Speaking Like God [Part 3]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Allen Wright. Grace and truth together release the glory of God.

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 Power to Bless, taken from Pastor Alan's book of the same title and 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 can be yours for your donation this month to Allen Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at pastorallen.org or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Allen Wright. Jesus, He's not just 50 percent grace and 50 percent truth. He's 100 percent grace and 100 percent truth. Grace means gift. And the ultimate gift in a mysterious way really is when you give somebody the truth. So, there's a real sense in which grace is truth and truth is grace, right?

If someone had a life threatening disease and a doctor says, I have a study that reveals a particular antibiotic, one antibiotic that is effective against this disease and I'm going to give you the antibiotic and it's going to cure you. That truth of this one specific antibiotic is the greatest grace to that patient. Truth is grace and grace is truth.

They're inseparable and yet they seem so different. I was sitting with a friend and having breakfast and he was just, this is many, many years ago. And he said, I think of Reynolda and he said, I think of grace and truth. He said, not many churches are like that. And he said, really, this is the aspiration of the Christian life. We should be full of grace. And so he doodled this on a napkin.

I want to just show you how this works. So first he just put it at the top. He said, Jesus is full of grace and He is full of truth. And he said, what's the word for the opposite of grace? And he drew an arrow over.

And I said, well, I would say legalism. And he said, yeah, okay. He said, what's opposite of truth? And we drew an arrow over. He drew an arrow. And I said, well, I would call that deception or falsehood, something like that.

He said, sure. He said, the problem is that whereas Jesus was a hundred percent grace and a hundred percent truth, most of us lean in one way or the other. And oftentimes there's a rift that comes right down the middle of this. And so the problem with it is that if we're all grace and we don't have any truth, look what it leads to. And it leads to a life of deception, right?

I mean, just think about that. If all you are is just lovely and gracious and kind, but you don't care about the truth or are filled with the truth, what are you going to wind up with? Some people that seem really nice that are really lost, just lost. I often say to people like this, say, well, people that don't believe in narrow truth, well, just let them ask somebody for directions. What if somebody wants directions to my house where I say, well, far be it from me to tell you any specific way to get there.

Always lead to my house. That's just what people could be wandering around lost, right? People need specific truth. But if you have truth and you have no grace, look what you wind up with, legalism.

And I could use some other words for this. You could refer also to legalism as a moralism. I like to think of moralism as you care about right and wrong way more than relationship. Moralism, if you will, like a transaction, then God will.

If you will be better. Moralism likes to interpret every story in the Bible as if it's about how you ought to be a better person so that God will bless you more. So if you read the story of David and Goliath, we teach them in Sunday school moralistically, look at David, he was brave. Now you ought to be brave like David, face all your Goliaths, be brave. Have you ever noticed that telling somebody just to be brave doesn't make them brave? But I'll tell you what will make you brave is if you're one of the cowardly soldiers of Israel trembling day after day at Goliath's taunts, and then one day a mediator, an unlikely candidate from Bethlehem comes onto the scene and says, I'll fight the giant. And he runs out there with his sling and smooth stones and slays the enemy on behalf of the whole army.

I tell you what will make you brave is when you see that happen, when you see what your champion's done for you, when you see what David's done, when you see what the son of David has done, when you see what is possible, all of a sudden that cowardly army is brave and they chase them down for seven miles, routing the Philistines as they go. Moralism just tells you what you ought to be and doesn't give you any power to be it. But there's another side to this, and I've used this word on the side of deception, that's amoralism, not anti-morality, but just amoral, which means no morality.

And this, beloved, is the spirit of the age, isn't it? To say that there's no real right or wrong, let's just get along and let's just be kind to everybody. That's the greatest good is to not try to talk about truth as if it's specific so as to be offensive to anybody and this idea that there's no real absolute right or wrong.

I understand how we arrived there. I'm just being honest about that because we had too long of religious moralism crammed down through Sunday School and every other way into people like it's all pharisaical about how you ought to be better and we are better than you and all of that. And I think that our country just said, we've had it with that, and they just went over to the other side of the diagram and said, we're just going to say there is no right or wrong. And the problem, of course, if someone says there is no absolute right or wrong is you can always look at them and say, you're absolutely sure. Somebody said, yeah, there's no absolute truth. Are you absolutely sure about that? I don't believe at all that anybody believes that there's no such thing as right or wrong.

It's nonsensical. And all you gotta do is break in line in front of them to find out. The blessing that Ms. Harper gave to Mickey that day was full of grace. Mickey, this is not the vision I have for your life. You haven't proven yourself yet, Mickey, she's saying, but I'm offering a kind and merciful and hopeful vision that's not related to your past performance but to my faith for your life. That's grace. That's grace. I'm not withholding my affirming vision of your life until you prove yourself.

I'm affirming you before you've proven yourself. That's grace. The grade, Mickey, doesn't warrant my affirmation of your intelligence, but I see you beyond this Latin quiz.

I see who you can be. That's grace. But truth, authentic discernment. That is because she's a gifted teacher a gifted teacher who could recognize intelligence and academic potential. She had faith because it was rooted in rock solid truth. She knew what was possible.

She knew his nature. So as I thought about this over the idea of thinking and writing about blessing, I saw in my mind something that became revelatory for me. And I want to show you this and then encourage you, get in one of our groups, we're going to talk about this in more detail. I think you can think of grace and truth as continuance. So let's imagine a vertical line and we'll call this the line of grace. And as you go up, it's more grace. And as you go down, we're less grace. And then imagine another line that we'll call truth that runs horizontal, and it's a continuum also, that if you go further and further to the right, let's say this is more truth.

And if you go further to the left, there's less truth. So it leaves us with really four quadrants that are built on these continuance of grace and truth, grace and truth quadrants here. And if you think about, therefore, any particular quadrant that it means up here in this right hand side, you've got grace and truth. And down here, you've got truth, but you don't have grace because you're going. And if you go to the lower left, there's no, there's no, there's no grace or truth and upper left, lots of grace and no truth.

So here's the way I would look at there. Blessing is a form of speech that is full of grace and truth. And it's not blessing unless it is grace and truth. If you have no grace, no positive vision for the future, no hopeful word to say, but only doom.

And you have no real truth to offer. Instead, it's all deception and darkness. That is what we call curse. And that's the currency of hell. That's what, that's what hell wants most to release in the world. Your past sin condemns you so that there is no future for you.

And you should just give up. Ultimately, what hell would like to do is have everyone kill themselves either literally or figuratively over time because of zero hope that is rooted in there being no grace or truth that is offered. But there are other forms of speech. So if you have a lot of truth, but you don't have grace with it, you've got moralism. This is what the Pharisees trafficked in. It wasn't so much that they were saying things that were wrong when they spoke about the law. Remember Jesus said they didn't come to abolish the law. He didn't say they're wrong for bringing up the law. He said they were wrong because the way they brought up the law just tied a heavy burden around people. He said you search the world over for a convert, you finally find one and make him twice the son of hell that you are.

So what was Jesus saying? He was saying that language that's curse is a little bit more obvious about how it's hellish, but he's saying that moralism is also hellish. And I'm telling you right now, anybody ever just grows up in a household of nothing but moralism, any child that knows the weight of a constant pressure, pressure, pressure, be better, be better, perform or else.

Your love that you're going to receive is dependent upon how well you do. Anyone who grows up under that knows that is hellish. Anybody's ever gone to a church like that knows it's hellish too, even though you're in church. You walk out feeling worse than you did before you went in. More hopeless.

Can you imagine that? And there's another form of speech that has lots of grace and no truth, and it is equally impotent to change our lives. But it is equally dangerous.

It is dangerous. It sounds like blessing, but it is not. There's so many things on a daily basis just raised up like our son Bennett and Abby in the sound of blessing.

And it was rooted in authentic discernment that as a parent I had day in, day out. And so I would affirm to Bennett the things, the gifts and the things I saw. And he was a good golfer and he'd go play golf tournaments and I'd bless him before he'd go. I said, you got this in you? And I believe you're going to do well in this tournament and you can go far with your golf game. What I never did say to him is, man, you are some kind of basketball player. I think you'll be an NBA star one day.

He just wasn't that good and he just wasn't that tall. So it would be a misdirection for his life to try to steer him down that path, wouldn't it? Truth matters. That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. 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, 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. 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. If Mrs. Harper had said, Mickey, you've made another bad grade. You obviously are not smart and you're not going to go very far in your education. And I just don't see life working out well for you. That's a curse. If she had said, Mickey, there you are having made a bad grade and I'm ashamed of you.

And unless you start bringing up your grades and studying harder than you're studying and applying yourself is not going to go well for you. Well, it's mainly true what she's saying. It's just no grace in it.

And he'd have been crushed. But if she had said, Mickey, thick pen, grades don't matter. Boys will be boys. Enjoy life. The main thing is, are you having a good time? Do whatever feels good to you, Mickey. That's amoral.

It sounds mighty nice, but he'd be just as lost. I love what my wife used to say to our kids when they were acting up and you do something, just everything within you, the sin nature wants you to just call it dumb. And we're like, no, no, our kids are smart. We don't want to ever call them dumb. So she'd say, God gave you a great brain.

I expect you to use it. See, even in our correction, even in our discipline, even when God corrects us, it comes full of grace and discernment and power because it's also truth. Hal would like to teach every tongue to curse, but would be happy if it would just take us into moralism or amoralism. And curse is easier to recognize, isn't it?

Which is why probably most people, their speech habits fall into moralism or amoralism. And God came to bless our lives and to show us the glories of who He really is. So Jesus came full of grace and truth. In the fullness of time, He went to the cross. Why Good Friday? Why the cross? Because truth and grace had to meet there. The truth is the wages of sin is death.

That's the truth. It's not popular to say, but a life of rebellion against God is death. The truth is that God said that those who keep the law will be blessed and no one's been able to keep it except one man. One man named Jesus, who never once disobeyed his father, never once caved into temptation, but lived a sinless life. And so we're left wondering, how could it be that God could at the same time be grace and truth? How could it be that God, whose steadfast love endures forevermore, whose covenantal love goes on from generation to generation, who loves to forgive iniquity, who is in His very nature, mercy and loving kindness, and yet is just and holy and righteous and in no way ever violating the principle of justice in the world, in no way ever going back on His own word, never in any way saying that what He spoke earlier about justice in the world and about the problem of sin and about the wages of sin being death, He would never go back on that. So how can He be both kind and just? How can He be both grace and truth?

How could He be this towards us? Jesus, the perfect man of grace and truth, went to the cross and there mercy and wrath met and God didn't overlook my sin or yours, but He put that sin upon Jesus and crucified that sin. He crucified your sin in the person of Jesus.

He judged your sin. He fulfilled His word. He kept the truth in the person of Jesus. And in so doing, He released the power of unlimited grace so that anyone who would receive Him would have the right to become a child of God. And if a child of God that an heir and a co-heir seated with Christ in the heavenlies, dwelling with Him forever and ruling with Him in a new heaven and a new earth, the heart of God is seen in the beauty of the cross. Grace and truth together release the glory of God.

And that's the gospel. Allen Wright, today's good news message, Speaking Like God. It's from the series, The Power to Bless, Pastor Alan's book by the same title. And you can get that at pastorallen.org.

Find out more on how to get a copy of your own. Pastor Alan is back with us in the studio sharing his parting good news thought for the day in just a moment. So that they could be productive and joyful in the world. The patriarchs blessed 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, Allen 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 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. Learn more at pastorallen.org.

That's pastorallen.org or call 877-544-4860. Back here with Pastor Alan and sharing our parting good news thought for the day. And really this is the conclusion of this teaching, The Power to Bless, the conclusion of this particular teaching as well. And here at the end, you ended in kind of a like manner of beginning it. You began this whole series getting real personal about your own life and your relationship with your father. And then here as a parent, as you're preaching a message on balance, even admitting you didn't always get it right. There were some days you were Mr. Grace, other days you were Mr. Truth, and it wasn't always perfectly balanced. How do we live? We want to be balanced, but I guess it's okay to admit there are some days we'll fall short. Oh, it's a laugh.

It's like, you know, if I'm a vacation dad, I'm all Grace, man. You know, yeah. Anybody want ice cream? Yeah, sure. Want some more? Yeah, sure.

Can we go and do this? Stay up late? Yes, absolutely.

And there are other times where I've just felt like after a long busy week, I'm tired and everything else. It was just all truth. Can we do this dad? No. Can we stay up a little? No. Can we get some ice cream?

No. You know, you can find yourself kind of swaying back and forth. And I think as long as we're in this world, we're not going to get it perfectly because only Jesus did. But we have the mind of Christ and we have the very presence of Jesus in us by the Holy Spirit. So the one who is grace and truth lives with us and in us. And I think part of discipleship is letting it be discipled. And I think if you ask God, I think the Holy Spirit will help you to recognize when you're speaking grace and truth and when you're not. And I think that if you read the scriptures this way and you understand it, you take it in deep, that the gospel is transforming you. So it's both, I think Daniel, a work of the spirit and a concerted effort to say, this is worth training myself. And you know that it will transform your marriage, transform the way you parent, transform your relationships. If you have coworkers or people that you help at work or supervise, or if you teach or you coach or anybody that you ever want to help, this is so important. Learn to speak life, learn to bless. And it is an expression of grace and truth.

Read all about it in the book. email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.