New Operating System [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

You have been made spiritually alive, recreated, into someone who is now alive to God in a way that did not exist before you were a Christian. 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, Victorious Living, 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's a book written by Pastor Alan called God Moments, and 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. More on this later in the program. But right now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. Are you ready for some good news? In Christ, all things have become new. You're a new person, you're a new position, and there's a whole new process by which you can live out God's beautiful destiny for your life. We're in 2 Corinthians in the middle of a study in 2 Corinthians that's actually entitled All Things New, and it comes from the text that we're in today in chapter 5, 2 Corinthians chapter 5. And I want to pick up reading at verse 14, this marvelous text that is laden with the power of the gospel and some of which familiar words that you've heard perhaps before if you've been a Christian long.

And I want to just show you today the power of our newness in Christ in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, picking up reading at verse 14. For the love of Christ controls us. Some translations say constrain us.

It is an image of being hemmed in. It is compelled. The love of Christ controls us. Because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died.

And he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. I think Paul just means here that at one point, remember he was a Pharisee, he just thought of Jesus as a religious leader that was a charismatic figure but was wrong, and he saw no divinity in him, and so he just regarded him according, literally it says according to the flesh, but he said obviously no longer.

Then verse 17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. And literally, in the Greek language, this would read like this. If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. The archaic things have passed away.

Look, all things have become new. That would be a very literal rendering from the Greek language. And then verse 18. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

For our sake, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. It's good news to think that you're new, especially as we get older. We had chuckled this week to see a story of an old couple that went and decided to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary by returning to the hotel where they honeymooned. And that night, the wife said to her husband, you remember how you used to stroke my hair? And he smiled, and he stroked her hair real gently. And then she said, you remember how you used to rub my shoulders? And so he smiled, and he rubbed her shoulders very gently. And then she whispered, you remember how you used to nibble on my ears? He smiled, but he got up out of the bed and started, and she said, where are you going?

He said, to get my teeth. There are a lot of texts that talk about the process of being made new. It's important to that talk about the process of being made new. It's important text because there's a big part of our life with God in which we are being changed. You think of David who said, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Or the prophet who said that you will mount up with wings as eagles. There is much that is still to come.

We are in a process, and we know that. Paul, he said in Philippians, be renewed in the attitude of your mind. Literally he said, be renewed in the spirit of your minds. And of course, Romans 12, where he said, do not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So there are a lot in the Bible about the process of being changed.

But in today's text, that's not what Paul's talking about. In today's text, Paul is talking about something that has already changed, something that is new, something that's categorically new, something that is absolutely new, and it's already taken place. Which leaves me, therefore, with today's question, and that is, what's new? What's new? You know, the sad thing is if you see most adults and you say, what's new? They'll probably give you the same old, same old. Well, nothing's really new. Nothing's really new.

You know, if you see somebody a year later, maybe not that much has changed. They've got what preacher Tony Evans said is same old disease. That's where you get up in the morning in the same old bed and go in that same old kitchen, eat that same old cereal, get in that same old car, drive down to the same old office and work with those same old people, do that same old work, come home to that same old house, spend even that same old spouse, watch those same old TV shows, and get back in that same old bed, and the next day do the same thing. And it can all start seeing pretty futile, that same message preacher Tony Evans said. It's like a father who goes and gets his son up for school, and the boy says, why? And the father says, well, you've got to get up because you've got school starting. He said, why? He said, so you can go get a good education. He said, why? He said, well, so you can make good grades. He said, why? He said, so you can get a good job. Why? So you could get good pay.

Why? Well, so you could have a family of your own and wake up your own kids, get up and go to school, son. You know, I just, sometimes it seems purposeless. And the writer of Ecclesiastes made some sense when he said, there is nothing new under the sun. From an earthly perspective, sometimes we just think, well, there's just nothing new.

But there ought to be, you know, I mean, it seemed like we ought to change more than we're changing. I mean, it's just kind of same old, same old. I'll tell you though, who, one group of people, one category that will never tell you same old, same old, is a category of people that Jesus said, you need to become like them, the little kids. So you can't see a one-year-old and then a year later see that one-year-old who's turned two and say, what's new? And that two-year-old say, same old, same old?

No, no, no, a lot's happened. You say, what's new to a two-year-old? And they'll go, well, let's see, since you saw me last, I learned to walk. Hey, hey, I can move around, stand up, get away from people, grab things. And, oh, and I learned to talk.

That's cool. I learned to say things like, nope, you know, stuff like that. Or you see a five-year-old come back a year later and see a six-year-old and it's like, what's new? Oh, well, I learned to read. I learned to read.

That was cool. I learned to ride a bike this year. I mean, even a 22-year-old, you come to our son, you saw him a year ago, and you see him now and say, what's new? And he'd say, well, I proposed to my girlfriend. She said, yes, graduated from college, got accepted to law school, got married, went on a great honeymoon, and just moved into my first apartment with my new wife.

But what if it happens to us? We get this stage of life later on, and it's just like, what's new with you? Well, same old, same old.

I did have my gallbladder out, but I mean, other than that, everything's all right. Seems like there ought to be more that's new. Even the things that we call new aren't half-time new. Got a new car this year, we did, but it's actually three years old. That's a nice new hairdo.

Well, yeah, the same old hair, you know. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Ever been facing a problem when a well-meaning Christian friend said something like, you just need to have more faith? The problem with such an exhortation, of course, is that telling someone that they ought to have more faith doesn't actually help a person have more faith. We all want more faith, but what can we do to get more faith? In his highly acclaimed book, God Moments, Pastor Alan Wright describes one of the most important biblical pathways to building your faith, remembering God's presence in your life.

When you see God's faithfulness yesterday, you'll find it easier to trust him tomorrow. Your life is full of God moments, and through Alan Wright's teaching series and book, you'll have a treasure map to help you discover them all. When you make a gift to Sharing the Light Ministries today, we'll send you a very special bundle. It's Alan Wright's faith-building book, God Moments, and the CD album of the series that he has preached on the subject. We'll send you both when you make your gift today. It's time to discover your God moments from yesterday and be filled with fresh faith for today.

Call us at 877-544-4860, or come to our website, sharingthelight.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. The things that we call new sometimes aren't new. They're just kind of new to us, but are there some things that are just categorically 100% new?

Yes. A new baby. Never existed before.

Those fingerprints never been in the world. New. That's, sometimes there can be a new idea, like a new invention.

I wish somebody would invent a teleportation device and just beam us places. That'd be new, wouldn't it? A butterfly. It's new.

You know, everything about a butterfly, it can act like a caterpillar and forget that it has wings, but it can't become a caterpillar again. It's a new creature. The word for new that Paul uses here is a word that means distinctively new. There are two words in the Greek New Testament for new. Neos and kinos.

Kinos is what Paul uses here. Neos means new in time. It's sometimes used to describe something that's younger or something that has just freshly appeared. Sometimes it's used to describe younger almost in the sense of disrespectful towards the more mature, but it means new in that it's not new in kind, but it has freshly appeared. It has freshly appeared like that, but kinos is a different word that means new in its distinctiveness, new in how much better it is than the old.

It is like a new category of thing. It's interesting that in one instance Jesus uses these two words in the same sentence. It's in Matthew chapter 9 at verse 17 where Jesus is talking about the new covenant versus the old covenant, and to describe this picture of how new it is, he says, neither is new wine put into old wine skins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed, but new wine is put into new wine skins. The ESV says fresh wine skins, and so both are preserved, and what he's talking about here is, I think it would be a common image to them that they would keep their wine in leather wine skins, and if you took new wine, that is grape juice that is in the process of fermenting, and you put it into old brittle wine skins, leather that had grown, was no longer flexible, then what happens is those gases of fermentation are expanding, and it will burst it, and the wine would spill out, and you'd lose that, and the wine skin itself would be ruptured and would be ruined. So if you've got new wine that's fermenting, you have to put it into new wine skins that will stretch with it as the gases expand and so forth, and what he's saying here is that what has happened in Jesus's coming, the inauguration of the gospel of the kingdom of God being at hand, the power and availability of the Holy Spirit to the believer, and this whole new life of grace, this is all what is happening and in a very fresh way, and you can't take this and try to squeeze it into the mold of the old covenant. You have to put this into a new covenant, and the word that he uses for the new wine is neos. It's not that the grace of God is something that's categorically new. It's just saying it's new wine.

You haven't seen the grace of God in this way. It's not that the spirit of God is new. He's not new.

It's just you haven't seen him being poured out in this way. You haven't seen the kingdom manifest in this way, but he says with regard to the new wine skins, that is kinos. It means a new category of thing.

That's what he's talking about. So there's something that is categorically new. The old things, Paul says, have passed away. You know this word because it's archaeos, and it comes into our language with the adjective archaic, so it means something really old. This is not Paul talking about old behaviors that need to change, although there are other places where Paul does talk about this. In this instance, he's talking about something that's ancient.

It's archaic. He's talking about the old covenant, and he's saying that those old things have passed away, and so the new has literally come. To get the idea of something that's really new, being a new creature, you have to think of a creator, and a creator makes something out of nothing if he's truly a creator, and that's why God's the only creator. Nobody, nobody except God can actually just create something out of nothing. When God said, let there be light, and there was light, light had passed away, and there was light had not existed before.

If he said, let there be every seed-bearing type of plant, they had never existed before. So what Paul is talking about when he says you're like a new creature, he's saying God has created something that didn't exist before. Now what this means is in Christ, you're much more of a new thing than you might ever imagine, so it leaves you wondering what about you has become new? What is new?

And I want to just highlight for you at least these three things, you're a new person, you're in a new position, and there's a whole new process. To be a new person, to be a new person, it means that you have been made spiritually alive, recreated into someone who is now alive to God in a way that did not exist before you were a Christian. And I understand that some people become Christians at a very early age, and they just walk with Christ all their days, and it's wonderful, and some people have big radical moments, but either way, here's what the Bible clearly teaches, is that apart from Christ, we're spiritually dead to God. We're not physically dead, and our minds still work, but spiritually we're dead. I think this is why the Bible teaches us as being spirit, soul, and body.

There's some dispute about whether we're just soul and body or spirit, soul, and body, but I just see so many evidences and references to being spirit, soul, and body, and it makes sense to me this way. When you become a Christian, God could change you physically. He could heal something. He could do something in your body, but generally, regardless of your age, whoever you are physically doesn't generally change just because you become a Christian, right? If you've got three freckles on your right cheek and you accept Christ, you've got three freckles on your right cheek afterwards. So one day, every Christian is going to be given a new body, and it's going to be a spiritual body, but it's still a literal body, and so one day you're going to be new with a new body, but your body hadn't really changed automatically, and your mind or your soul we might think of, your psyche, your character, your mind, your will, and your emotions, and how you think, and your personality. Now when you accept Christ, sometimes there'll be a radical change that takes place.

I've seen that happen. I've seen people who were so radically changed. They just were set free from besetting sins and addictions and other problems.

I've seen people change that used to be very prideful and selfish, and they just change instantly, but most of us would have to say this, that being a Christian in terms of our character, in terms of how we think, it's much more of a process, that you go through a process in which things that you once believed get replaced by things that are true in Christ, and so we're being transformed in our minds. So if you're not categorically new physically, and you're not instantly new mentally, what is really new? You're new in spirit. You are made alive every bit as much as Jesus stood by the tomb of Lazarus and said, Lazarus come out, and the dead man came to life. This is what happened to you spiritually.

It's what the Bible teaches. What this means therefore is that part of what is new is you. You are new, and it means therefore that a transformation has taken place, a new life has taken place, which is much better than just saying you've been improved because you're a Christian.

C.S. Lewis said it well in Mere Christianity, for mere improvement is not redemption, though redemption always improves people even here and now, and will in the end improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine. God became man to turn creatures into sons, not simply to produce better men of the old kind, but to produce a new kind of man. It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better, but like turning a horse into a winged creature. Of course, once it has got its wings, it will soar over fences which could never have been jumped and thus beat the natural horse at its own game.

There may be a period while the wings are just beginning to grow when it cannot do so, and at that stage the lumps on the shoulders, no one could tell by looking at them that they're going to be wings, may even give it an awkward appearance. What a fitting portrait of the Christian life. It's not like God's just making you better. He made you into something. You're a whole new animal. You're a whole new thing. You're a new creature in Christ. It's good news. Today's teaching new operating system in our series on 2 Corinthians.

Stick with us. Alan is back here in a moment in the studio with additional insight on this for your life and a final word. God's always been there in every moment you narrowly escaped from danger in every moment you were surprised by a blessing in every moment you just knew the direction to take. God was there. Your life is defined by countless moments of God's grace.

Perhaps they've been covered by the sands of time or have just gone unnoticed in the rush of life, but your life is full of God moments. When you make a gift to Sharing the Light Ministries today, we'll send you a special bundle, both Pastor Alan's heart-stirring book, God Moments, and a CD album containing all his audio messages on the subject. Make your gift today and start your spiritual treasure hunt to uncover your God moments.

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Call us at 877-544-4860 or come to our website, sharingthelight.org. Alan, in all clarification, a new operating system for those who may not be up on computers or smartphones, you're really painting a picture here, I think it's pretty brilliant. Yeah, well, you know, sometimes you struggle and you work with something and you realize, no matter how hard I try to work this system, it's not going to ever be very good.

I just need a whole new system. Yeah. And I think that's the image that we're talking about here for the heart, for the deepest things in our life. What God came to do for us in Christ was not to just make us a little better version of the old self, but he came to make us all together new.

And how incredibly hopeful that is to be a new creature in Christ. 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 PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.