More Than Conquerors [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

I'm going to change the system. I'm going to bring grace into your life, and then you can be filled with my own life. So God, as He's always planned and always promised, does these two things. And Christ makes you clean in His sight, and then He gives you His own life, His own spirit.

So you can live because you're designed to live. More than conquerors, the study of Romans 8 has 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 Alan Wright Ministries.

So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Just contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now as we get started with today's teaching, sitting here with Pastor Alan with some context for today's message, sometimes visual aids are used to illustrate a point, and that's certainly the case today. So we have a video that was shown during the message, an experiment with a psychologist, with a mother and baby, and various different facial expressions.

I'll put it that way. And there's a lot of references to this video throughout the message. So no matter where you're joining us in this message, you may hear something relating to a video or mothers and facial expressions and babies, and we wanted to put that in context for you. When a mother smiles, we now know from studies of neuroscience that something lights up on the inside of the baby's brain. We're designed for that. And so this experiment shows what happens when a mother's smile is suddenly gone.

It can be so troubling for an infant. And we're, in a sense, using this as an ongoing metaphor to think about the smile of God and the glorious assurance of Romans 8.1, there's no condemnation for us in Christ. Now with today's teaching, No More Condemnation, here's Pastor Alan Wright. If we are not forgiven, if we're not fully forgiven by God and we have sinned against God, there's a real sense in which the powers of hell have a sort of legal right to accuse us and condemn us. And some people are going to be trying to do all the dishes and make up the bed to make up for it so they can try to live a little bit ahead of it. And some people just say, you know, I don't care.

And they go into rebellion. But the lingering spirit of condemnation is the problem of our souls. And that's why the whole world's been waiting for Romans 8.1. It is the declaration, a great crescendo, following Paul's explanation of why being in Christ is a whole new way of being.

It is a new system. It is to say that Jesus was perfect, deserved only reward from God, but deliberately because of his infinite love for you, went to the cross and a great exchange took place where he who knew no sin became your sin and you became his righteousness. And in turn, you are now under that grace. And God is smiling upon you because the condemnation doesn't exist because you are not under law, Christians.

And if you're not under law, then the law of sin and death is gone for you and condemnation is gone for you. And what's left is the smile of God. I want to show you a little video from some years ago, some groundbreaking research from a child psychologist, Edward Tronic, who does an experiment about just how powerful a mother's countenance is upon her child. I'm actually not only exegeting our text, I'm sort of exegeting this video, but for illustrative purposes. So you can see something about what this means to be really have no condemnation from God. So a lot of other studies that confirm this same kind of thing. So it shows us something about what's going on inside of this child.

And I want to just draw a couple of points for illustration here to help us understand who God is to us in Christ. And the first thing I just say is, don't you feel really, don't you hurt for the baby during those moments when she, when her mom's not smiling? My wife said, are you going to show that thing?

How bad is it? I don't want to see that thing. I said, is it, it doesn't last long. And the mother starts smiling again. It's like, you don't even want to watch it for 20 seconds to watch a baby, not have her mother smile for even just a little bit, which tells you a lot, doesn't it? That you feel great pain for that little baby. Just for those few seconds, you feel that don't you, because you don't have to have any other science or anything else to tell you that it proves more or less that if a child did not have a caregiver's smile and that sort of ongoing affirmation that it would be scarring. And you could imagine how difficult for that child to ever learn to really be secure in the world.

Right. And of course that's all been proven out and what grieves me. And I think God so much is not really in the world so much the evidences of our sin nature, the things that manifest, you know, drug addiction, crime and hate, racism, greed. He hates all of that. But I think what hurts God is at the root of it all.

It's like if a baby, if that baby had thrown a temper tantrum, the baby started making banging around willfully being defiant or whatever. You wouldn't be as bothered by those outward manifestations as you were by the core problem, would you? You would know what the core problem was.

It would break your heart. And so does this not go far to help you get a spiritual picture of what really is in the heart of God about how he wants to solve the problems of people? I think so often what religion does, it wants to come and try to address, Hey, the baby's, you know, thrown a temper tantrum. We're going to address that. But what really needs to be addressed is the attachment love and the joy because of the smile. So grandbaby Mia, she's seven months now. I think a week or maybe even, maybe even two sermons have gone by without me mentioning it's long overdue. And I apologize for that.

I apologize for that. She turned seven months and it's getting cute. I'm telling you it's already been cute, but I was just thinking, honestly, like as a, as a, as a new, as a new grandfather, if you were to ask me, you know, what do you want most for your grand baby? Well, of course I want to know Jesus.

I mean, by far and away, right. That's the most important thing. But apart from that, what do you want most? And if I were to go through all the lists of things that you would want health and joy and good relationships and prosperity and fruitfulness and safety and covering and, you know, on all the things that we pray, right.

Favor upon our life. But I think if I were really to get it down, other than just knowing Jesus, I would, if I had a magic wand that could wave it and say, what would you, your dream be for this little baby girl? That she never experienced condemnation. I don't even know what would happen to a person if they never experienced condemnation. Can you imagine the magnitude of freedom and security and faith that would exist? It's why everybody needs Romans 8.1.

Romans 8.1 is the answer to the world. The second thing I noticed from that video, I'd love to leave Mia up there the whole summer, but you can take her down. They're not looking at me anymore. They're just looking at Mia. And it's, it's the second thing I noticed from that illustration is that the parent doesn't have to scold or openly shame the little child in order for her to feel hurt. All she had to do was just be disconnected. It's not a mean look.

It's a blank look. She doesn't scold her. She doesn't openly shame her. She's certainly not physically hurting her, but just the thought of not being connected, not being fully accepted and not being celebrated leaves the infant ultimately inconsolably sad until she is celebrated.

Wow. This is, this is, this is not change in life really for us. But we mature and we start understanding that most people don't necessarily celebrate us, but the feeling of being disconnected and not celebrated, it goes away.

And what it does is it makes us as this is my third point from this little video is the baby starts using all her tricks to try to be accepted. How do we get back to that smile? How do I get the celebration back? How do I get that feeling of connected with connectedness with you again? How do I feel attached to you, mom?

What do I need to do? Point, smile at you, reach out to you. The powerful force of not feeling the love and celebration of someone else, even if all it is is the silence of someone else will cause us to do anything we possibly can to try to get it. And this is in one picture why shame is so prevalent in the world.

Shame essentially withholds blessing and affirmation until you get what you want from the other person. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. It has been called the most influential letter ever written. Every word written by the apostle Paul and his epistle to the Romans is dripping with the astounding news of what God has done for you in Jesus, answering the two biggest questions of life.

What went wrong and how has God made it right? Discover the richness of those answers and enhance your Bible journey today. Make a donation to Alan Wright Ministries this month and unlock our Romans reading guide paired with the ESV scripture journal. Immerse yourself in the word and capture personal insights, prayers, and reflections directly alongside the powerful text.

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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. Because we're made for love and honor and affection and attention and attachment and joy, when we don't get it and it's withheld, we're no different than that little girl. We'll point, we'll smile, we'll have antics, we'll throw a fit, we'll do whatever we can. But people will run a little faster and jump a little higher if you withhold your affirmation of them. But what will it do to them?

What will it do to them? That's what Jesus is saying. That's why he had such a big problem with the Pharisees. He said you search the world over for a convert and you find one and you make him twice the son of hell that you are.

He said you get him in here and you then you withhold affirmation until they have perfected themselves in the law and you're missing the whole heart of God. The fourth thing I see in that video is that it demonstrates, now this is going to sound weird and harsh, but stay with me. It demonstrates that children are born in sin. What? The child didn't do anything wrong.

Well, yes, she did. And here's what it was. It's not the evil things.

It's not the crying. It's not the thrown attempt. That's not so much what sin is. I'm talking about sin with the capitalism.

I'm talking about the sin nature. The problem of humanity is that we misunderstand because we do not see accurately. And what you can see in that picture was the mother had not stopped loving her child. She was in an experiment and it wasn't going to go on for very long, but the baby doesn't know it. So the baby's interpreting, right? And what really our issue is is that we come into the world and we do not have the spiritual capacity to fully understand or experience the love of God. And we misinterpret all the signals of life. We're misinterpreting them all the time. Something bad is happening and we're saying, God doesn't love me anymore. Something goes on in our lives and we think, well, there's a problem with me, you see? And so we're just misinterpreting much like that little baby.

So sin is characterized by our inability to see correctly. Like I, I have been married to Anne for 38 years. And from the first time that we ever dated, I haven't even come close and never could imagine coming close to being unfaithful to her. And she knows that. But what if she didn't know that? What if for some reason she thought I had been? It would sabotage the whole relationship for her just misunderstanding it. So it's the misunderstanding that is, which is why we need the eyes of our hearts opened up, right?

We can't see God properly. The next thing I learned from this is that you can tell in that little two minute video that in some way, just by seeing a blank face on her mother's face, that the baby is internalizing the message in some way she's internalizing the mother's distance is saying something about me, that the infant whose mother isn't silent is saying something is wrong here, but we instinctively think something's wrong with me because see a little baby like that, like any toddler, if mom's having a bad day, uh, she doesn't, she doesn't say, well, mom's having a stressful time. The dishwasher broke this week. I know she just got off a stressful zoom call just a few moments ago. And I know that things between her and dad have been a little tense lately, but I'm sure that, you know, she's got a appointment with her therapist on Friday.

She'll work all that out. But one thing's for sure. It's not about me to baby doesn't think like that. We don't think like that. So what were all the messages we got? We, we, we didn't understand it. We didn't understand it.

We interpreted and it becomes internalized within us. And we start thinking if I'm not celebrated, the reason I'm not celebrated is I'm not worthy of a celebration. I need to try harder in order to be worthy of a celebration. Something wrong with me. That's why I'm not getting smiles.

What do I got to do to get them? People will join a gang to have somebody look at them with a sense of acceptance. I'll do anything. And it breaks my heart. It's why I just got to preach the gospel to my dying breath.

We got to tell them. They don't know God has a smile. I just, you know, that feeling you get when you watch that little baby for just 20 seconds and you feel sorry for the baby. It's what God's done to my heart for this world.

I can't not feel it. When you experience the love of God, don't you want everybody to have it. And sixthly, from this video, you learn this most basic truth that through your life, you learn this most basic truth that through the simple smile of a primary caregiver, a child is transformed.

Which takes me back to number six. The Lord spoke to Moses said, speak to Aaron. He's talking to the priest now. Thus you so bless the people of Israel. He's describing the will of God for his people. If you want to know the will of God for his people, here it is.

Say to them, say to them, the Lord bless you and keep you the Lord, make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel and I'll bless them. This is who I am to my people.

My face shine upon them. This is why the appeal to God is rooted in this blessing. The Psalmist cries out in Psalm 102, hear my prayer O Lord, let my cry come to you. Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress. Psalm 27, seven here O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me. You have said, seek my face. That's what God wants.

Look for my smile everywhere. Hallelujah. My heart says to you, your face, Lord, do I seek hide not your face from me. Turn not your servant away in anger.

Oh, you have been my help. It's the Lord's will. What I'm saying is that all of creation has been groaning and travail down through the corridors of history from the dawn of time to hear Paul under the unction of the Holy Spirit say, there is therefore now no condemnation in Christ Jesus.

It's the best news ever. It's radical freedom and acceptance that comes only from a new system of grace. The second verse of our text, the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death, the law.

Now you're not talking about the mosaic law, but just the principle, the force and guiding principle of trying to keep law, but being sinful and it just leading to more condemnation and death that in Jesus Christ for the believer has come to an end. Why would you ever want to put yourself back under it? Don't ever put yourself back under it and don't let a preacher put you under it. And don't let a friend put you under it. And don't let, don't misread the Bible and put you under it.

But the condemnation does not exist and you are not under law. You're under grace. Pastor Alan's back here in the studio sharing his part in Good News Thought for the day in just a moment.

Stay with us. Scripture journal. Immerse yourself in the word and capture personal insights, prayers and reflections directly alongside the powerful text.

These sleek portable journals amplify your study, enrich group sessions and deepen personal reflections. Elevate your spiritual odyssey and forge a stronger connection with the scriptures. Help Alan Wright Ministries reach the world with the good news of the gospel with your gift today and receive these essential tools that will elevate your study, enrich your prayer life and deepen your understanding of the book of Romans. 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, pastorallen.org. Back here now with Pastor Alan and the continuation of our teaching, No More Condemnation.

It's from this series, More Than Conquerors. And as we talked about before, it is certainly the news we've been waiting for our whole lives. As we have been in an unusual way in this message, talking some about not just the text, but about this interesting video of what happens when a mother who's smiling at her infant, quit smiling.

And how dis-consolant the child can become. It makes us think about if we don't see God accurately through the lens of the finished work of Jesus and His shed blood for us, and we don't see God through that, then we'll see Him not smiling. We'd see Him condemning. But Paul has before us the greatest news that humanity's ever heard. That because of Jesus' sacrifice, for those that are in Christ, there's no condemnation. And what we have left is the smile of God, which causes everything within us to have delight and expectancy and security.

God's smiling on you. 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 PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.