Why Wouldn't Everyone Want the Freedom of the Spirit? [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. God is love. His mercy is new every morning. His steadfast love endures forevermore.

And he so loved the world that he sent Jesus Christ to die in your place. 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, Filled, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with this throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource today. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

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

Here is Alan Wright. Turn with me to the second book of your Bible, Exodus, chapter 34, and then we're going to go to 2 Corinthians, chapter 3, as we continue to learn about the person in the work of the Holy Spirit. And I want to talk to you today about perhaps what is of greatest delight to my soul in the things of the Spirit, and that is wherever the Spirit is, there's freedom. Freedom.

Freedom. Exodus chapter 34 comes after Moses has been with God on Mount Sinai for 40 days, goes down to the people. He and Joshua hear the sound of festivity in the camp and realize that the people are dancing around a golden calf. In his anger, Moses shatters the tablets of the Ten Commandments. God is prepared to smite all of the people of Israel, but Moses intercedes that God would spare them. In his mercy, God decides to not smite all the people, and Moses meets with God. And Moses shows the deepest hunger of his heart is that he wants the presence of God.

If your presence doesn't go with us, then don't even send us, he says to God. And then Moses appeals to the Lord in chapter 33, show me your glory. In chapter 34 at verse 6, God has put Moses into the cleft of the rock, and as he passed in front of Moses, he proclaimed the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God. Slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin, yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.

He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and the fourth generation. As God was revealing himself to Moses, he was revealing himself as the compassionate and the gracious God. Not a God who overlooks sin, but a God who has it in his heart, so abounding in love that it is his deepest desire to forgive wickedness, rebellion and sin. In other words, when God showed his glory, God showed himself as a good and loving and merciful and compassionate God.

The glory of God is seen in the gospel of God. And Moses has met with God and now at verse 28, having been there 40 days, 40 nights, he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the 10 commandments. Verse 29, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord.

When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant and they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to them. So Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him and he spoke to them. And afterward, all the Israelites came near him and he gave them all the commands the Lord had given them on Mount Sinai. And when Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face. But when he entered the Lord's presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he'd been commanded, they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses with the veil back over his face until he went to speak with the Lord. So what was happening was Moses, when he was with the Lord, there was no veil.

But when he was with the people and he would speak the law, it would be in that environment in which he would put this veil and a lot more about that later. All right, Second Corinthians chapter three. It is from this story that Paul draws the imagery of Second Corinthians chapter three to talk about the magnificent work of the Holy Spirit, and bringing freedom into every believer's life.

And I pick up reading the Second Corinthians three at verse six. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant, a new covenant. New covenant, not of the letter, which is a synonym for the law, but of the Spirit. So the old covenant was a covenant of works. The new covenant is a covenant of grace. The old covenant is a covenant of what Paul calls the letter, but the new covenant is a covenant of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Verse seven. Now, if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? What he's saying is from the lesser to the greater, he says, I mean, the law, which was only a fading significance, it was only part of the increasing revelation of God. It is, it never brought any life to anybody.

It never empowered anybody. It just showed the holiness of God. It just showed something of the nature of God, but it never brought life. And yet even when that came and Moses had met with God, it came with so much glory.

They couldn't look at the face of Moses. How much more will the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? Verse nine. If the ministry that condemns men, speaking of the system of the law is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness? So you must understand that the ministry of the new covenant and the ministry of the Spirit is so entirely different from the old, because in the old, it pointed out that you were not righteous and did not empower you to become righteous. But the ministry of the new covenant of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit is to bring you into the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. It's a fundamental difference between the covenants. And the new covenant is altogether more glorious, he's saying, and it is of the Spirit. What he's leading to here is why would anybody want to gravitate back to the old covenant with all his bondage? Because look how glorious this new covenant is.

Verse ten. For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with a surpassing glory. And if what was fading away came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts?

Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away, but their minds were made dull. For to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read.

It has not been removed because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, Moses, the letter, the law, the old covenant, those are all speaking of the system of law of the old covenant, all saying the same thing. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. He's drawing analogy, he's making a typology out of what happened with Moses when he would read the law and then he put on this veil. And what Paul is saying is that is a picture of what still happens if you put yourself under old covenant thinking. If you put yourself under legalistic thinking, a veil covers the heart and you cannot see the glory of God.

That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Almost everything about New Testament Christianity is impossible by human power alone. Thankfully, God has never expected you to live the Christian life by your own strength. He has sent a helper and every single Christian is invited to live a supernaturally empowered life through the continual infilling of the Holy Spirit. In a special bundle alongside the audio teaching, Pastor Alan has also written a booklet. Both the audio and the booklet not only explain the infilling of the Holy Spirit, but will nourish, inspire, and draw you nearer to the God who longs to immerse you in His love and power.

Discover how to be filled with the Spirit and get ready for your life to be filled with fresh love, joy, and power. 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 verse 16, whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Freedom! Everybody say freedom.

It's a good word, isn't it? And we who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Why wouldn't everyone want the freedom of the Holy Spirit? My 11-year-old daughter Abigail was at a practice of sorts, and she was sitting next to an acquaintance who was also at the practice, and she had her Bible. They had their Bibles with them, and the other girl, maybe 10-year-old girl, observed my daughter's Bible, and what ensued was a conversation about the translation of the Bible. My daughter had a translation that was not the King James Version, and what ensued was a conversation in which this 10-year-old informed her that the people that wrote the New International Version of the Bible would be going to hell. So we had to have a discussion about this as to whether that was indeed true or not, and it was a little complicated to try to explain to an 11-year-old the process of the canonization of the Scripture over time and assured her that the people that had worked for years translating original Greek texts and Hebrew texts to form the NIV Bible were not, by that fact, going to hell.

And I appreciate the beauty of the King James Version, and many of you, that's the version you've been using maybe since childhood, and you've memorized King James texts, and now that's wonderful. It's a word-by-word translation, but my two questions came from this. One, how could anybody ever wind up with that conclusion? That's the first question. How can you even get there with that conclusion?

I mean, because if you just stop and think about it, just start with this. The Bible was written, the Old Testament in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek, and so any language that it's in other than Hebrew and Greek is a translation into that language. And it was not first translated into English. It was first translated into Latin. In fact, the Old Testament was translated into Greek, and then the Old and New Testament translated into Latin, and then finally when some courageous reformers like Martin Luther decided that we need something other than Latin, we need something the people can read, and so Martin Luther spent years in hiding translating the Bible into German. So the German translation of the Luther Bible came way before the King James Bible, and so it's got me kind of worried about the eternal security of Martin Luther. And what about poor Tyndale, who really wrote the first English Bible, and he was running for his life because Henry VIII and others were so mad at him for doing it that he eventually lost his life.

Poor Tyndale. I can't imagine him roasting in hell over that. And the more I thought about this, and I thought of all these poor folks who've been translating the Bible into Italian, and Spanish, and Russian, and all of these poor people who put it in something other than the King James, and then I got to thinking about, you know, the Apostle Paul quotes Scripture a lot himself. I got to worry a little bit about Apostle Paul's eternal security. I mean, I'm just, how can you wind up with that kind of hell? We wonder why people are rejecting Christianity all the time. Brother. But my bigger question is not just how could you wind up there?

Why would you want to? That's the bigger question. Why would anybody want to have that kind of religion, that form of Christianity in which that's what it's about?

Is you're not using the right translation of the Bible? How could we be drawn enough to that that anybody would have anything to do with it? But we are amazingly drawn to the letter that kills. And I'd like to expose that today, and I would like to pray for the continued outpouring of the Holy Spirit, because the promise of the Word is that wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom. Glorious freedom. Freedom. The first thing to say is that some people are attracted to the law because they wrongly define freedom. A lot of people think that freedom is mainly about the freedom from having to submit to authority. And that is not the biblical gospel picture of what freedom is. Freedom is not so much your freedom from responsibility, it is your freedom unto responsibility.

This is a true story. I had a friend who was incarcerated for a brief period of time, and he didn't think like so many of the inmates. And I don't mean this by any, I love ministering the inmates, and I like, and I'm not a stereotype in senior, but he found surprisingly amongst some of the inmates that they just acclimated their lives to being in prison. But the most bizarre was that he came to an acquaintance who was up for parole.

And so he went, the fellow went to his parole hearing, and they described to him all that would be required for him when he was on parole, how he'd meet with his parole officer, had to check in at certain times, couldn't travel out of the state, and all these different things, whatever the requirements were for his parole. And this fellow said, no thanks, and just came right back to jail, and said, nobody's going to tell me what to do. I'm going to be free.

I don't have any parole officer telling me what to do. I'm going to be free. It's like a student who says, I'm so tired of school, and these teachers telling me what to do, and taking me to the principal office, telling me what to do, nobody's going to tell me what to do, I'm going to be free. I'm going to drop out of school and I'm going to be free. I'll tell you what you going to be, you're going to be free not to get a good job. That's what you're going to be free to do. You're not going to be free to drop out of school. You're going to not be free to go to college. You're going to not be free to get a good job.

You're not going to be free to be working towards something you're like, that's not freedom. This is the way addiction works. And it's a deception that comes in and it's something in that carnal nature.

If we're going to live out of the carnal nature, I'll tell you what that flesh, what that carnal nature is going to do, it's going to say, nobody's going to tell me what to do. And I've had, I've worked with families and others that have loved and cared for an addict in their family, an alcoholic perhaps, and finally they get them, you know, to see that you really need to go to a treatment center, and I've seen this happen way too many times. Getting the treatments and getting to a 30 or 40 day program and two weeks into the thing, they're walking out. They're walking out because nobody's going, I'm tired of all these people telling me what I got to do and the steps I got to take and I got to show up all these things. I'm better, I'm free, and walk out and can't make it one day without drinking and call themselves free. That's freedom? You're not free to even choose whether you're going to drink alcohol or not, you ain't free. You're not even free to spend your money the way you want to spend it.

There's no freedom there whatsoever. Freedom is not defined by you being free from authorities in your life. Freedom is when you are released to be fully submitted to the greatest authority in your life. It's freedom unto the things that you're called to be.

That's your destiny that we're talking about. So when the gospel talks about freedom, it's not talking about a lack of restraint, and it's not saying that when you have freedom, that means that you don't have to work. Let me tell you, freedom, the more free you are, the harder you will work. The more free you are, the more responsibility you have in your life.

Isn't that true? Oh, come on, I mean, anybody that's ever run their own business or been at the head of any kind of organization, and you realize, you are free. Oh, you're free. Well, I wish I could have your job. You're free to just go do whatever you want, make your own schedule whenever you want to.

That's a person that's never run anything before. Yeah, you are free. You're free to be the hardest working one there, right? So freedom doesn't mean you don't submit, and freedom doesn't mean you don't work. That's not what the gospel's talking about. It's talking about something much deeper than that. It's really talking about God making you free to be what He's always created you to be. I'm thinking about the work of the Holy Spirit in my life and what happens when you see people that are filled with the Spirit, how wonderful it is to see what God does.

It is just amazing. One of the things that you first notice, the more the Spirit fills you, the more that you become surrendered to the Spirit and out from under the law. You know what the first thing that happens is it is a great delight to the soul, and that is you can live a more open life.

You can just be more open. You don't have to hide as much because hiding is what we do when we fear punishment. But if you come into a system in which there is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, it starts setting you free to be real and come out from hiding. It's amazing the tricks of the enemy to keep us in hiding. But the main trick is we fear condemnation.

Alan Wright. Good truth today. It's part of our teaching in the great series of Filled. Today's teaching, why wouldn't everyone want the freedom of the Spirit? Alan is back in a moment in the studio with additional insight on this for your life in our final word today. 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. Someone once said, doing your will by your power is humanism. Doing God's will by your power is religion.

But doing God's will by God's power, that's Christianity. Can anyone love his enemy just by deciding to be nice? Can anyone produce peace that passes understanding by mental discipline?

Can anyone heal depression by just trying harder to be happy? Of course not. In fact, almost everything about New Testament Christianity is impossible by human power alone. Only God has never expected you to live the Christian life by your own strength. He has sent a helper and every single Christian is invited to live a supernaturally empowered life through the continual infilling of the Holy Spirit. In a special bundle alongside the audio teaching, Pastor Alan has also written a booklet. Both the audio and the booklet not only explain the infilling of the Holy Spirit, but will nourish, inspire, and draw you nearer to the God who longs to immerse you in his love and power.

Discover how to be filled with the Spirit and get ready for your life to be filled with fresh love, joy, and power. 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. Alan, someone hears the word freedom and they feel like it's a dangerous freedom and maybe that's to answer your question, why wouldn't everyone want the freedom of the Spirit? Well, that's why. It feels too dangerous.

What would you say? Well, the wrong idea of what freedom is. Freedom as we'll be learning is not freedom from authority, but freedom unto authority. It's not freedom from submitting to God's will, it's freedom to submit to God's will. And that's what we'll be seeing. So the person who is addicted to a substance, well, how silly for them to say, yeah, but I'm free.

I'll do it if I want to. Well, you're not free. So the biblical notion of freedom is grand and that's what we're learning about. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.