The Rescue [Part 3]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

To say that we are all under sin is to say that we are all invited to abandon every false hope in the flesh and to say that it is good news because that until we realize how trapped we are, we will never know how much we need a Savior, and we will be forever deceived, and we will be exhausted by the effort. 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. Verse 13. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive.

The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood, and their paths are ruin and misery in the way of peace they've not known. Tongues and lips and mouths and curses and bitterness and violence and wrong path and no peace. This is Paul talking about what theologians call total depravity. It doesn't mean that everything that we do is sinful, but it means that every part of our being has been tainted by sin.

Every part of ourselves, the way we think, the way we speak, what we do with our lives, all of it has been clouded. John Calvin said it's as if we are born in sin and we're wearing these sin-tainted spectacles, that everything that you see, you look at it through the lens of your own selfishness. You look at it through the lens of sin, and you can't see, therefore, accurately. How could you see God? How could you see anything accurately if it's all being filtered through your own sin?

That's what total depravity means. It means, therefore, that something has to happen miraculous. It means you need some new lenses. It means that somebody has got to open up your eyes.

It means that you need rescuing. And at verse 18, we read, there is no fear of God before their eyes. We know the Proverb says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Always like what my uncle Stanley said, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but not the end. And it's not fear in the sense of being afraid of God, in the sense of you are concerned that He is bad and that therefore He cannot be trusted. It is much more related to amazement that your soul is in such reverence for God and all of His sovereignty and goodness. Psalm 130, verse 3, if you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared.

So to have the fear of God is to respect so much that God is the giver of life and that it is only through Him that forgiveness can come, that it turns you away from every lesser priority. John Gerstner said that we are too much like a thirsting man in a desert who has begun to see mirages and imagines an oasis, imagines water sources that do not exist and is pursuing the mirage, not knowing that there is real water close by. The mirage keeps you from the real. And this is part of what Paul is saying and building up here in Romans 3, is that therefore, if you realize what is a mirage, you then have a happy day.

It may be disappointing to realize that trying it your own way hasn't worked. It may be remorseful to your soul when you begin to realize the poverty of your own ability to see what is right and good. But what Paul is leading to here is that this is the best news imaginable.

So here comes the good news. Verse 19, verse 19, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law. So under the law, like being under sin, means that this is the system of your life. It doesn't mean the law is bad. He's already established that.

And it's good to do what is good and right. He's established that. But to be under the law means that your system of salvation, your planned path for life is by religiously performing well enough so that you would feel accepted.

And it's impossible. That's what he's saying to us. And this is what it means to be under law. It means you have not received the new covenant of the grace of God.

So under the law. And here's what he says, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable. For by the works of the law, and here it is, listen carefully, note it well, underlined it in your Bible, for by the works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

To say that we are all under sin is to say that we are all invited to abandon every false hope in the flesh and to say that it is good news because that until we realize how trapped we are, we will never know how much we need a savior and we will be forever deceived and we will be exhausted by the effort. So if you're trapped in a cave and you finally realize you cannot escape, then it's the beginning, the dawning of hope in your heart that maybe a rescue will come because you have surrendered yourself to the fact that you can't swim your way out. You can't save yourself. You can't manufacture it for yourself.

You can't make it happen. And so this is the beginning of it. The mirage is seen for being a mirage. And this is the beginning point of trusting God. That's what the good news is here. And secondly, it is to say that because no sinner seeks God, that therefore you can take heart, you can receive this good news that if no one ever got saved because they knew how to get to God, then you can trust in this. Anyone who is saved is saved for one reason, and that is God sought them out.

So the gospel is not about how able we were to seek God and find Him. The gospel is about the love of God who came to seek sinners while we were lost at great peril. He came to rescue us. And this is good news because what it means is that He's the hero of this story. I love rescue stories. I love epic tales. And it's wonderful to follow the journeys of an Indiana Jones who goes to great lengths to find a lost ark or a hidden treasure or a Frodo and Lord of the Rings who makes an epic journey and though a hobbit is a hero in the end.

And I love all those stories. And sometimes we read the gospel and we put ourselves as if we're on the epic journey and we're the hero, but that's not the story of the gospel. This rescue story, the gospel rescue story is about God's rescue of us. And it is about the epic rescue that has been performed by Jesus Himself, which means that you are the treasure.

It means that you are everything to God and that God therefore becomes everything to you. The movie 13 lives, if the boys had escaped because suddenly they found a secret avenue out or that they were good enough swimmers and they could find occasional pockets there, we would rejoice at that. But what's moving about the story is that these two British cave divers came in as volunteers to try to rescue them.

And what they did, they did not because they knew these kids or they were getting paid, but just because these kids were trapped and they would certainly die. Verse 19 again, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law and look at this, so that every mouth may be stopped, silenced, made still. It'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. Policy is something extraordinary here, that the law is a good gift because it was a revelation of God, but it was also a good gift because the law has put every mouth to silence. No matter the most moral Jewish reader that he had who had lived meticulously trying to keep the law, no reader of his would have kept all the law. And so part of what the law does is it shows us what we can't be. It silences us.

It gets us to the point that we quit so frantically trying to be our own Savior. Here's what's so shocking about that rescue is that they found the boys on the 10th day and they realized the problem had only begun. Yes, those cave divers would be able to lead some other Navy SEALs now on the way. Yes, they would be able to get some provisions to them. Yes, that would happen, but the waters were continuing to fill. Time was limited.

Air was limited. How in the world would they get these exhausted boys and their coach out of there on a two and a half mile dive that would take over six hours to get to the mouth of the cave? Boys that are exhausted and weak and you know what it's like when someone feels like they're drowning? They are frantic.

They are thrashing. They knew the boys would make it impossible for the divers to do their rescue work. Hundreds of volunteers are trying to mitigate the problem. There's so much going on, but these two cave divers, Stanton and Volanthen, they realized that they needed to call a friend, another excellent cave diver, an Australian that they knew. He came and offered to help, but then they looked at him. They said, we've called you here, not just to help with the dive, but because of your special expertise.

And then it dawned on him. The Australian was a doctor, an anesthesiologist, and what they were proposing was to administer sedation, general anesthesia to each boy so that they would be unconscious during the rescue. The anesthesiologist realized there may be no other way and that probably most of these boys would die, but he agreed to it. And they went back and took the first boy, didn't tell him what they were doing, but gave him an injection or a little concoction of several medications and put a mask over his face and would pause to make sure the mask didn't lose its place.

And two other times a diver would have to stop and give him an injection through the wetsuit in order to keep him sedated thoroughly to make it all the way. And that's what they did for kid after kid. And for the coach, they put them to sleep so that when they were silenced, they could let themselves be saved.

It's an interesting story. We won't take time to look at it in Genesis after God has called Abraham and promised him that he'd be the father of a nation in Genesis 12. Then in Genesis 15, he comes back and he reaffirms his covenant with Abraham. And in the text, God essentially puts Abraham into a trance where he can't move as if he's asleep. And God appears to him and says, know for sure that I'm blessing you. I think that salvation is something like that, that the transfer of the righteousness of Jesus Christ to us is dependent upon our mouths being silenced, our own righteousness being recognized for its poverty and the need that is impossible of perfection over our lives, such that we're silenced in any attempt to be worthy in God's eyes. And when we come to that point and we are surrendered into the hands of God, that's when he is able to do what he's always longed to do.

And that is to save us, to rescue us and carry us into new life. Verse 21, the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe for there's no distinction. Here's the final and the best news of all of this text is that while we're all the same apart from Christ, we're under sin because we're under the law and we could never escape. What it also means is that in Jesus Christ, we have seen the revelation of righteousness and we have received that as Christians by faith, not by merit so that in the end there's no distinction and we have all been saved in the same way and we all become children of God in the same way and we're all the recipients of the same grace and therefore, Paul says in Galatians, he says, therefore we are one in Christ, therefore he says there's no Jew or Greek. There's no one who, you had all the advantages amongst the Jewish people and you had the laws and you were in the same predicament as the Gentile was, but now the Gentile, he can say to the one who didn't have all of that, in Christ you're all the same.

We're all the same because we have this one savior, no male, no female, no Jew, no Greek. You once were the same because you're under sin and now you're the same because you're under grace. When you're under grace, it changes everything in your life. The manifestation of righteousness apart from the law means that Jesus has come. It means the savior has come.

It means the rescuer has come so that all of the attention of the story, all of the attention of our lives, it's upon the rescuer. It should be as silly as anything to think of any of our own merits when the rescue has come only through the person of Jesus Christ. That's what's so extraordinary about the gospel. It's all Jesus and his righteousness, none of our own. But when you're saved and rescued, you're brought out into the glorious light and you breathe and you're free and you live under grace. That's what Jesus has done for us. And that's the gospel. All right. Our good news message. The rescue from the series.

Oh, baloney. It's a study of Romans, chapters one through three, the first few chapters. Hey, stay with us. Pastor Alan is back joining me in the studio, sharing his parting good news thought for the day 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 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. Thank you with Pastor Alan sharing our parting good news thoughts for the day as we come to not only the conclusion of the teaching called The Rescue, but as we come to the end of Romans chapter three in this series called Old Bologna.

What's our parting good news thought for the day? The most shocking thing about the incredible rescue that these divers brought about for these boys trapped in the cave was the way that they did it. There was no way that they could get those boys out of there for a six-hour dive, so treacherous that it would be hard, if not impossible, for many of the Navy SEALs, but a child that would grow frantic and make it too difficult for the divers to lead them to safety. And it's crazy, but it's true.

They had to fully anesthetize them so they could deliver them. And that's my closing thought from this and from Romans three, is there's a way in which you can't really understand or really receive what God has done for you and Jesus until all your striving is put to rest, until we have taken our thrashing and all of our efforts at our own gasping and all of our attempts to tread water ourselves, and we finally just say, I am utterly dependent on the gift that God's given me in Christ. And that is where we receive salvation. And that's how we live our life, Daniel, day in and day out. And for all of our listeners, here's the takeaway. Our story in the end is about a hero named Jesus. And we praise him because he swam into the murk and saved us at the peril of his own comfort and life. Praise be to his name. Thank you.