The End of the Law [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. It just seemed too good to be true, and it seemed too simple. When you have this complicated system of law, and here comes Christ, and what he does is he sums up all the law, and he says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and love one another as yourself.

When he sums it up like this and he starts simplifying it, well, it just seemed like that can't be true. 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 this series, Beloved, a study of Romans chapters 9 through 11. It's presented at Rennola 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 let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. You ready for some good news? Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for those who believe. The end, say that with me, the end problem in life is that there's so much stuff that doesn't seem to ever end. I've got one wisteria weed in my front natural area that I've been trying to get rid of for five years. If you know how to get rid of it, please see me afterwards. I've tried to round up. I've beat it back. I've cut it back. I've rounded it up again. I have cursed it in Jesus' name. You name it. I've rebuked it.

I've done whatever. And then you'll think it's gone. And then here it comes up again. And if I don't do something, it will try to take over the whole front natural area, crawl down in the driveway and come and start taking over the house. I know it would because that's the thing about life is that there's no such thing as, hey, I pulled all the weeds in the garden and I'm glad that's the end of weed pulling.

It doesn't work that way. There's no such thing as, hey, got the house really cleaned up. So that's the end of housekeeping. No. Got the yard mowed. Whew, glad that's the end of mowing. No. I got the kids out of high school. They're right. That's the end of parenting.

No. Life has most elements that just, it doesn't end. And problems that they don't end. And even the things that you do well, you got to stay at that too, don't you? I've talked to a lot of salespeople who've told me you never stop selling.

Just because you land a big client and you made the big sale, that doesn't mean you just can sit back then because somebody else is going to be trying to sell them something a little better. And because stuff like that doesn't end and we don't have these finishing moments like that, which is the way God has designed most of life to work, it becomes the breeding ground of so much anxiety. When will this ever end?

When will I be able to be done with this? It just doesn't seem to stop. It seems like there's another battle. And it breeds within us this sense of the incompleteness that makes me think I've got to do something else.

And that's, I think, the place where we get attacked with so much of our worries in life. But there are some things that end. And the most important of which, Paul says today, is the end of the old system of the law, of trying to relate to God through our efforts to put ourselves at peace with God, through our efforts at righteousness, the system in which there was a temple and there were sacrifices that temporarily covers the people's sin, the whole system of pledging we'll keep the law and we'll be good people and religious people in order to, that whole system, he says, has come to an end in Christ.

That's what he's talking about here. And when something has come to its end and it's perfect, like the gift of Jesus, the thing you do with that is you quit trying to add to it. Some things don't need another touch.

It's been finished. You don't need to have a tourist go into Florence and the museum with a chisel and a hammer and try to add a finishing touch to Michelangelo's David. Let it be.

Nobody needs to go into the Louvre in Paris with a palette and a paint brush and touch up the Mona Lisa. Some things what you do is you just say, wow, and you just receive it. And what Paul has shown us in this text is that that's the very thing that his kin's people, the Jewish people of which he is one, had such difficulty because they lived with the law as their system for so long that it was very hard for them to accept that Christ had come to be the end of that. And this is what he's sharing with us here. And if you get hold of this, that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness, for those who believe, if you really get hold of this, it'd be one of the most liberating things that could ever happen in your life. And maybe it's a revelation you've had, but God's here to encourage you in a deeper way. And maybe it's one you've just not seen before.

And if so, get ready for some real freedom in your life. Let me start again of these opening verses. What shall we say then that Gentiles, this is verse 30, Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it.

That is a righteousness that's by faith. So the Gentiles people, non-Jews who didn't have the law, didn't have all of it was given to them through what we call the Old Testament, they didn't have all of that, didn't have all of the temple processes and the priests and the sacrifice. They didn't have all that. He says, here's the irony is that they didn't have any of that. But now many of those Gentiles have come to faith in Christ and they never were pursuing righteousness in the old way of the law. And so they have it by faith.

But the irony is that Israel, he's saying essentially, who should have been in the best position to receive the grace of the gospel has missed it. Why? Because they pursued verse 31, a law that would lead to righteousness. They didn't, they did not succeed in reaching that law.

Why? Verse 32, because they did not pursue it by faith, but as it were based on works. So it was a wrong-minded pursuit. And what Paul saying here is so fascinating because he's just spent parts of chapter eight and the early parts of chapter nine talking about how God is the one who goes first. You can call it election. You can call it God's free choice.

You can call it predestination. You can call it the beginnings of grace, whatever you call it. Dead people don't make themselves alive and spiritually dead people don't make themselves alive. So God has to do the miracle. And this is what Paul is saying. Therefore, he's saying that in this wonderful mystery of the grace of God, that God has this powerful predestining purpose where he calls and he justifies and he glorifies. And so on the one hand you say, well, if God is going to do it all and do all the saving, then what does it matter about what we do? And then right here in these closing verses of chapter nine, in the very early part of chapter 10, he's making it very clear that the reason that many of his kin's people are not saved is because of the choices that they made and they did not believe. So if you were just reading these verses, you would say it's all about the freedom of human choice for God. And what we've been learning in these chapters is something of a great mystery that God chooses and people choose.

In other words, there is God's sovereignty and there's free will. And what in the world do you do with this, right? 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 in 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.

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, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. It is what is in philosophy called an antinomy, antinomy, two principles or laws that seem to be absolutely contradictory and yet are 100% true. A man walks in on a chilly day and blows on his hands to get them warm and then sits down at the table and blows on his soup to cool it off. Which is it?

Do it was blowing on something warm or cool it? Well the answer is yes. That's sort of a paradox, but this is something even deeper. This is like saying, it is possible for two things to be absolutely…