Inside Out [Part 3]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. He is our all.

He is our everything. And so when you have Jesus, you have everything. Let the outward things, let the manifestations of it, let all of these things that are good expressions of it, let them be on display, but never be deceived. People of God, the real is what matters, and that is God inside of you, with you, now and forever. 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 Obalone, 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. This is so radical what he's saying right now. We just don't have any concept of this thing that Abraham was told was the mark of the covenant, which they've been doing for thousands of years. And now he says, no, a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart. He's saying it never was about a physical external sign. It's a matter of the heart by the spirit, not the letter, which is one of Paul's ways of calling the law. And his praise is not from man but from God. Being a child of God, an heir of God, being a Jew, recipient of the promises of God, the riches of being in relationship with God is a matter of the heart. It's inward.

It doesn't matter if you have the name and the pedigree and you've got the outward sign if you don't have the real thing. I'm gonna give an illustration that might help sum up the way Paul is addressing this. It's like someone says to me, are you married? I said, yeah. They say, you got a good marriage? I said, yeah. And you a good husband? Yeah, pretty good husband. They say, well, tell me all about your marriage. Tell me how I got. I wonder if I said to them, well, the first thing you need to know is I've got the name, Alan Wright, and she's Ann Wright.

So that proves it right there. We got the same name. I got the name. I gotta be married. I got the same name she's got. And then I said, and then on top of that, I said, I got a marriage license down at the Register of Deeds that could prove it that we've been married coming up on 38 years.

Honey, if somebody tells you I quoted that incorrectly. And I said, no, I gotta show you pictures. I should show you wedding pictures. And then I can show you, we had children together. I can show you pictures of the children, and we got a grandbaby.

I could definitely show you some pictures of a grandbaby. I got the name, and I got this long history of the pedigree to prove it through documents and pictures and all the years and the history. Yeah, I married. I said, and if none of that proves it to you, I got the ring. I got a wedding ring. So that's how you can know. I got the name, I got the history, and I got the ring.

But what if I was never around, didn't want anything to do with her, never showed her affection, was gone for long periods of time, never even contacted her and began to be cruel and say things. But I got the name, I got the history, I got the ring. That's not the marriage, right? And the symbol, the ring, is fine as long as it's pointing to the reality. I'm glad I got the ring. My ring won't come off. I've jammed that finger so many times, and over time, the finger has grown too fat. I got a fat ring finger. It won't come off. If you could see that, if I ever had to get it off, if I was like, I don't know, going to some kind of surgery, they said, let's take that ring off. I'm saying, I'm sorry, you had to chop the ring off or the finger off? It won't come off. I worry about it sometimes.

Is it cutting circulation off or something? I don't know. I can't get it off. I can't. My wife never has to worry. I'm never going to be that guy that's going to slip into the bar one night, just slip the ring off, slip the ring off.

I was like, slip into the bar. Hey, baby. She knows the ring won't come off. I can't get the ring off. The ring's fine. We exchanged that ring nearly 38 years ago. She put it on my finger, and it's never come off because it can't come off, but it's just a ring. It is a token.

It is a symbol. It is a mark of the marriage, but I can't have my wife come to me and say, well, you know, you agreed your job is to take out the trash, and it hadn't been taken out in five months, and it's all piled up in the whole front of our house, but I got the ring. I got the ring. A good husband.

But you hadn't talked to me in weeks, and you walk around the house and act like you don't even care if I'm here. I got the ring. It was a joke. You call yourself a Jew. You got the law. You got right from wrong. You feel like you're a teacher of the foolish, and you got circumcision, and inside you don't have a real marriage with God. That's what he's saying. What God's saying is what I want for you, and this is what everything that's building up in Romans is building to this is that God is saying, I want you to have that which is real because circumcision was only ever meant to be an outward sign that I've made a covenant with this people.

It never was meant to be the thing. In fact, over and over in the Old Testament, God had been showing us prophetically what was to come. Like in Deuteronomy 30, famous passage, verse five, the Lord your God will bring you into the land your fathers possessed. He's talking about inheritance, not just the physical promised land, but this is prophetic of your inheritance as believers in Christ who've been blessed with every spiritual blessing and become a co-heir with Christ himself.

I'll bring you in. I'm gonna give you the land, and he said, and he will make you more prosperous and numerous in your fathers, and the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live, that you'll have love and attachment, love with God, and experience of God's presence, of the real presence of God like a friend, like a father, and therefore what all this outward sign of circumstances is just pointing to a time in which I'm gonna do a work that's on the inside of you. It's so dramatic and so powerful what he's saying here is that you, Christian, you have not just a sign of, you have the Holy Spirit. There's such good news in living this sort of inside out life in God, and the first is this, the inside out, the having the real that then gets expressed in outward things, that kind of life dissolves fear and builds security because as long as you are relying on the external, you'll never feel secure.

If you're relying on the fact you had a wedding ring to prove that you had a good marriage, inwardly you would know it's not doing it for you, and the problem of relying on an external of any sort is that for the one who is relying on it, you know that it doesn't have real substance, and maybe if your external is your performance religiously and the good things that you do, but somehow you know that there's always this lingering voice inside of you that says, but what if you haven't done enough? It's the problem. Master Cato in teaching on this text said that there once was a lumberjack who had a son who desperately wanted to be a lumberjack, but the son was afraid of the woods because he'd been told there were ghosts in the woods. He was too afraid to go in. You can't be a lumberjack if you can't go into the woods, and so the father gave him a scarf and said, here son, this is my scarf, wear it. When I have my scarf on, the ghosts are afraid of me, and now they'll be afraid of you too, so the son started wearing his scarf, and everybody said, it's the lumberjack's son, and he walked around and said, yes, I'm the son of a lumberjack, and I'm a lumberjack, but he still couldn't go in the woods because he knew it was just a scarf, and his father would have been far better off not to give him an outward sign, but to teach him that the ghosts were lies and that he could live without fear because of who he is. It's such good news when you start living from an inward relationship with Christ Himself because you get liberated from performance anxiety in your faith, and you're just free to be His little child and enjoy His love and His fellowship.

It's real. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. 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 our self-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-week 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 going to 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, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. And the second piece of wonderful news is that this sort of living that Paul is inviting us into, the circumcision of the heart, the spirit, not the letter that we're going to learn so much about in Romans, is that it makes us unafraid of our weaknesses and in fact makes us strong in our weaknesses. Now back, as I promised, to verse 23 and four. You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law, for as it is written, the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. And there is a part of this, I know that Paul is speaking here of hypocrisy, that really causes harm to the message of Christ when we say one thing and we live another way. But I think that the wrong way to see this is something that got into me early in my Christian life because I wanted to be a good witness. And somebody said to me early on, you may be the only Jesus that anybody else ever sees. And that sounds like a really good thing to say. And listen, our witness and our outward behavior, it does matter.

Because we're called to live beyond the appearance of evil. It matters. It matters. I don't think I'd ever be tempted to be with another woman, but I can't be because we made a rule for me and for all our pastoral staff. In fact, it went back to Billy Graham's one did this, never alone with a woman. Won't have coffee alone with a woman, won't get in a car alone with a woman and won't be in the office. You say, well, that's old and not fashion outdated and all that. Well, maybe, but it does matter that nobody could ever say, Pastor Alan, I saw him with this woman in this place.

It's not gonna happen. Well, that matters. But the fact that I've got that rule is not the thing that makes me have a great marriage, but it does matter. But when somebody says you may be the only Jesus that anybody ever sees, I don't know. I think maybe it's just shame inside of me, but it makes me go, oh, no, it's all up to me. I gotta be so good. I gotta be so good that everybody goes, wow, he's so good and so wonderful.

I wanna just be, that's Jesus and I just wanna be just like that. Well, what about when you mess up? If you're the only Jesus anybody will ever see, what about when you mess up? You just messed up Jesus for somebody.

Listen, I'm gonna tell you this for sure. I don't care how good and godly and righteous and moral and upright and how long your quiet times are every day and how much good you've done and how many mission trips you've been on and how many times you've been baptized in the Jordan River. You are gonna mess up and you're gonna mess up in front of somebody that doesn't know Jesus and they're gonna go, you call yourself a Christian. We are not discipling people to us. We are discipling people to Jesus. In our lives, yes, our outward witness matters but the thing that matters most is that what's on display within our lives is that we were sinners but we've been saved, that we were captives but we've been set free and that Jesus is everything to us and we love Him and He loves people and He can work despite all of our weaknesses.

That's liberating. That's empowering to me and this is the way Paul talked. He said in 2 Corinthians 12 9, he who said, he said, speaking of when he had begged God to take away this thorn and but he said, but the Lord said to me, my grace is sufficient for you and my power is made perfect and weakness. Paul said, therefore I'll boast all more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Paul went so far in 1 Timothy to say, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came to the world to save sinners of whom I'm the foremost. I'm the chief of sinners.

Paul said, if I'm gonna boast, I'm just gonna go around boasting about this. I was the worst sinner there ever was. I was persecuting Christians. I hated Jesus. I hated the Christians. I was the worst there ever was and look what God's done in me. Hallelujah. I like to boast in my weaknesses. It's not, look how perfect I am and the witness I have is perfect. It's like, no.

So in other words, beloved, this is what this means. There are, don't be a hypocrite and there are two ways to not be a hypocrite and one way is to have this incredible biblical moral standard that you, you espouse and you proclaim and then you are so good that you live up to all of it. You're not a hypocrite because you keep all of it but as we've been learning the last couple of weeks through Romans 1 and 2, nobody's ever kept it all. You can't keep it even if your only standard is what you want other people to do. You can't keep it? You know what I mean? The other way to not be a hypocrite is to proclaim this wonderful, moral, beautiful standard of righteousness and then say, I haven't been able to keep it.

I'm growing, I'm getting a little bit better than I was before but I am able to keep it. I might be the chief of sinners but Jesus has and His power is manifest when I'm aware of my need for Him. You're not a hypocrite because you can't keep all the law that you say that we should keep. You're a hypocrite when you pretend as though you have but when you acknowledge that you yourself need God and that the new covenant is an invitation to trust in the full and the final and the finished work of Jesus Christ who is the only perfect one, the only sinless one, the one who died for us, the one who loved us, the one who reigns for us, until we can come to that place we haven't really experienced the authentic but when you do you've experienced what's real not the outward sign of it. So circumstance in Paul is saying always was really a matter of the heart and now Jesus has come and He's the fulfillment of this. We don't have time, we don't have time but this is so profound if you were to go back and look at the rabbinical practices and the teachings around circumcision. Let me just give you this one little example of in the ritual we have that goes very, very far back, many centuries back that we see this was what would be read at the time of the baby's circumcision. Our God and God of our father sustained this child for his father and mother and let his name in Israel be such and such son of so-and-so. May the father rejoice in the child from his loins and the mother receive happiness from the fruit of her room as it is written and it quotes Ezekiel when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood I said to you live in spite of your blood I said to you in your blood live.

It is a picture of an intimate rite that has the shedding of blood because it is a forecasting of how Jesus became our circumcision, how He bled for us, how He was cut off for us, how He took the punishment for us and so it is that everyone who is in Christ has experienced this tremendous exchange in which Jesus who knew no sin became our sin and we who have been so full of sin have been reckoned as the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. That's what the circumcision of the heart is and so really if you go back and you look at this big list of all the things that Paul says so you call yourself a Jew, so you you got the law, so you're like go back and look at the list and now to who's ever lived up to all that then you go Jesus, Jesus. You call yourself a Jew? Ha, the Bible says Jesus is the true Israelite. In fact, He is the seed of Abraham.

You rely on the law, He is the Word who became flesh to know His will and what is right. Jesus is the good shepherd, the light to those in darkness. Jesus said I'm the light of the world, whoever follows me will never stumble. An instructor to the foolish, He is the rabbi, the good teacher who leads in the way everlasting.

A teacher of children, remember Jesus let the little children come to me. The embodiment of knowledge and truth, Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life. Someone who doesn't steal, doesn't commit adultery, doesn't worship idols, someone who keeps all the law, He is the righteousness of God.

He is God in flesh, He is the sinless one unblemished in every way. He is our circumcision, He is our all, He is our everything and so when you have Jesus you have everything. Let the outward things, let the manifestations of it, let all of these things that are good expressions of it, let them be on display but never be deceived. People of God, the real is what matters and that is God inside of you, with you now and forever. That's the goal.

You know you just think of this way, would you rather have some papers from a dot matrix printer that had been stepped on and put in the refrigerator and looked real like you had earned twice as much as everybody else and had nothing or to have no report, no paper and have some solid investments. If you have Jesus, you have everything and that's the gospel. Alan Wright, our Good News message inside out from the series Oh Bologna 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. 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 going to 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, PastorAlan.org. Back here on the studio to share Pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day.

And this is a careful study of Romans chapter one through three. We'll continue, but we're putting the finishing point here on this teaching today inside out. Inside out living is, we've said today, dissolves fear and builds up security.

As long as we are living by a code of externals, we'll never feel secure. We'll always wonder, have I been good enough? Did I follow the rules well enough? Did I keep the symbol?

Did I keep all the signs? And we know that the outward sign is not the thing itself. And that's the problem with all religious and moralistic living, outside in living, is that in some way or another, we're always a little bit afraid. But it's an inside job that God does, an inside out life with Him that liberates you when you have the inward gift of Christ Himself. And that's the focus of your life. The life of the Spirit liberates you from fear.

And that's really, really good news. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastorallen.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 pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.