The Winners Without Words [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. And the head coach coach said, you know, there's a guy, you knock him down, he gets back up. You knock him down, he gets back up. You knock him down, he gets back up. Assistant coach said, that's the guy we want.

The head coach said, no, I want you to go out there and find that guy that's knocking everybody down. 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 Elect Exiles as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. Now, 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 could be yours 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. 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. Okay, beautiful exiles. Are you ready for some good news? You're in it to win it, by the grace of God.

But the way of winning was entirely different than the way of the world. And we're going to see that winning in the best sense of the word doesn't mean getting the upper hand, doesn't mean controlling, it doesn't mean overpowering, it doesn't mean any of that, but that in the way that Jesus has saved us through honor and humility, so it is that we will have flourishing in our relationships and in life itself. We're in 1 Peter, a series that I've called Elect Exiles. That's the phrase that Peter uses in the opening verse that gets at the paradox or the mystery of who we actually are. We're people that we are like exiles in the world, so we're in one sense like strangers and aliens because this is not our ultimate final destination, like we're traveling through the world headed to a new heaven and a new earth. But we're the elect, we're the co-heirs of Christ, so living with that tension and how to live in a world. And so we're in volatile times in our own culture.

Somebody's mad about something all the time, and also there's this rampant confusion and huge, huge disagreements about what truth is. So what an appropriate epistle for us to be studying. And today, by just the Word of God that I'm taking chapter by chapter, I've been thrown from the frying pan into the fire because last week was be subject to the emperor, and this week it's wives be subject to your husbands.

So let's just go ahead and do it. 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 1. Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives. One without a word.

I gave the title of this message, winners without words. They may be won by the conduct of their wives when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, the clothing you wear. But let your adorning be of the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves by submitting to their own husbands. Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord. And you are her children.

If you do good and not fear anything that is frightening. Likewise, husbands live with your wives in an understanding way. Show honor to the woman as a weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life so that your prayers may not be hindered. Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling.

But on the contrary, bless for this you were called that you may obtain a blessing. And once was a football coach, and he was talking to his assistant who was going out on the recruiting trail. And the assistant coach said, Coach said, What are we?

What kind of guy we looking for? And the head football coach said, Well, you know how you can find that guy? You knock him down and then he stays down. The assistant said, Yeah. Hey, Coach said, We don't want that guy. And assistant coach said, Well, who We want? The coach said, You know that guy? You knock him down, and get back up, and then you knock him down. Then stays down. The assistant coach said, Yeah.

And head coach, We don't want that guy either. And, uh then head coach said, You know, there's that guy? You knock him down. He gets back up. You knock him down. He gets back up, and then you knock them down. A third time and he stays down.

Assistant coach goes, Yeah, we don't want that guy either go said no, and head coach goes, said, You know there's the guy. You You knock him down, he gets back up. You knock him down, he gets back up. You knock him down, he gets back up. Assistant coach said, that's the guy we want?

Head coach said, no, I want you to go out there and find that guy that's knockin' everybody down. You know, it's unusual predicament living in two kingdoms, isn't it, in the kingdom of this world, seems like a whole lot of the message is, you know, see if you can knock the other guy down, get yourself into a superior position, and that's kind of the way of the world, isn't it? But what we see in this text is something that feels opposite to that, submission, understanding, honor, not reviling when reviled, be a blessing.

It's all pointing us to some very deep spiritual truths. And so I want to go through this sort of phrase by phrase with you, you know, when you get to a text like this that can feel offensive or confusing to modern ears or has been misunderstood or even abused in religious circles. You know, you can, it's tempting to just want to just skip over it so we can sometimes just skip it, move on to something else and don't deal with it. Or you can be tempted to dismiss it by over-contextualizing it.

By that I mean by just saying, well, it was relevant for them in the first century, but it's just no longer relevant in the modern world. Or you can reject it and say, I just don't believe that part of the Bible, but I believe other parts. But, you know, once you start saying that you believe certain parts and other parts, you've kind of made your own Bible, haven't you? So we're not going to skip it or dismiss it or reject it.

We're going to dig into it. And I have found over the years that sometimes the texts that are more challenging that you might want to skip or dismiss or just feel confused are actually the places you need to go in deeper. And so I hope to show you some of the nuances spiritually of this, and I hope to take you in to something that I think will be absolutely beautiful once you see it.

And I want to give a couple of statements up front. First, to say that I am and have been heartbroken, partly from a revelation that came to me about 23 years ago when I was preparing a message one time about husbands honoring their wives. And the Holy Spirit just came and began to do a work in me, and I just spent a week weeping over the way women have been mistreated. And we came in the sanctuary and we gave roses out on Valentine's Day to every woman, and men came up by the hundreds and got on their faces and repented of the ways that men have dishonored women. I want to start by that, that part of the predicament that we're in is that if men had been understanding and honoring, then we wouldn't have some of the vitriol that we now have. The second thing I want to say, which is very important, very, very important, is that while I'm going to say some things today about God's design for men and women, I want to say up front that for anyone under the sound of my voice who you yourself or someone you love who's close to you is struggling or has struggled with issues of sexuality, confusion, gender confusion, that I love you, and I in no way would want to be insensitive to the manifold issues that are swirling around all of this that has become so, so prevalent and on the forefront of the national discussion.

But up close and personal to families, it becomes very painful. So all of that to say up front that all these things, but my assignment, I think, is to help you understand this text. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. With so much worry about yesterday's failures and so much hurry getting ready for tomorrow's tasks, sometimes it's hard to focus on the moment that matters most right now in a hurried, worried season. God invites you into the present.

Modern day life coaches call it mindfulness, but it isn't a new psychological program and it isn't rooted in Eastern religion. Mindfulness living in the present is God's idea, and the Bible unveils the way Pastor Alan Wright invites you to savor life each day. When you make your gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's eight messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Make your gift today and learn how to savor the textures and flavors of God's grace each moment in the moment every day of your life. 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. In so doing to ultimately point you to Jesus, and that's what I want to do today. And I want to start with this, and this is I think starting at the most important point, and that is that God has made a beautiful creation. And that as part of that beautiful, beautiful creation, what is reflected in this text is that the Lord, through Peter's pen, is speaking differently to men and women here about who they are in their essence, about what their temptations might be, and about what their particular call of living out relational life in this world looks like. In other words, there is a difference between the man and the woman. To say men and women are distinct and different by God's design, it wouldn't have been until recent decades that there was anything that would have been controversial about that, but there is in some people's minds now. And I want to begin with this because everything else depends on this statement, that God has made a beautiful world that by its design is glorious because of its polarities, because of the things that seem to be so opposite that get brought together.

I was an English major. I studied Romantic and Victorian poetry for years, and can I just share a poem with you? I mean, can we just do a little poem? I don't do it very often, but a poem that you might would have been the kind of thing you would have had in some English class. It's from Gerard Manley Hopkins.

He was a Jesuit priest and Victorian poet of the 19th century in England, one of the most heralded poets, and he really was a precursor for a lot of modern poetry, and I love this. It's called Pied Beauty, P-I-E-D, meaning diversified and speckled and such, Pied Beauty. Glory be to God for dappled things.

And that's a good word. It means multivariate and speckled. Glory be to God for dappled things. Imagine the poet just looking out at the creation.

For skies of couple color, it's sometimes beautiful when it's just a clear blue sky, but aren't our sunsets and clouds and divergent colors that come, aren't they more beautiful? As a branded cow, branded like a brown and white cow with different stripes or swirls, for rosemolds, the little spots, all in stipple, stipple like if you were to just take a pen and dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, and draw something that way. Rosemolds all in stipple upon trout that swim, the trout that have these spots on them that shimmer under the water and make them hide amongst the rocks and the pebbles.

Fresh fire coal, which you've seen coal that's black around the edges and burning orange in its center. How beautiful. Chestnut falls. The chestnut, when it falls and it opens up at the top, revealing the inner seed and the outer husk of a different texture and color, finches wings with their little stripes. Landscape plotted in peace.

You drive by it in Eastern North Carolina and see the beautiful fields that have been plowed and their different shapes and stripes. Fold, fallow, and plow, and all trades, all kinds of work, all the tradesmen, all the workers, all the artists, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange, whatever is fickle, freckled, who knows how, with swift slow, sweet sour, a dazzle dim. He fathers forth, whose beauty is past change. Praise Him. In other words, God is glorified by the connecting of seemingly opposite things. And so God celebrated this design of creation Himself, like in verse 12 of Genesis 1, the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit, which is their seed.

So diversity of all of these and all. And God saw it was good. Or like in verse 21, God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and winged birds, according to their kind. And God saw that was good.

There are things that fly, there are things that swim, and they're very different. God saw that's good. It's good.

It's beautiful. And verse 27, God created man in His own image. In the image of God, He created him male and female. He created him.

And He saw it was very good. So in the Word of God, and in the Christian's life, we do not try to make things uniform, but we celebrate the seemingly opposites. Things that might would clash, but instead become more beautiful because of their distinctiveness. And we celebrate that distinction. And we celebrate the distinction because of the greater beauty and glory that is expressed in it.

Praise God for dappled things. But we also celebrate this seemingly union of opposites because this is God's plan for flourishing in the earth and productivity. This is the way that we reproduce men and women. And so in the Scripture, there's no blurring, there's a celebrating of this. And what I want to point you to is in this text, therefore, that when God speaks differently to men and women, it is not in any sense a matter of superiority or inferiority.

And we'll see that clearly. But it is because He made us differently. And God isn't embarrassed of that.

It was His design. And what if there had not been so much sin in the world and inhumanity against inhumanity? And what if men had had their deep sense of unprideful and tremendous humility and honoring of women? And what if women had never fallen into sin either and had longings and cravings and misused their sexuality? What if all of that? Well, we wouldn't have this mess.

That's what we're going to see. But here we are in a sinful mess. And the answer is in the Word of God. I love this creation and I love the Creator.

And so I praise Him for the dappled things. And I was, this week, I felt, though I'm no scientist, and so it's difficult to try to even decipher, but I just felt like I needed to read some of the latest literature on the scholarly studies about men and women. You know, back in, when was it, the 90s, that the famous book Men are from Mars, Women from Venus came out, that just became an international bestseller. And what I highly acclaimed is how differently men and women think and so forth. And then, of course, it became subject to critique in later years that it was being, you know, that there was too much gender stereotyping. And so this is part of the problem, is that gender stereotyping is a real thing, right?

Where we've had too much of that. And so it might be, you know, men are supposed to do this, women are supposed to do this, and it ended up, in many ways, limiting women. And still, women aren't making as much money in similar jobs in a lot of places in our own culture, and that's wrong. And all the gender stereotyping, to just say, you know, because we have conditioned ourselves to believe this or that about a man or a woman, all that's wrong. But what's equally wrong is to say that, therefore, there's no difference between men and women.

And that's just false. We are different biologically, we are different physically. And the question is, are we also different in our souls?

And I think the answer is unequivocally, yes, we are. With so much worry about yesterday's failures, and so much hurry getting ready for tomorrow's tasks, sometimes it's hard to focus on the moment that matters most, right now. In a hurried, worried season, God invites you into the present.

Modern-day life coaches call it mindfulness, but it isn't a new psychological program, and it isn't rooted in Eastern religion. Mindfulness, living in the present, is God's idea, and the Bible unveils the way. Pastor Alan Wright invites you to savor life each day. When you make your gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's eight messages in an attractive CD album, or through digital download, as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Make your gift today and learn how to savor the textures and flavors of God's grace, each moment, in the moment, every day of your life. 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. Back now with Pastor Alan Wright.

Our parting good news thought for the day on this. The winter's without words, and I think this is a great place we're going to pick up with the conclusion to this teaching. And hear more about the differences, even down to the soul level. The whole study of 1 Peter was tremendously nourishing and challenging for me. In many ways, these messages are a departure from the normal sort of preaching that our listeners hear from us, which we are always exposing the gospel, the grace of God, and how grace works in our lives, and how transformation happens. Well, Peter here, he's digging into some real rubber meets the road practical issues.

And I remember week by week, you just go with the preacher. You're like, wow, okay, honor the emperor. Oh, boy, honor the human institutions.

What? And then we dive into wives be subject to their husbands. Well, they're deep mysteries and wondrous truths that are here for us. And I think it's important that we expose the lies of culture graciously, which is increasingly saying, no, there's not difference between men and women. And the biblical view is, oh, God made us wonderfully different, wonderfully different, equally valuable, equally important, equally loved by God, but different. And the biblical picture is the celebration of pied beauty, of dappled things, of things that seem to be so opposite. So we're right in the midst of it today, Daniel, and this is really relevant to the cultural discussion. God made us different, and we interact with one another different. And there's secrets here not just for marriage, but for abundant living for all of us. Today's Good News message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.