Inside Out [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

What can happen to a religious person who can become so convinced that the outward signs of their faith are the thing that matters most, and on the inside there be no real substance to their relationship with 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 am Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series we call O Bologna, a study of Romans chapters one through three, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. Now, if you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, we sure 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, and you can contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.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 Alan Wright. Okay, beloved, are you ready for some good news? Everything that makes the gospel the gospel and makes the gospel such good news has to do with this, that our faith, our life with God is something that's lived from the inside out. There are expressions of our faith that are on display, but it all has to do with the reality of an inward communing relationship with God himself. In a world that so emphasizes the outward things and tends to lure us into living from the outside in, we have the good news of Romans chapter two that describes why real Christianity is exactly the opposite of that. God wants you not to have the appearance of a thing, but to have the thing itself, the reality. And that's what we're talking about today. Someone has written if, if you can live without caffeine, if you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains, if you can resist complaining, if you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time, if you can take criticism and blame without resentment, if you can ignore a friend's limited education and never correct him or her, if you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend, if you can face the world without lies and deceit, if you can conquer tension without medical help, if you can relax without liquor, if you can sleep without the aid of drugs, if you can honestly say deep in your heart that you hold no prejudice against anyone, congratulations. You have almost reached the same level of spiritual development as your dog. A little bit of tricky humor because you're just going along going, yeah, that's what a great Christian looks like right there.

What's missing in describing what could be an appearance of a great Christian is God himself, God on the inside, a relationship with God. We have been watching, we're in the middle of watching a limited documentary series on Netflix on Bernie Madoff. I didn't know much about Madoff.

There was a big scandal on Wall Street years ago and it's fascinating. Bernie Madoff who eventually stole billions and billions of dollars that people never got back and it started with a legitimate business in which he was, I think in the 70s, selling over-the-counter stocks. He got into this a little bit and had some family and friends that he was investing in these risky stocks that didn't trade and the stock exchange itself. For a while he was making them some money and then they went south with these risky investments and he lost their money. As a young man, instead of going to these investors, friends and families and saying, I made poor investments, it's been lost and I'm sorry your money's gone, he went to his father-in-law and borrowed $30,000 which was enough in that day for him to cover these losses and instead he told his investors that they had made money and done well. One historian of Madoff put it this way, so early on Bernie Madoff made a decision made a decision that it was more tolerable for him to live with himself as a liar than it was to live with himself as a failure and what happened was from that little seed of that $30,000 that enabled him to cover up all these bad investments, it seeded what would become the biggest Ponzi scheme in history where eventually Bernie Madoff had in a fund $70 billion of folks money whole hedge funds invested in it that had never bought a stock, never made a trade and had no investment behind it whatsoever. All he would do is when someone said they wanted to get their investments back out, he would pull money out of the fund and give them that money and he was always getting money putting it in the fund while he and his colleagues in the scheme lived lavishly.

They never bought any stocks. What's interesting was he had a legitimate business on the 19th floor of this Manhattan building and then he had on the 17th floor this bogus Ponzi scheme and it was just odd. Everything about it is stunning that it could ever happen. They could fool that many smart business people and financiers and hedge fund managers and twice fool the SEC itself. In one instance they were so committed to this what they would do is they would, they had two computer guys that came up with a program wherein they could generate all of these phony stock transactions by looking and simply seeing what happened the day before in the stock market and they would go back and recreate as though they had bought and then sold that stock and it looked like they'd made money. And this is weird, even after we had good printers and all that they were using a dot matrix printer with those holes in it you know that fed through the thing and there were nobody could get any online statements they just send them when they wanted a statement they just send them these pieces of paper they've been printed on a dot matrix printer and these brilliant people were just going along with it because on paper he was showing that they were making twice as much money as everybody else in the stock market. It was too good to be true and yet there's something about human greed that just wants to get it and then what happened was one time the SEC sent in two junior associates to examine the books and Bernie Madoff was so famous and so revered on Wall Street that the two young SEC associates were just starting out to be in the same room with Bernie Madoff and he showed them a bunch of things and he talked to them and he could just you know be so convincing and they gave him a clean bill of health so now Madoff's going around saying we got a clean bill of health from the SEC and so even more people started investing with them and it became so popular that he started turning some people down which made them all the more attractive people were desperate to try to get their money in with Bernie Madoff like you're a special person if you've got your investment if you could get a billion dollars with Bernie Madoff you're really special and if somebody ever said I want I've got questions I want to get it he'd say all right I'm gonna give you your money back he said but don't ever come back to me they're like oh no no no we want we don't want to miss out on these great returns we're getting you know and there was no no none of the money was being invested in anything it's unbelievable I mean there was one time where a major client wanted to get suspicious he wanted to see all the paperwork and was coming in and so in a scramble on the 17th floor he said we got to generate a bunch of paperwork for this client he wants to come in and see where his billion dollars is went and so they started spewing out all this these numbers on their dot matrix printer and they got all these sheets of paper and they were gonna go down and Bernie was gonna lay it in front of them and show them everything they've been doing and somebody said wait a minute this paper looks too new and fresh like nobody's even been looking at these numbers so they actually took the papers and threw them on the ground and walked around on them so they'd look old and then they stacked them back and somebody said this is still warm from the printer and so they put it in the refrigerator and cooled it off and carried it down tattered and cool like man they really been working these numbers and convinced them and this went on for decades decades of this of people who thought they had stocks they didn't have and thought they were making money that they weren't making until 2008 when everything crumbled and once everybody wanted their money out then there wasn't money to give and it was all empty because early as a young man he decided to be more tolerable to be a liar than to feel like a failure that he would be more comfortable living a lie with only the exterior external appearance of success than actual success and that he could live like that just from the outside in but on the inside it was bankrupt i share that example because i think it goes far in a natural picture to explain what paul is saying to his jewish readers about what can happen to a religious person who can become so convinced that the outward signs of their faith are the thing that matters most and on the inside there'd be no real substance to their relationship with god that's alan wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series seeing is jesus sees it's the title of pastor alan wright's newest book just released and it's the giant secret of real transformation followers of christ tend to focus on doing so we've been told to ask what would jesus do but even our noblest efforts to be more like jesus ultimately fail for the same reason that pledging to keep the law never works there's no gospel power in ourselves striving but what if the secret to personal transformation and victorious living isn't found in doing as much as in seeing anyone who has ever had an aha moment or has suddenly discovered the truth of a situation knows that fresh vision changes everything in his eye-opening new book alan wright invites readers into a new simple spiritual practice a little breath prayer that can be prayed throughout the day jesus how do you see this it's a prayer that the savior loves to answer because after all christ came to be the light of the world clear away confusion win over the darkness and open your heart to wonder and joy by getting your copy of the book right away when you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries today we'll send you pastor alan's new beautiful hardcover book and as an additional thank you for your support you'll also receive a free six weeks seeing as jesus sees companion video series from pastor alan along with a study guide and a daily reading plan let jesus take you by the hand and show you a whole new perspective for your life as you learn how to ask christ for his eyes you'll start seeing as jesus sees and you're gonna love the view 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 pastor alan.org today's teaching now continues here once again is alan wright and we want to go through the sections of this dense text and show you what i think it means what he's saying and then there's some splendid good news to draw from this that leaves us profoundly encouraged and i hope put your heart more in love with the son of god look back at verse 17 again if you call yourself a jew and rely on the law and boast in god and know his will and approve what's excellent he's listing all of these benefits of being amongst the jewish people you've got the name you've got the law you've got the revelation of god you've got right from wrong he goes on to say at verse 19 you're a guide to the blind a light to those in the darkness you're probably familiar with a number of old testament texts to say of the jewish people you'd be a light to the nations and he's listing that an instructor verse 20 instructor of the foolish teacher of children the whole jewish people they were just fantastically committed to passing on their their teaching to their children having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth so this whole list at first if you read it you might go well he's being sarcastic that what he's saying to his jewish readers is oh you think you got all these things but you don't really that's not what he's saying he's saying these are good things and this is part of the benefit of you having been born into a jewish family and that god had given through this one people okay he had given a revelation that started with the old covenant and started with the law and all that's really good you call yourself a jew well that's beautiful it's beautiful it comes from the name judah who was one of the sons of jacob and it means of praise to the lord praise the lord you have the law you have the torah wonderful is that you know the thing is so i mean amazing just it's it's at the most rudimentary level about a lot of the old testament uh truths is that it just actually had practical impact on the people of god like ceremonial hand washing and all these different times before you'd eat food and all of that nobody knew what a germ was until a few centuries ago and yet here the jewish people everybody made fun of them for washing their hands all the time they're avoiding plagues and you know in war more people throughout history i think have died from diseases than they have from the sword so the jewish people are just being preserved by that they they were told they were supposed to quarantine before quarantine was a thing and so infectious diseases of the skin and others people would be quarantined until until it was healed so others didn't care on and on like this but not just that the more weighty matters of what makes for life like loving god and loving others like the secret to fulfillment and happiness is not through selfishness but through selflessness these giant things about about justice and and love and covenantal uh commitment all of this you know the people had that so paul is listening and saying so if you have all of that you know uh listening one blessing after the other he says um well that's that's that's that's wonderful if you call yourself that and and if you have those things then yeah that's great to be thankful for but if those things your your name you're jewish you have the bible you you've got the uh the outward sign of circumcision is a sign of the covenant you've got if you think that your security and your life is in those outward things you're missing the whole thing that's what he's saying they're good things but you're missing the whole thing if you place your security your hope in those things the outside things the external things verse 21 he continues you then who teach others do you not teach yourself why you preach against stealing do you steal you who say that one must not commit adultery do you commit adultery you who abhor idols do you rob temples you who boast in the law dishonor god by breaking the law i have read this over and over and i've read every interpreter of these couple verses that i could find because i found them so intriguing i want to know what does this mean because i found it odd that if paul is trying to make the point to his jewish readers that you've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of god why does he pick up such heinous sins that a lot of his readers would not have committed like like stealing outright stealing or adultery or robbing temples there was actually some different ideas what this might mean but there's at least one instance of a jewish leader who actually robbed a pagan temple took the idol worship the idol but why why pick out these three things that a lot of his jewish readers who are trying to live righteous lives would never have done those things right and and some would say well this is kind of like when jesus spoke in the summer mountain about a higher righteousness you know when he said thou shalt not commit adultery but i say to you if you've if you've even lusted you've committed adultery so there's a chance maybe he's kind of talking about that higher righteousness like you hadn't gone into a temple stolen an idol put it on your shelf but you've had idols of the heart he might mean that but i actually think he means something else i think what he's saying is to his jewish readers you who have the law the jewish name the uh and and and you have circumcision do you know anyone who has those all of those signs of being one of god's people who's done any of these things stealing or idolatry or adultery and any reader would say yeah and i mean there are people who call themselves jewish and they've done those things and i think paul's saying aha i proved my point the point being that if you know someone who has the jewish name has the law on their side has the the right of circumcision they've been faithful all that and yet they've done these very things would you say that it's just fine and they're true jew even though they do all these things they go um yeah if somebody's out there stealing and murdering and committing adultery yeah i see your point that that something's wrong there so he's saying aha every single one of us has fallen short of the glory of god he's exposing the superficiality and unreliability of relying on outward things verse 24 for as it's written the name of god is blasphemed among the gentiles because of you now he is talking here about hypocrisy but maybe not in the way that we usually think and this is a real important verse and so i want to come back to it more with some of our grand conclusions of good news from this text we're going to come back to that verse 25 for circumcision indeed is a value if you obey the law but if you break the law your circumcision becomes uncircumcision circumcision was simply put a sign of the old covenant it's a symbol to you are part of old covenant that you have your baby circum baby boy circumcised on the eighth day abraham was called by god blessed of god and then later went through circumcision so this became a remarkably important symbol for the jewish people and so much so that in many circles the symbol became an important thing unto itself because it contrasted them with other peoples you might you might think of uh this and just uh the parallel for christians of baptism so we're going to have a baptism today and we're going to celebrate and the baptism is great that's just wonderful when you go under the water you come up out of that water it's a beautiful symbol of like as if you've once were dead and now you're alive again it is a symbol of washing it's a it is a symbol of entry into the family of god the people always pass through the waters like the red sea or the jordan river it's all of that and more and should we get baptized yeah we should get baptized because jesus said we should be baptized and is baptism a wonderful symbol that expresses an inward reality of what's happened to us and therefore as part of our witness that we should celebrate yes right but is baptism the thing that makes a person a christian of course not do you have to be baptized in order to be saved and go to heaven of course not alan wright our good news message inside out from the series oh baloney from romans one through three an in-depth study please stay with us pastor alan is back joining me in the studio sharing his parting good news thought for the day for us all in just a moment seeing as jesus sees it's the title of pastor alan wright's newest book just released and it's the giant secret of real transformation followers of christ tend to focus on doing so we've been told to ask what would jesus do but even our noblest efforts to be more like jesus ultimately fail for the same reason that pledging to keep the law never works there's no gospel power in ourselves striving but what if the secret to personal transformation and victorious living isn't found in doing as much as in seeing anyone who has ever had an aha moment or has suddenly discovered the truth of the situation knows that fresh vision changes everything in his eye-opening new book alan wright invites readers into a new simple spiritual practice a little breath prayer that can be prayed throughout the day jesus how do you see this it's a prayer that the savior loves to answer because after all christ came to be the light of the world clear away confusion win over the darkness and open your heart to wonder and joy by getting your copy of the book right away when you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries today we'll send you pastor alan's new beautiful hardcover book and as an additional thank you for your support you'll also receive a free six weeks seeing as jesus sees companion video series from pastor alan along with a study guide and a daily reading plan let jesus take you by the hand and show you a whole new perspective for your life as you learn how to ask christ for his eyes you'll start seeing as jesus sees and you're gonna love the view 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 pastor alan.org back here in the studio to share pastor alan's parting good news thought for the day where we're placing a bookmark in this teaching we'll pick up next time inside out well i guess we can say that you know the whole power of the christian gospel it's an inside job and religion wants to go from the outside in religion dead religion is all about outward conformity to external advice principles or laws and we're learning from paul and as his argument continues to grow in its strength and clarity in romans that not so with the gospel of jesus the gospel of jesus christ is something that happens from the inside out and it's all the difference in the world thanks for listening today visit us online at pastor alan.org or call 877-544-4860 that's 877-544-4860 if you only caught part of today's teaching not only can you listen again online but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free find out more about these and other resources at pastor alan.org that's pastor alan.org today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries