

Why would we want to do that? He said, verse 11, one of the most astonishing statements in history. He said, we believe we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will. He's saying plainly, there are not two ways of being saved. We are saved through Jesus' sacrifice by grace alone, through faith alone, or we're not saved at all. The people in the Old Testament weren't saved through the law and the New Testament saved through grace.

We're only and forever and always saved by grace or we're not saved at all. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Need some inspiration and practical help to bless those you love? In conjunction with the exciting release of Pastor Alan's new book, The Power to Bless, we put together some tools to get you started on the journey of speaking life and empowering the people you love. The toolkit includes an audio message of Pastor Alan's recent sermon on the mysterious blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh, the gateway to understanding the power of all blessing. Also included in the kit is a booklet with a list of scriptures that can be spoken directly as blessings. The blessing scriptures are categorized so you can easily access them for specific situations. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries this month, we'll happily send you the Power to Bless toolkit as our way of saying thanks for your partnership.

The resources are available for immediate digital download or available in CD and booklet. Partner with us and be inspired and equipped to bless someone's life today. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. 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. See the problem is that it doesn't matter what law you're trying to keep.

You can't keep it. Most Americans say that if they're asked in a survey if you want to say why you should be allowed into heaven, why should you be allowed in? And they say, well because I'm a good person.

And you know the problem with that is what's the standard for measuring whether somebody's good? The Ten Commandments? I don't know anybody that's kept the Ten Commandments. I don't know anybody who hasn't coveted at least a little bit.

I don't know anybody who hadn't lied at least a little bit. We can't keep the Ten Commandments. Listen, if God had just given us three, if he just said here's just three things, just these three things are all you got to do to be saved, we couldn't have done it. Just three. He could have given us two. Two, don't ever lie and don't covet. Never ride down the street and go, man I wish I had that car. Just never do that your whole life and you'll be saved.

We couldn't do it. I like the way Tim Keller put it. He said, you know what, not only could we not keep like some commandments like a set of code like the Ten Commandments, you couldn't keep it if it was your own code.

This is a great illustration. He said, imagine you had a tape recorder around your neck and the only thing that it recorded is the words that you speak about the standards you have for other people. The only thing it records is what you say other people should do and that includes every time somebody pulls in front of you in traffic. That would include things that I would say to the referee while watching football games this weekend. That would include everything you said about that parent like why aren't they controlling that child. That everything that you can, that's the only code you wouldn't be able to keep it.

Of course you would. We can't keep any set of rules. We're saved by grace and so are they.

And if you say, well, there's just no standard, the modern era is trying to say it's all relative. There's no really right and wrong, no good and evil and that's the fact of the matter is we all get in because there's not really any good or evil. It's nonsense.

It's just nonsense because to say that is to say that Hitler and Mother Teresa are equally morally virtuous and that's absurd. No, we're saved by grace and that's it. And then Paul stands up to join into the debate and Paul essentially says, well, I've seen the Holy Spirit moving in the Gentiles lives at verse 12. And all the assembly fell silent after Peter spoke because they're all, they fell silent because all the people that were arguing, you know what?

Peter's got a good point there, but then Paul stands up to reinforce it. And Paul at verse 12 at the fall silent, they listened to Barnes and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. He started telling them stories.

He said, well, let me just tell you this. We have been traveling through Cyprus and into Antioch and then through Lystra and Derby and then we've come back to Antioch, Syria and we've come down through Phoenicia and we've even gone through Samaria and we've even seen the Samaritans that God, we started telling about Jesus and the same joy that we have, it started falling into their lives. We started seeing them having this incredible joy.

You know what happened? We prayed for so-and-so and he was healed and then he turned around and prayed for his sister and his sister got healed. We've been seeing the same things that happened in our lives happening in their lives. The Holy Spirit's moving miraculously through them. The Gentiles, who haven't been circumcised, are being used by God for miracles.

How can you improve on that? And then James, who is the brother of Jesus and who wrote an epistle, which if you've ever read it, is the only place in the New Testament where you kind of get over and you go, that almost sounds like works righteousness. It wasn't, but he said things like faith without works is dead and he talks so much about faith without works is dead and he talks so much about our morality there. Even James, he stood up and added to the argument and what he essentially said was, have you not read the Old Testament? And he quoted Amos to prove the point of grace. Verse 15, with this the words the prophets agree just as it is written and he quotes Amos, after this I will return and I will rebuild the tent of David that is falling, talking about messianic rule, the son of David. I will rebuild its ruins and I will restore it that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old. And James said, therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God. And so the Jerusalem council decided grace is all they need.

Now interestingly, we don't have time to go into detail about it. The discussion doesn't stop there and there's something that at first of all she might go, well wait a minute, they're counteracting that in the pastoral letter that they decide to write. They also follow James council at verse 20 where he says, but we should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from what has been strangled and from blood. That conversation about what's been strangled and from blood is talking about the way food is prepared and what we call kosher style according to the ceremonial customs of the Jewish people. And the thing that's at the heart of this is about food that's been offered to idols, which becomes a question that's addressed elsewhere in the New Testament.

Now this is very interesting. I won't spend long on it, but it is essentially to say that James says we've by no means should we tell the Gentiles that in order to be saved they need to also follow the law. But once we've made it clear to them that they're saved by grace alone, I suggest James says that we add to it they really shouldn't just willy-nilly eat food that's been offered to idols. And what's he talking about here? He's talking about the fact that people that were idols, and still today I've seen it in India, it's so interesting to look at and see like, you know, like I'm just riding by and you'll see some little pagan statue or something and there's a bowl of food out in front of it. And I remember asking Pastor Sam Chelder, I said, what's going on? He said, oh, well, that's food offered to the idol.

And that's like, well, what does it just sit there? And he said, well, yeah, sometimes, but you know, sometimes you'll take it and then you just go sell it in the marketplace. Because what would happen is you put food out in front of the idol and the idol is not real and worthless and mute and powerless. And so the idol doesn't eat the food. But the pagan priest being good businessman thought, you know, we shouldn't let this food go to waste. So they take it down to the marketplace and sell it.

I mean, you don't want some good lamb chops to go to waste sitting in front of a statue. So they take it down the marketplace and you know what? I think you could get a pretty good deal on food that had been offered to idols. It's kind of like, you know, day old bread at the grocery store or something like this and getting ready to expire.

We put a fire sale on this thing. So you go down and get some good meat that's been offered to idols. And Paul says elsewhere, he said, it's fine to eat it. He said, there's no sin in eating that food because we know the idol's not real.

There's no curse that got on the food. And we know we're redeemed. And we know that he said, there's no problem with that. But what James is saying here and what Paul elsewhere says, if, however, you have a friend that you're trying to teach about Christ, if you know some Jewish believer who thinks that it's detestable to eat food that's been offered to idols and they think it's a sin and you go ahead and flaunt your grace and do it anyway, then you're causing them to stumble. And I suggest instead, be sensitive to that person. It's sort of like, I have a son who just graduated from Duke law school.

And I'm just so thankful for this law degree of this esteemed school where he got this law degree and all they did for him. But still deep down, you know, I'm a Carolina fan. So there's just a little part of me that when I go to visit him on the Duke campus, there's just a little mischievous part of me that thought, I kind of like to wear my Carolina t-shirt, you know, but I never did because would it be a sin to wear the Carolina t-shirt on the Duke campus? Of course not. But would it be sensitive?

No, it would not. Maybe a better example, when I go preach in someone else's pulpit and some other part of the country or on the other side of the world, I like to ask the pastor, what do you wear when you're preaching? Is it because it'd be a sin for me to wear jeans when he wears a coat and tie?

No, of course it doesn't. What I wear doesn't affect at all the power of the gospel. It's not about me. It's not about what I wear. It's about the gospel, right? But I don't want to needlessly offend those that think, well, he's not honoring.

He's not wearing. I don't want to do that. So you'd be sensitive to that. That's what James is talking about here. So they decide they're going to send the Gentiles a letter and say, don't think you have to be circumcised. Don't think you got to keep the law.

Let's give you some counsel here though. Be sensitive and don't flaunt your grace needlessly to make other people stumble. And they concluded their meeting and the gospel of grace prevailed. What would have happened if instead they had said, yes, it's grace, but it's grace. Plus we're going to identify three or four laws that are necessary for us to be saved.

We'd have wound up in the wrong ocean. That's why I say it might be the most important question any counsel ever debated. And it might be the most important question that you could ever ask yourself when you rise in the morning. Am I saved and do I have abundant life by grace plus something else that I can perform or bring to the equation or am I saved and have abundant life because of what Jesus alone did for me through grace alone and remind yourself that he's more than enough. 19th century English theologian Andrew Jukes said Satan would have us to prove ourselves holy by the law which God gave to prove us sinners. The law was a good gift not because it empowered us to change, but because it proved to us that we need a savior. What happens when you encounter the law is you realize I can't keep that yoke and you draw, you flee to the heart of God. You come to the savior and say, fill me or I will not be filled. Use me by your power or I will not be useful. Grant me your peace and security by grace or I will be anxious for there is nothing by grace or I will be anxious for there is no other gospel.

There is no other way. You and I and everyone who will be in heaven is saved by grace alone and that's the gospel. Allen Wright, today's Good News message, The Grace Decision. It's in our series Unlimited and Pastor Alan is back with us in the studio joining us to share his parting good news thought for the day in just a moment. Need some inspiration and practical help to bless those you love? In conjunction with the exciting release of Pastor Alan's new book, The Power to Bless, we put together some tools to get you started on the journey of speaking life and empowering the people you love. The toolkit includes an audio message of Pastor Alan's recent sermon on the mysterious blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh, the gateway to understanding the power of all blessing. Also included in the kit is a booklet with a list of scriptures that can be spoken directly as blessings. The blessing scriptures are categorized so you can easily access them for specific situations. When you make your gift to Allen Wright Ministries this month, we'll happily send you the Power to Bless toolkit as our way of saying thanks for your partnership.

The resources are available for immediate digital download or available in CD and booklet. Partner with us and be inspired and equipped to bless someone's life today. The gospel is shared when you give to Allen Wright Ministries. 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 Allen Wright Ministries. 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 thoughts for the day on a topic of grace as we conclude this particular teaching, but also we're concluding the series unlimited. So the question is, is grace enough? In not saying, do you need 99% grace and 1% law? The question is, is the grace of God in Jesus Christ enough? And the answer of the gospel is yes. You don't bring one shred of your righteousness to the table when you come to Christ. Instead, it's all his work, his righteousness, and all we bring is simple childlike faith to receive the saving work. And the rest of our lives then is living out in expression of gratitude and empowerment, the great salvation that he's brought us. So you start Daniel by grace, you grow by grace, and you finish by grace. That meeting was one of the most important in the history of the world, and the meeting is decided, and it's forever true. Grace is enough. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.