Freedom for the Captives Through Gospel Proclamation [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. You're in a posture of being an heir of God, not a slave. You're not the product of some human effort like Hagar. You are a product of God's goodness and His love. This is who you are, and God is going to build His kingdom for you. 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 called Unleashed, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program today, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. You can find out more about it and even receive a copy of your very own for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer at pastoralan.org. Find out more about it and make your request or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Again, our website, pastoralan.org. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. Her older brother was abusive towards her, and she is all she knew. But she, under a series of encouragement from one of her older brothers who had sort of broken out of this system, she taught herself enough about reading and arithmetic to eventually take the standardized ACT test. And after the second attempt, she was admitted to Brigham Young University. And she began to study. She said in her first, for example, one of her first courses, there was some talk about, some mentioned very quick about the Holocaust.

And she raised her hand and said, what's the Holocaust? She was, turns out, very, very bright. And she studied, studied, studied, studied hard as she could. And eventually one of her professors at Brigham Young said that he wanted her to apply for a Cambridge scholarship. And she did. And she went to Cambridge to study. And she wrote an essay for a professor that she'd worked on very, very hard and submitted it. And I want to read to you what she wrote. I finished the essay and sent it to Professor Steinberg. Two days later, when I arrived for our next meeting, he was subdued.

He appeared at me from across the table. I wanted for him to say the essay was a disaster, the product of an ignorant mind that it had overreached, drawn too many conclusions from too little material. I've been teaching in Cambridge for 30 years, he said, and this is one of the best essays I've read. Listen to what she wrote. I was prepared for insults, but not for this.

Professor Steinberg must've said more about the essay, but I heard nothing. My mind was consumed with a wrenching need to get out of that room. I could tolerate any form of cruelty better than kindness. Praise was a poison to me. I choked on it. I wanted the professor to shout at me.

I wanted it so deeply. I felt dizzy from the deprivation. The ugliness of me had to be given expression. When there's a mixed message, it's paralyzing because it's so confusing. It introduces fear, which brings slavery, but believed long enough it becomes part of your identity. And maybe what Paul's most concern about in the Galatian situation was above and beyond all that, it means the loss of power. He says elsewhere in this epistle, he said, you start out in the spirit and now you return back to works of the flesh. You really are moving in that direction?

Who has bewitched you? Because the power of the gospel is in this, that we knowing that we have no power in ourselves to fulfill righteousness or keep the law, that we humbly yield ourselves to the grace of God and count on Him and trust in His promises. And as we do that and we trust in Christ, therein in that submission and that deep worship, that's where we are empowered. We are filled with the Spirit when we are submitted in worship to God. In as much as we are trying it by our own effort, we effectively close down our hearts to the very gift of the Spirit that God wants to continually pour out in our lives. So what Paul's saying is that there's not really an in between here because once you infect the gospel with law-based thinking, whether it be you got to keep this day a festival or you got to circumcise your children, you got to keep these rituals, or whether it be the strange environment that Tara Westover grew up in of legalism, whether it be once you introduce that into it, you have moved, Paul says, instead of relying on the promises of God, you're now relying on your own strength.

And that's anti-gospel. And to explain this, he draws upon this poignant, familiar image in the Old Testament that all the Jewish believers would have fully understood immediately. He was talking about one of the most important stories. God had come to Abraham and promised that he and his wife, Sarah, were going to have a son in their old age. But they didn't have a son for years after that. And in their impatience, they started thinking, well, maybe God wants us to do something about this. And so they agreed that they would bring in Hagar, who was the maid servant, a slave woman in the house, that she would come and be a surrogate mother and that she could mother a child for Abram. And so that's what they did.

So here's what happened. We don't turn you there, but listening on this, Genesis 16, now Sarah, she wasn't yet, her name would get changed to Sarah. Sarah, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. And Sarah said to Abram, behold, now the Lord has prevented me from bearing children.

Go into my servant and maybe I shall obtain children by her. And Abram listened to the voice of Sarah. So after Abram had lived 10 years in the land of Cana, Sarah, Abram's wife, took Hagar, the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram, her husband as a wife. And she conceived, and when she saw that she conceived, listen to this, she looked with contempt on her mistress. So as soon as Hagar, the maid servant, is pregnant with Abraham's child, she now starts hating Sarah. And Hagar, looking down on Sarah, in verse six of that chapter, Abram said to Sarah, behold, your servant is in your power, do as you please. And Sarah dealt harshly with her and she fled from her. So now Sarah is retaliating toward the bad treatment the maid servant's given her.

And so there's this terrible conflict. And God said to Abram at chapter 17, verse five, as for Sarah, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarah, but Sarah shall be your name. I will bless her. And moreover, I'll give you a son by her. I will bless her. And she shall become nations. Kings of people shall come from her. And the text says that verse 17, Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, shall a child be born to a man who's a hundred years old?

Shall Sarah, who's 90 years old, bear a child? And Abraham said to God, oh, that Ishmael might live before you. So Abraham says, listen, we've got Ishmael. There's no way a hundred year old or 90 year old.

We tried this the other night for work. And so why don't we just let Ishmael be the one through whom all these promises come? That's what he's saying to me. God said, verse 19, no, but Sarah, your wife shall bear you a son and you shall call his name Isaac. And I'll establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. So verse five of chapter 21, Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. And Sarah said, God has made laughter for me and everyone who hears will laugh over. And so that's why Isaac was named Isaac.

It means laughter. And she said, who would have said to Abraham and Sarah would nurse children? Yet I've born him a son in his old age.

Here's what happened. Verse eight, the child grew and was weaned and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian whom she had born to Abraham laughing, mocking.

See, he's much older and he's mocking this little half brother of his. So she said to Abraham, cast out this slave woman with her son for this son of this slave woman shall not be an heir with my son Isaac. And the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, be not displeased because of the boy and because of your slave woman, whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you for through Isaac shall your offspring be named. And so they send off Hagar and Ishmael.

And Paul has grabbed hold of this story to say, I want to show you something about the gospel. And it's an interesting story because it seems unfair at first to Hagar and Ishmael. I mean, after all, it wasn't Hagar's idea.

It was Sarah's idea. And now Hagar is going to be put out and Abraham doesn't really want to put her out. But God says, you do what Sarah said and get rid of that slave woman out of your house. The problem with Ishmael is that he wasn't the son of promise and God had given a promise. And he's like, the power of my word is the thing that matters here. And we're not going to put on display.

We're not going to send forth this blessing through any human effort through this slave woman. It's an interesting text, a story would be so fascinating to talk about all the dimensions, but one that jumps out at me, Isaac means laughter. Abraham and Sarah both had laughed when God had given him this message because it was the laughter of the hilarity of the gospel of grace, of God doing the impossible. But then there's another place where there's laughter and it's Ishmael now laughing mockingly. It's like saying you're either laughing with humility and joy at the gospel or you're laughing with pride and disdain. And Paul takes this and he applies this like an allegory to say this all took place so that you could see how important it is that you have no law mixed into the gospel of grace.

That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. This is what the Lord says, I will restore the fortunes of Jacob's tents and have compassion on his dwellings. The city will be rebuilt on her ruins and the palace will stand in its proper place. Those timeless words from Jeremiah 30 reveal the heart of God. He loves to restore. In ancient times, cities would often be rebuilt on top of the ruins of the former city.

The new city would stand higher with safer walls and a greater perspective. In Pastor Alan Wright's eight message CD album, Out of the Ruins, you'll discover how God can rebuild your life gloriously out of yesterday's disappointments. 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. Now these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website pastorallan.org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. It's like you have Hagar and Sarah. And Hagar produces Ishmael, Sarah, Isaac. And he says that Hagar is representative of the old covenant, the covenant of law.

Whereas Sarah is representative of the new covenant. And therefore Hagar is a picture, he's saying, of law and Sarah is a picture of grace. Further, what they're saying is that Hagar is a symbol of living by the works of the flesh, which to Paul means human effort that's still rooted in the sin nature. But Sarah is a picture of living by the power of the Spirit, because what happened in her is miraculous by the Spirit. And Hagar is a picture therefore of performance or works-based living. And Sarah is a picture of living by the promises of God. And what happens with Hagar and with Ishmael and performance-based living is that it introduces, as we've been speaking about, a life of fear, a life that is continually concerned with the question, have I done enough to be acceptable?

If you're going to make the promise of God come to pass by your own efforts, how will you know if you've done enough to make God's promises come true? And so what Paul is saying is that the whole model of this means that you're either going to be in fear or you're going to be, as is symbolized through Sarah, you're going to be in faith. Another way to look at this is that Hagar is all about saying I'm in control, whereas Sarah is saying God's in control. Isaac is a picture of God's in control of this, and he was going to bring supernaturally this child to them, but it was going to be in God's timing and God was in control of it.

And that's the thing that gets worrisome to us when it doesn't seem to be happening and we try to take over. It is the appearance in Hagar of blessing, but it's not blessing, but in a sense she's inwardly just bereft of any real blessing. You know, in that culture where it was just such a mark of blessedness to be able to bear a son, and yet Sarah has all these years of having no son and appearance of being barren and unblessed, but she's actually the one who's blessed. In the end, what it is is a picture of the difference between slavery and freedom. The gospel sets you free and the law will make you a slave, and so what Paul says to the Galatians is cast out the slave woman and her son. He is saying you not only need to recognize what part of your gospel has been infected with law-based mentalities, but you need to actively get rid of it. You need to know that it will never work to invite legalism into bed with the gospel. It will never work because law mocks grace and law fights against grace.

They might look alike, like they're both sons, but they're totally different. They might say, well, we both want, both law and grace are saying we want to live this wonderful and good and righteous life, but from totally different motivations. So what Paul's saying, the big enemy of the grace of God and his power at work is not really a particular sin. It's not your lust or your deception or your gospel.

You can deal with that. But what the real enemy is is the legalism itself. The human attempt to keep the law result in either pride, which says look how righteous I am, look what I've done, or condemnation, look what I haven't done and I'm doomed by my sin. And then Paul takes all this and he says to the Galatians, he says you just understand who you are as a Christian. You are not an Ishmael. You're an Isaac. It's who you are. How were you born again?

By your own effort? No, you were born by the promise of God. You were born by the spirit of God. You were born again by the grace of God. You are as a Christian a supernatural miracle.

Every bit as much as Isaac was a miracle, you as a Christian, you are a supernatural miracle, an evidence of the grace of God. You're in an unshakable covenant of grace. You're in a posture of being an heir of God, not a slave.

You're not the product of some human effort like Hagar. You are a product of God's goodness and His love. This is who you are and God is going to build His kingdom through you.

So you kind of get rid of the slave woman slave woman. So you can welcome every day of your life the work of the spirit. So you can live by the promises of God and that proclamation, that announcement, that announcement of the good news of what God's done for us in Jesus Christ, that is what it means to preach.

Preach means to tell somebody the good news and it is the great joy of our lives and that's what we do as a church and that's what we want to support here and all around the world. I hate to say but it wasn't the only time I ran through the airport this week. I had a time that was more anxiety producing running at the airport on the way down to Moultrie, Georgia. Y'all, I almost missed my flight and the bad thing about it was there was no plan B. There were no other flights to get me down to Tallahassee in time. I couldn't jump in the car and drive the eight hours down there in time. I was just going to miss it if I missed the flight. It was a rough day. I left a little later from home to go to Raleigh-Durham Airport than I should have and I put it on GPS and my heart just absolutely sank because there was some kind of traffic jam on I-40 and it said it was going to take me a half hour longer than I thought and I thought well it'll clear up.

It didn't clear up. I had to be rerouted through Durham and down the Durham freeway and I got there. I literally parked as far away from terminal two as I could be and I ran from my car to security check-ins saying please don't let it be long. Please don't let it be long and y'all about as long as I've ever seen it before and I stood there in line. It's a terrible feeling to sit there and think I am the program tonight and all these people gathering for this big banquet and there is no plan B and I might miss this flight.

It is a terrible feeling. I made it by literally one minute. They were closing the door behind me and kind of you know and so I did the whole trip. I'm just like back and forth.

I'm just so I'm like man this is tough. I didn't get to go buy Starbucks and get me a coffee there and the terminal you know and all this and I've been bemoaning all week how grueling my flights were getting back and forth to Moultrie and then yesterday I got a email from Stephen Banda who is a pastor, a missionary we support in Malawi for the better part of a couple decades. He said pray for him said he was going to go and preach in Mozambique and so we prayed for him and he sent word back and said it went really well. He said just pray for me that I'll get a better bus going back.

He mentioned offhandedly that he had to stand for seven hours on the bus going because there were no seats. So there's a little difference there between our travel problems and he loves to preach. It's interesting that the idea of euangelizumai the proclamation of the good news was often used to speak of the message of victory in a battle. And the one who carried that message, the one who shared that good news was much celebrated. How blessed are the feet of him who brings good news.

The word euangelizumai means there's a message and it's coming from the the battle scene to tell us that we've won. And that is the message of the good news of the victory of Jesus Christ for us. We just preach it and say Jesus has won. And that's the Jesus has won and that's the gospel. Alan Wright and today's teaching freedom for the captives through gospel proclamation.

It's in our series titled Unleashed and we've got Alan back in the studio here in just a moment sharing a parting good news thought for the day. Stick with us. This is what the Lord says. I will restore the fortunes of Jacob's tents and have compassion for the good news of the city. The city will be rebuilt on her ruins and the palace will stand in its proper place. Those timeless words from Jeremiah 30 reveal the heart of God. He loves to restore. In ancient times cities would often be rebuilt on top of the ruins of the former city.

The new city would stand higher with safer walls and a greater perspective. In Pastor Alan Wright's eight message CD album Out of the Ruins you'll discover how God can rebuild your life gloriously in your commandments. 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.

Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website pastoralan.org. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement get Alan Wright's daily blessing.

It's free and just a click away at pastoralan.org. Alan someone's listening right now and maybe they really identify they feel held captive and how they can find the freedom. Boy they're they're hanging on to every word of today's message.

Here's what you need to hear again. You were born of God's love and power and promise. That's that's what the Christian is. That means you're you're not an Ishmael. You're an Isaac. You were born supernaturally of God. It means you're a miracle. It means that you're in an unshakable covenant with God through Jesus Christ. It means you're an heir not a slave. It means that your life is full of promise and full of the Holy Spirit and it means this. That as a Christian God wants to build his kingdom through you and so there's gonna be a great temptation this sort of religious spirit this sort of idea that it's all up to me and and and my own flesh is a tent. Well that's what produces Ishmaels but you are not an Ishmael you're an Isaac. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.