You're Called in Hope [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. When you've accepted his saving work and you're born again, you are in Christ. And that means that therefore you are viewed by the Father as if you hadn't sinned.

And you are viewed also as if you had the righteousness of Jesus. 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 Ephesians, 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. It can 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 or call 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. Are you ready for some good news today? I just got a feeling something good is going to happen.

You know that feeling? Like I just got a feeling something good is going to happen. It's just that's what hope is.

I don't like it. I mean, I describe everything about it, but it's something good is getting ready to happen. And that, which is hope, is the very thing that Paul prays that you would know. And you can know this. In fact, this is part of the delight of being a Christian is to live, whether during the easy times or the hard times, to live with this awareness that something good is down the road.

You can know the hope to what you've been called. Let me just tell you a little bit more about Jeff and Cissie DeJournes, these missionaries that we've been supporting for two and a half decades. And we had the privilege of going to their little island of Papua New Guinea and being amongst them. It's about a 15-mile wide island. And a big part of the island is the volcano in the middle that has a lake that's five miles wide. It's got a little cone of the volcano that comes up out of the lake. And it still vents. It's not dormant.

It still puffs a little bit. And then it's just jungle. And then the villages are basically around at different spots on the beach. There are a few people that have boats. They've never seen cars. They don't have any electricity.

Don't of course have any phones. Of course don't have any running water or any of the things that you would think would be conveniences or comforts of life. There's zero medical care. There's not a nurse, not a nurse assistant, certainly not a doctor on the island.

And generally there's no access to medical care. So Jeff and Cissie moved there 27 years ago to befriend this people. And they'll laugh about it now, but the Papua New Guineans have a history of cannibalism. So they weren't just real sure when they got there. And they were so thankful that they were received. And they began to befriend the people in order to learn their language.

And that's a hard thing to do. Imagine going to learn a language just by going and living amongst the people. You got a whole lot of pointing to different things and saying, what do you call that? And trying to find how they even say things phonetically and how to position the guttural sounds and the trills of the tongue and all this, figuring all that out, 15 different words for banana. And then once they learned the language, befriended them, then they put it into writing because the language didn't exist in writing. And of course you can't give somebody a written Bible if they don't have a written language. So then they had put it into writing. And then they had to begin the work of translating the New Testament. They thought it would take them about 15 years, but it took 27 years. There were hardships along the way.

Jeff and Sissy would hardly talk to you about these things. But if you pull it out of them, you'll realize in the early years they developed, of course, a few guys around them that would help Jeff with the translation work, some of the local guys there. And you know how it is when you're trying to get somebody on your team and then you train them, you work with them, but you need them badly because you've got so much invested in them. Well, early on, one of the men fell from a palm tree and was paralyzed and then died. And then another one of his key translator team members was lost at sea. And so he had to kind of start all over building another team. We got to meet the team that he's been working with ever since then. And they were so excited about this accomplishment. And you know, he couldn't have done it obviously without them. That was a big investment of the time.

But it just took, he thought about 15 years, but it took about 27 years to get the New Testament done. The mosquitoes there are famous for their resistance to some of the best malaria medicines. Did I mention it's hot?

It's 5 degrees south of the equator at sea level. So it's hot every day. There's not seasons. It's just wet season and dry season.

And so you sweat the whole time even when you sleep. And so this has been Jeff and Sissy. This is what they've been doing for 27 years. And just ask the question, say, how could you do that? They raised their kids in the midst of that. One time she was threatened at Machete Point, almost killed.

They were capsized at sea one time and could have died. Faced all the... How do you do that? To get a New Testament for 3,000 people that speak that language, you know, I'll tell you how you do it. You have to know the hope to which you're called.

Both things have to happen. You have to have hope and you have to have a calling. And a calling by a very nature of the Word, what we mean is a voice outside of your own. The voice of the one who created you. The voice of God calling you towards something. And that call has a power in it that because you've been called and you know that you've been called, there is a hope then that is associated with it that by the grace of God we're going to get this done. See, and this is the thing I want to highlight for you in today's message of what hope is and what calling is and how they're linked is that a lot of people when they proclaim a gospel that gets mixed up with really pieces that aren't hopeful, what people tend to think is that if we get too assured of our salvation, if we get too certain about the blessing of God in our lives that we'll quit trying.

But what I want to just try to prove to you is exactly the opposite. In case in point Jeff and Sissy, if they ever got to the point that they thought they wouldn't be able to succeed at translating the New Testament for the Arab low-cut people, they would quit. See, when do you quit?

You quit when you lose hope. So the opposite of that is true that the more hope you have, the more energy that you'll have to follow a calling and the more delight of soul that you'll have on the journey. So let's talk about that, that you can know what is the hope of your calling. Now the first thing to say about this text is that this is a prayer of Paul's. And I would pay special attention to Paul's prayers because this is Paul. He was originally known as Saul of Tarsus. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees, one of the smartest academicians and one of the most zealous religious leaders of his day. He was chief persecutor of the Christians, oversaw and gave the nod of approval to the first Christian martyr's death.

They stoned Stephen. And he thought that he was living an especially righteous life, a very religious man. Well, he met Jesus personally. Jesus actually spoke to him saying, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? And a blinding light of the Shekinah glory of God came upon Saul of Tarsus and he was literally blinded. And for three days he was led by the hand around. He had gone to persecute Christians, but instead he was led humbly around unable to even see. And then following this through a prophetic encounter, something like scales fell from his eyes, but it also fell from his heart. And he came to know Jesus in such a very deep and personal way that Paul himself would say, I can't even describe the visions that I've had of Lord Jesus. So arguably nobody ever met more intimately with Jesus than Paul.

Paul ends up becoming the chief proclaimer of the gospel to the Gentiles, the writer of so much of the New Testament, that I'm very curious that if he's going to pray for Christians, what's he going to pray? And what he prays is that we would have in our heart, in our inmost being, by the Holy Spirit, a revelation and a wisdom that emerges within us. Wisdom, Sophia, a revelation, an apocalypse, that something would happen supernaturally.

He's not talking about mere normal natural thoughts. He's talking about a supernatural spiritual thing that takes place in the heart where his prayer is that you would know, you would know what is the hope of your calling. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. What is this mysterious biblical principle called blessing?

Why is it so powerful? How can we learn to bless others? In his newest book, The Power to Bless, Alan Wright answers those questions and more as he leads readers into a deep revelation of how anyone can learn to speak life and empower the people they love.

Contact us today to get your copy of the Amazon best-selling book. And when you do for a very limited time, we will send you four additional resources to help you discover The Power to Bless. Along with the beautiful hardcover book, you'll receive Pastor Alan's video masterclass called Speak Life and its corresponding study guide. Also, we'll send you Pastor Alan's brand new video course, The Power to Bless, perfect for small groups or individual devotions.

It also comes with a study guide. Everyone needs to be blessed and anyone can learn to bless others. So contact us today to get The Power to Bless bundle, Pastor Alan's book, two video courses, and two study guides. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. Learn more at pastoralan.org.

That's pastoralan.org or call 877-544-4860. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. When he says this, what he's saying is so completely radical and it flies in the face of so much of what you hear that I want to draw for you today a real contrast between two opposing theological viewpoints. And it's one of those that's so important because it's like a watershed. When I talk about like a watershed, I envision like a mountain and at the top you might be on one side or the other and it looks pretty similar. And that's the way it is sometimes with ideologies. They might seem sort of similar if you're kind of at the top.

But if the water drains down, if they go to their natural where they naturally would lead, you'll see that it's very radical the difference between it. And the first perspective is a perspective that says that essentially you can't know for sure for absolute certain that you're saved. You can't absolutely know what's going to happen when you die.

You can't be positive about your calling because the concern from this school of thought is that if you tell people that all they have to do is believe in Jesus and then they're born again, people will just go on and they'll just live any kind of life. You'll get lax morality. You'll get lazy spirituality.

You'll get people who won't try very hard in their growth spiritually or sanctification and live unholy lives. And so in other words, nobody will put it this way, but essentially what they're saying is that you ought to keep people a little bit uncertain about whether they're absolutely sure that they're a child of God and whether they're absolutely sure or not that they're going to go to heaven because this is the way that you're going to spur people on to try hard for holy living. In other words, this perspective says that we are so concerned that people will become morally lazy that we really can't be absolutely sure and therefore here's the way that you're going to decide whether you're really saved or not is you examine your life and you see whether or not you've got a lot of sin in your life and this is essentially one of the viewpoints.

The other side of course which I preach all the time and which I want to make as vividly clear today as possible says exactly the opposite. The other side of this says that there's something so dramatic and so radical and so phenomenal that happened with the coming of Jesus Christ that a new covenant was instituted. And it's not like the old covenant which was a covenant of works, but this is a covenant of grace that is based upon a relationship between Father God and His Son and that Jesus made and established a covenant with the Father and lived a perfect sinless life and He did so to fulfill a covenant that we would never have been able to fulfill. And when you accept Christ, what happens is that you are born as if all over again and born not by your own willpower or your decision, but born by a supernatural transaction that takes place by the power of God, born of God. And you're born of the Spirit and what happens is in some mystical and supernatural but eternal way, you are engrafted into Christ. You are, Paul says over and over in the first chapter of Ephesians, you're in Christ and Christ is in you. And what this means is that therefore if you are in Christ, when you've accepted Him, when you've accepted His saving work and you're born again, you are in Christ. And that means that therefore you are viewed by the Father as if you hadn't sinned and you are viewed also as if you had the righteousness of Jesus. This is so radical, this is so incredible that it just seems too good to be true, but this is most certainly what the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaims.

And this perspective therefore is entirely different from the perspective that says you can't know for sure. So what Paul is saying here is here is my prayer. If you are gonna live out this life that is so incredible, if you look at Paul's life, a man that was shipwrecked, a man that was poisoned, a man that was imprisoned and had the joy of the Lord in his life, he's saying I want you to know what I know. You can know for sure the hope of your calling.

Because if you don't know this for sure, that slippery slope on the other side will lead you into despair. It's interesting to read some of the wisest earliest Jewish fathers who even though that they love God so much that in any kinds of work-based theology would find themselves unable to have any essential assurance about even their own eternal destiny. I was reading this week about a famous Jewish rabbi. He was a contemporary of the New Testament apostles.

His name was Rabbi Jochenon ben Zachai. And at his deathbed, this rabbi was visited by some of his pupils who came to receive a final blessing from their dying rabbi. And he wept. And the pupils asked him, Why do you weep? And he answered, quote, There are two ways before me, the one to the Garden of Eden, the other to Gehenim, and I do not know on which they lead me.

How can I help weeping? This man had been called by his disciples the lamp of Israel and the strong hammer. Surely he had lived his life in complete devotion to God and on his deathbed he wept.

He didn't know. It's interesting, there were two schools of thought amongst the centuries around Jesus amongst the Jewish people, Hillel, a rabbi and another was Shammai. And they were always in debate and they disagreed on different things. And one of the things they disputed, these two schools of thought disputed for more than two years is whether or not it was better for a man to have been created or whether it had been better if he had never been created.

And after two years, this is one of the things they finally agreed on. Both schools of thought agreed that it had been better for man never to have been created. And the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Kittles, ends with this quote on that particular article and says, No other view is really possible under the law.

And what a profound statement and I agree with it. That if you have a theological perspective that is based on works and righteousness, then I don't care how righteous you seem to think you're living your life. You can't ever really know. And if you can't ever really know, then that is a life of complete angst. If you don't know right now what happens to you for all eternity, then you have no recourse except to either have complete angst or to cover up your life with things to make you not think about it, because we're all going to die, right? And what Kittle is saying here is that any works, righteousness kind of theology ultimately in the end, if you trace it down to all the way to the bottom of that watershed, you've got to wind up with the conclusion that Hillel and Shammai, the schools of thought said, it'd been better for man never be created because we can't know for sure what's going to happen to us. And what Paul is saying here is such extraordinary good news.

It's exactly the opposite direction. He's saying, no, you can know and you can know for sure. And this is my prayer for you that you will know the hope of your calling. This difference of theology is so important that I want to actually highlight for you the opposite, the opposing perspective to mine by quoting some source material.

And I rarely ever do this. If you listen to me preach, you know I rarely, rarely, rarely ever do this. I don't think it's my place to stand up here and put down any other Christian thinker or anything like that. I just want to lift up the gospel.

But every now and then I think it's instructive to as much as I can with fairness say, here's what a different perspective is. So I want to read to you some portions of a Catholic website called catholicanswers.com. And I want to again be very clear to say this is not me putting down Catholicism. It's not me saying that Catholics aren't Christians or they don't love Jesus. I'm just going to point out, here's something where there's a very, very clear difference of theology.

And I'm doing this for illustrative purposes and I'm going to try to be fair. But I would say the Catholics would say this is a good website that addresses a lot of caricatures of Catholicism and answers a lot of questions. And so if you were to go there and ask the question, can you know for sure that you're saved, here is part of the answer on catholicanswers.com. Since it is necessary for those who hear the gospel to repent and embrace it, there is a time at which we come to be reconciled to God. And if so, then we like Adam and Eve can become unreconciled with God. And like the prodigal son need to come back and be reconciled again with God after having left his family.

Now if you just read that and you're up kind of at the top of the mountain where the watershed is not dramatic yet, you might go, well that sounds kind of right. Yeah, Adam and Eve, their fellowship broke and something had to happen to be reconciled. The prodigal son, he was away from the father and he had to be reconciled. But what I want to point out to you here is why I believe exactly the opposite of this.

That in fact of the matter, if you were to ask me about these same two instances, I would highlight them in a completely different way. That essentially what this answer is saying is that Adam and Eve were in perfect fellowship with God in a sinless world. And then Adam and Eve sinned and it broke their fellowship with God. Alan Wright, you're called in hope. Part of our teaching in the series of Ephesians and I encourage you to stay with us.

Alan is in the studio and back here in a moment with additional insight on this today for your life and our final work. The patriarchs bless their children and grandchildren. Jesus blessed the little children and as he ascended to heaven, blessed his disciples. The apostle Paul said, we need to learn to bless even our enemies. What is this mysterious biblical principle called blessing?

Why is it so powerful? How can we learn to bless others? In his newest book, The Power to Bless, Alan Wright answers those questions and more as he leads readers into a deep revelation of how anyone can learn to speak life and empower the people they love.

Contact us today to get your copy of the Amazon bestselling book. And when you do for a very limited time, we will send you four additional resources to help you discover the power to bless. Along with the beautiful hardcover book, you'll receive Pastor Alan's video master class called Speak Life and its corresponding study guide. Also, we'll send you Pastor Alan's brand new video course, The Power to Bless, perfect for small groups or individual devotions.

It also comes with a study guide. Everyone needs to be blessed and anyone can learn to bless others. So contact us today to get The Power to Bless bundle, Pastor Alan's book, two video courses and two study guides.

Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. Learn more at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org or call 877-544-4860. Alan, I've heard you preach on hope before and hope is oftentimes something so much deeper than what we give it credit for. Hope is not wishful thinking. Hope is an inward bliss that comes with the certainty that God has arranged something good that is still to come. And today we're learning and we'll continue tomorrow to learn about how the power of calling, the voice outside of ourselves, the voice from God that moves contrary to the spirit of age and calls us toward God and calls us towards His plan, how that is related to hope. There's a calling from God that is intimately associated with the hope in your life. And so as you hear God call, it means that God has something prepared for you, which builds hope within you. And Daniel, we need hope. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.