Who Will Deliver Me? [Part 3]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

The fact that you at all want to be like Jesus is proving that you're God's. 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, It's All Right Now, from Romans chapters 4 through 7, as presented at Rinaldo 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. It's a very powerful look at a flawed attempt to deal with the problem of this struggle. And Paul at verse 14 shifts from the past tense and he comes into the present tense, which is why most interpreters would say he's talking about the Christian life even for him, a super apostle. He says, For we know that the law is spiritual, meaning of the spirit God breathed, but I'm of the flesh sold under sin. So he's saying that that that this statement, which in many ways you go, how could you say that and say we're more than conquerors, is probably his admission that even as a spirit filled, powerful follower of Jesus Christ, that there's still something of the flesh that's there. And the struggle is real.

The struggle is real and the struggle is frustrating. And Paul says something similar to this that I think explains it all in Galatians 5-17. For the desires of the flesh, you can say the flesh is that part of you if it were to stand alone from God and try to be self-reliant and rely on its own abilities and its own appetites. The desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit against the flesh.

For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. And there he's clearly speaking to Christians. So this is what I think is being described here, starting at verse 15 in these famous words. For I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. And the reason probably he's talking about his Christian life is that only a Christian hates what's evil. But now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it's good. So now it's no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it's no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. The thing to notice here in the first place is all these I statements. I do not do what I want, I don't, I find it the case. I find, what's this a picture of? It's a picture of what probably every honest Christian could say they've been through, and it is that when you get a new nature in Christ, your affections turn towards Christ, and there are things that you just want to do that are completely different, and you want to amplify that in your life, and you want to become more like Christ, and yet you also can feel this tug of this shadow side of the old sin nature, and it can create a real struggle within.

That's what he's talking about. A lot of movies and films try to deal with this struggle. My favorite superhero movie is Captain America. I love Captain America.

Captain America started as a guy who was too scrawny to even be accepted by the Army, and they had an experimental potion, an injection that they could inject that could make him super strong and be able to jump over things and run faster than everybody else and be stronger than everybody, and so he got injected, and it worked because he was such a noble person that what it did was it intensified in an exponential manner his nobility and gave him strength for good, but there's a bad guy, Red Skull, who also gets hold of the potion and takes it wanting to be strong, but Red Skull is evil in intent, and the potion works the opposite for him. Now instead of amplifying any good in him, it amplifies because he was bent towards bad, and he becomes the evil antagonist in the whole thing. We would like to kind of have an injection and be Captain America, where I don't have to struggle with any of those things, and I think Paul is probably being honest and saying, I want you to know I'm really like everybody else, and there are areas of my life that I still struggle with it, even though I'm so filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. I find it, verse 21, a law, now meaning not law like Mosaic law but a principle, that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.

If people didn't love God at all, evil probably doesn't lie nearly close at hand, for I delight in the law of God and my inner being. Everywhere Paul uses that word in the New Testament, he's talking to Christians, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. We know for sure that he's not saying that we're under bondage to sin. He's already made that clear in the opening chapters of Romans. But what he's saying here is that there's some way in which the struggle that he's being honest about is identifying that he really wants something better than that. The fact that you are at all frustrated with sin in your life, the fact that you at all want to be like Jesus is proving that you're God's. So don't be so discouraged by the besetting attitudes and problems in sin of your life. If you're frustrated with them at all, it just proves that you know there's something better.

You know, the thing is, someone who doesn't know or love God at all doesn't have a problem with sin in the sense that they don't even know of it. You know, you think there's some things in my life like cussing. My family, my dad, and certainly my mother, we didn't cuss in our house. Now, my dad was a newsman, and there was so much foul language in the newsroom that he finally instituted a policy. They had to put a box in there, and you had to put a dollar in every time you said a cuss word because it got so bad in there. But he just never cussed, and I never grew up cussing. It wasn't like I became a Christian. It was like, oh, I've got to clean up my language now.

I guarantee you, long before I would have known any different, my mother had already made sure. We not only couldn't say a cuss word, we couldn't say anything that could be even remotely sounding like it. And my brother David was the same way. He was really a pure kid, and he was a great tennis player, and he was in a state tournament one time. And he gets a lot of people watching the match, and he got real frustrated with a bad shot he hit, and he just hollered out the top of his lungs, Heavens to Betsy! And nobody ever let him live that down.

I don't even know where Heavens to Betsy came from. But I'm sure my mom didn't approve even of saying that, so I don't really cuss. I don't have to try not to cuss.

I just don't really cuss. But if I did, I'd feel bad about that. I'd be asking Jesus to forgive me. I'd be asking the people around me to forgive me.

I'd be really feeling bad about that. But people who just cuss all the time, they don't go home going, man, I feel really bad about that word I said today 500 times. They're just not even thinking about it. You see what I'm saying?

And the person who just thinks it's fine to sleep around with everybody, and they're sleeping with somebody different every weekend, they're not coming home going, boy, I feel really bad about that. They just don't have an awareness that they're living in a contradictory lifestyle to the plan of God. So the fact that you feel the struggle is showing that you're God's.

You're God's. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. 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? This is the 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 Sing 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. Dr. Jekyll toward the end of the book decides that he will just try hard to redeem all the wickedness that Mr. Hyde has perpetrated. So Dr. Jekyll starts giving away his fortune, doing every kind of benevolent act he can for weeks. It's like his big hurrah trying to make up for everything. And one day he's sitting in the sunshine on a park bench and he's starting to think about how much good he's done. And as he has this tinge of pride begin to come over him, he looks down and he sees his hands are growing hairy. For now his sin is shifted over to pride. And in the end Mr. Hyde is taken over because his experiment in trying to deal with his dual nature hasn't worked. Paul now begins to shift it towards what will work.

What will work. And sometimes when you get as in touch as Paul is with maybe some area of your life where you just have felt so much of the tug of war with the old sin nature, that you just get to that point that you know that you know you cannot overcome it yourself good. You're drawing near to Jesus. I heard Dudley Hall in a message talking about the irony of God allowing the people of God not only to endure slavery in Egypt, but then for it to get worse. After Moses appears and tells Pharaoh to let my people go. Pharaoh gets angry and says in Exodus 5-7, you shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks as in the past. Let them go and gather straw for themselves. For the number of bricks they've made in the past you shall impose on them, you shall by no means reduce it for they're idle. Why would God allow them to not only be slaves but then it gets even worse to where now they're like we were barely making it and now the burden is definitely too big for us.

There's no way that we can do this. Why would God do something like that and allow it because he's getting ready for a great deliverance. And you could find this to be a principle that oftentimes at that point that you get like Paul where you're ready in desperation to cry out for God's help. There's a great deliverance that's coming. It could be a great deliverance for you today. The power of God at work in and through you.

Wouldn't that be something? So what happened was that God spoke to Moses in Exodus 6-2 and the Lord appeared and said, I am the Lord. And he said in verse 4, I established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan. Verse 5, I've heard the groaning of the people of Israel. Verse 6, say to the people, I am the Lord and I will bring you out. So it leads, desperation leads to a cry and that's where Paul goes in Romans 7. Verse 24, wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. Wretched does not mean worthless or even awful.

It means exhausted by hard labor. I'm so tired of fighting this battle on my own. Who will deliver me? After finally, finally after mentioning himself some 40 times in Romans 7, he turns to someone outside himself.

Who? Since I can't do it. It is the best moment of our spiritual life when we realize that we've been trying to fight the battle by human power and we turn to God's power instead and we make our cry for help. That we can't make our bricks without straw and we need a savior.

We need a deliverer. For the same delivering saving power of the gospel that brought us into the kingdom in the first place, that is the same power that delivers us from sin. Oh exhausted helpless man that I am, Paul says. Oh weary flesh that has tried to fight against sin and temptation in every way.

Oh my tired bones that have been worn out, beaten down and have finally come to a place that I just can't do it. Who will help me now? And many lesser powers try to harken to the question when you say who will deliver me. The old man, the old sin nature hears the cry and says I will help you, try harder.

That is your answer. Make a bigger vow, get up earlier, pray more, get more accountability, do something more, fast more often. If you'll devote yourself and vow today to try harder, you can defeat this sin that's exhausting you. There will be a spirit of religion that will tell you that. And when you say who will deliver me, there will also be the spirit of the age, a spirit of rebellion that would come near and want you to listen to its voice. They will say you do not need to escape the desires of the flesh, you simply need to gratify them. You'll hear the voice of rebellion that will say the problem isn't that you have tried too hard, the problem is that you shouldn't be trying at all. And quit letting other people tell you who you are or what's wrong with you. You shouldn't feel guilty because of all of these things that have been posed on you by empty religion and by your mother's words in the past.

Just be yourself and just do what you want to do. There will be many voices and many answers that will try to compete for your attention when you say who will deliver me. But believers, beloved of God, when you cry out and say who will deliver me, you're like Paul and you're directing your question towards a person.

You're directing your question towards God and Jesus answers you when you say who will deliver me. The answer comes, Jesus. Who will give me strength when I am weak?

Say it with me, Jesus. Who will give me courage when I lack it? Jesus. Who will open my eyes when my vision is blurred? Jesus will.

Who will remind me of the way when I am lost? Jesus. Who will send his angels to fight in the heavenlies for me in the cosmic battle? Jesus. Who is the only one in heaven or on earth who could give me victory over my sin? Jesus. O wretched man that I am, who would deliver me from this body of death?

Let's all say it. Jesus. For Paul, great in spirit and revelation as he was, was subject to the battle of the human nature that we still experience a struggle against the old sinful part of ourselves. But if Paul can find victory by crying to Jesus, so can we. If Paul can call out and find deliverance in Jesus and then lead us into Romans 8 to where finally we say we're more than conquerors through Christ, then so can we. There is no power of sin that can hold you. So verses 7 through 13 talk about the former life when outside of Christ it's a battle that you can't win. But what he's talking about in verses 14 to 25 is life in Christ and it's a battle, but in the end it's a battle you can't lose because when you cry out to Jesus, he hears your prayer. He's got the power to set you free and that's the gospel. Allen Wright, our Good News message, who will deliver me from the series It's All Right Now. It's from Romans chapters 4 through 7 and an in-depth study of these great words of the apostle Paul.

Please stay with us. Pastor Alan is back joining us in the studio and a parting Good News thought coming your way in just a moment. 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 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, Allen 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 Allen 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 Allen 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 Allen Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAllen.org. Back here in the studio to share Pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day. And we've come to the end of not only this teaching, the conclusion of who will deliver me, but also it's the end of our series that ends with Romans chapter 7, the series we've called It's All Right Now.

What's the closing inspiration you have for us, Pastor Alan? You're not stuck in your sin. Don't be discouraged by the struggle. Paul himself had struggles.

Don't be discouraged by them. That's part of being a human being and being a Christian. But God is committed to hearing your cry for help. He is committed to delivering you. He is committed to helping you be free, truly, truly free. So when you need help, call to God. I love the words of the writer of Hebrews. He says, let us come boldly to the throne of grace in our time of need. Not afterwards, but right in the middle of our time of need.

Are you in need now? Call out to God. If you're wondering who will deliver you, here's the good news of the gospel from the very pen of Paul. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

He delivers. 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.