Who Will Deliver Me? [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

These two things are true at the same time. The law is good and holy and just, but the law, if you try to keep it, will make your sin worse. 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. So, Paul has been arguing, not just here but previously, that the law has this way of, in some kind of bizarre, counterintuitive way, drawing sin out of us. St. Augustine has a famous text in his writings called the Confessions, in which he says, Near our vineyard there was a pear tree loaded with fruit, though the fruit was not particularly attractive either in color or taste, I and some other youths conceived the idea of shaking the pears off the tree and carrying them away. We set out late at night and stole all the fruit that we could carry. And this was not to feed ourselves. We may have tasted a few, but then we threw the rest to the pigs. Our real pleasure was simply in doing something that was not allowed.

I had plenty better pears of my own. I only took these ones in order that I might be a thief. And once I'd taken them, I threw them away, and all I tasted in them was my own iniquity, which I enjoyed very much. Everybody can understand something about this, that there is a way in which telling someone, don't do this, gives temptation to do that very thing. That there's something in the sin nature, in the sin nature, that takes pleasure in doing the forbidden thing. This is the etymology of the word perverse. It is the turning of something that you might not otherwise even want to do, except for the fact that you're not supposed to do it.

Interesting. So the law is good, Paul's saying, but trying to keep it is deathly. Here's verse 9. I once was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, and here he personifies sin as if it's its own power and personality, for sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me. So the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Sounds a whole lot like Adam in the garden, doesn't it?

Adam and Eve. Freedom and grace everywhere don't eat that one tree in the middle. And what did the serpent use, but that one commandment, to lure them into sin? But the law was good because the law is God's revelation. You learn something about God from the law. If the Lord says be holy because I'm holy, if the Lord says don't commit adultery, if the Lord says do not lie, you're learning something about God.

God's for monogamous covenant. God is for honesty and transparency and integrity. You can see something about God and his law. It's revelation of God.

It's good. And God spoke it and so it's God-breathed, so it's got to be good. But the devil has used the good law of God to, starting with Adam, lure people into something that leads to death. That's what Paul's saying. And so these two things are true at the same time.

The law is good and holy and just, but the law, if you try to keep it, will make your sin worse. Some years ago I shared this testimony that I received from a very wonderful brother in our fellowship who was describing some new freedom he had experienced. And he said, he said, he wrote me, he said, when I was 13 years old, so I was riding my bicycle to go see a friend and coming back, I got curious about an old abandoned house that he said, I went in to explore it and I found a magazine in there that I shouldn't have looked at that somebody had left behind. And so I was 13.

He said, I did what young guys do. I picked it up. I looked through it. And then a surprise thunderstorm blew in so fast that it startled me. I had not long before given my life to Christ and been baptized. So my conscience was screaming at me almost as loudly as my lusty curiosity had been. And I just, I just hopped on my bicycle and raced home as fast as I could in this blinding rain.

And just as I passed, you can't make this stuff up. Just as I passed under a telephone pole, a bolt of lightning hit the power transformer above me and a 20 foot circle of sparks came down around me. The light was blinding and a crack of thunder almost stopped my heart white with fear. I was off the bicycle and on my knees and an instant praying as fast as I could. And I swore to God, I would never do that again.

Just please don't kill me now. Listen to this. This is, this is profound. Well, the oath lasted about a month. It did little to deter my lusty curiosity, but it served well at increasing my shame and causing me to fear God, to be afraid of God.

I knew this brother and I'd prayed with him before he had been on a decades long struggle with this addiction that had been threatening his marriage and detracting from everything in his life. He was throwing himself into immersing himself into the gospel of grace. One Sunday, I preached a sermon about God swears to God from Hebrews and how it's not our vows to God that delivers us.

It's God's vows to us. And he said, I was listening to that on in the car. And he said about 28 minutes into the sermon, you began to prophesy over the congregation. And I sobbed and I cried out loud and pulled over on and pulled over on the side of the road. And he went on to tell me that the harder I tried, the more deeply I was ashamed of my failure and assured of a seat at the extreme far end of the table by the door where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth.

But now in this good news, I've told all those lying demons where to go to the foot of cross. And he said, I'm better at the time of writing this. He said nine months sexually sober. His addiction was broken by the grace of God, but it was heightened by trying to keep the law. That's what Paul's talking about. Trying to keep the law made things worse. Verse 13, did that which is good then bring death to me by no means. So he's just reiterating that though I'm saying that the trying to keep it just exposed and heightened my sin by making me more ashamed that I couldn't keep it. I'm not saying that the law was bad.

You have to understand both those things at the same time. It wasn't the law. He says it was sin producing death in me through what is good the law in order that the sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. One of the reasons that God gave us the law even though he knew we couldn't keep the law was that the law lets us know how bad our sin is so that we will cry out for the savior. Until you realize I'm utterly sinful, and I need a savior, why would you cry out for a savior?

That's what he's saying. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. 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, 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. Some many years ago, Tim Keller preached a two-part sermon on this text, and he used a powerful and pervasive illustration from Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It's not really this novella of Stevenson's.

It's not really like the horror movies, you know, that are made, not really a monster movie. It is instead an amazing and insightful look at the struggle of this dichotomy of the human nature. And in fact, Robert Louis Stevenson was raised in a staunch Calvinist home, and in several places in the book, he directly quotes Romans chapter 7. It's a story about a benevolent doctor, Jekyll, who was bothered by this incongruous struggle he saw in his own being. That on the one hand, he was benevolent and he wanted to do good, but he also said he saw the dark side, the shadow side, and it bothered him because it's unpleasant. It's going to be one of the things to be so wonderful about heaven, won't it, where we've just got one nature, a perfected nature.

But here, we're new in Christ, but we've still got this struggle with the old sin nature that we can all identify with. Well, what Dr. Jekyll did was he thought, if I could segregate these two things, so I'm mostly good, but I've got this bad, and if I could isolate and put all the bad in this other person, then I could just be all this good. And he came up with a potion that when he drank it, he became Mr. Hyde, all evil. Mr. Hyde, like the word Hyde, hideous, the thing you wouldn't want anybody to see. But what he found out, much to his displeasure, was that Mr. Hyde was far worse than he'd imagined. Mr. Hyde was total evil, total selfishness, and thus eventually murderous.

But what he also found was that the more that he drank the potion to try to get all of that bad out of him and into Mr. Hyde, Mr. Hyde just got bigger and bigger until finally he had to drink the potion to be even Dr. Jekyll. 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 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's real, and the struggle's 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 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, right? 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 find it case.

What's this a picture of? It's a picture of what probably every honest Christian could say they've been through. And that 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.

It'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 and injection that they could inject that could make him super strong and, and, and, 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 a 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 and sin of your life.

If you're frustrated with them at all, it just proves that you know there's something better. Allyn Wright, our Good News message, who will deliver me from the series, It's All Right Now. It's from Romans chapters four through seven and an in-depth study of these great words of the apostle Paul.

Please stay with us. Pastor Allyn is back joining us in the studio and a parting good news thought coming your way in just a moment. Seeing as Jesus sees, it's the title of Pastor Allyn 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, Allyn 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 Allyn Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Allyn'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 Allyn, 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 Allyn 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 Allyn Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, pastorallyn.org. Back here with Pastor Allyn and our parting good news thought for the day, and who will deliver me? Pastor Allyn, for someone who's listening right now, and they're really, well, they can hardly wait for the next installment of this message. So what can they chew on over the next few hours? The first thing to say is this is all headed towards the best news ever.

Who will deliver me? Thanks be to God and Jesus Christ. So there is a way out. And Romans 7 is about the honest struggle. And I think he's talking about Christians here.

There's debate about that. But I think he's talking about Christians and even his own life, where we know that there is a struggle between the flesh and the spirit. And there's a struggle.

Sometimes the very things we don't want to do, we end up doing. But there is a way forward and there's the way of God. And God is not going to leave you in this. God is committed to the middle to your deliverance. And so we will, in the end, join Paul and say, and thanks be to God, who sets me free from sin. 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.