You Gotta Serve Somebody [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

You have been set free from the bondage of sin, meaning not that we don't still sin, but that we are no longer under its tyranny, and God wants us to see ourselves that way and think of ourselves that way. 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 four through seven, 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. Okay, are you ready for some good news? Yes. Not only have you and Christ been set free from sin, no longer a slave to sin, but you and Christ have become a slave to righteousness. You have not only been set free from the I'm stuck in sin, but you have been liberated to a new mastery in your life, a new appetite that in Christ grows and grows into conformity with all that is good and wonderful and holy and right.

It's a message of victory. I was thinking back to a silly movie. I remember what year it was released from Universal Studio. Jim Carrey starred in it as a lawyer who was a pathological liar. He couldn't tell the truth. He was like, I had a friend one time who just told so many lies that I'll call him John.

Somebody said of him one time, John will tell a lie if the truth would do. And so the movie, Jim Carrey, typical, I'm not saying run out and see it. It's not family friendly.

It's crass. It's just Jim Carrey. But it shows him, you know, obviously making up lies. And part of the way that he was being successful as a lawyer was always fudging on the truth in the courtroom, always, you know, telling people in the office whatever they wanted to hear and, you know, and his big problem was he was just being a terrible dad. He was separated from his wife and he'd make promises to his little boy and then he wouldn't show up. And so on the evening of the boy's fifth birthday, when the dad, Jim Carrey, had said he was going to be there for sure and he didn't show up.

The little boy's so sad. As he's blowing out the candles on his birthday cake, he makes a wish. And you hear in his mind the little boy says, I wish for just one day my dad couldn't tell a lie. The wind blows through the window, the curtains ruffle, and the magic happens and poof suddenly Jim Carrey cannot tell a lie.

And it's funny to watch because when you've built your whole life on telling lies and suddenly you can't lie. And so he's walking into his office. He goes by a homeless guy who says, could you spare some change? And he says, yes. But he doesn't give it. He said, well, will you give me some? He said, no, why not?

Because I'm too cheap. You know, and he just, he just, everything like that. A woman working in his office who's done a terrible hairdo recently that he'd been lying and said it looked good. This morning, you know, he walks by and she says, how do I look?

You know, the new outfit. And he said, anything that'll take attention away from your head. And you know, it's just, it's just, you know, it's, it's stuff, it's stuff like that. And, and, and so, and now he's trying to do his lawyer work and he's in the middle of a big case where he'd been fudging the truth along with his client. And now he can't lie. And so all these courtroom scenes where he can't, he can't lie.

It's, it's, I think a funny scene. He, he goes in his office and he's trying to, you know, muster up that ability to lie again. And so he takes a ballpoint pen. The pen is, is blue. And, and he's, and he's like, says, he wants to say this pen.

I'm going to say it's red. And he said, the pen is royal blue. And he just can't, can't make, can't make himself lie like he used to lie. And, and the story is interesting in this sense, but that at first it kind of upsets his world.

It's a different way of operating and he doesn't hardly know what to do with it. And it all leads towards a happy ending. The, the client he was representing, he couldn't win the case by his usual strategies of lying, but he finds out an authentic way of winning the case by telling the truth. And though, and though it seems to be messing up all kinds of things in his life in the end, it changes him as a dad and, and, and his marriage can get restored because, well, honestly you can't, you can't have a good marriage if one person's lying all the time.

And the reason I thought of it is that this is an intriguing and powerful text today that we don't talk about this very much. But what Paul is clearly saying is that there has not only been a transformation in the Christian's life, wherein you have been set free from the bondage of sin, meaning not that we don't still sin, but that we are no longer under its tyranny. And God wants us to see ourselves that way and think of ourselves that way so that you don't think, oh, I'm stuck in this. I'm under bondage to this, but to think, no, I've been set free.

Whether I've walked it all out yet or not, I'm set free from that. And then he goes this step further and he says, you really have been set free from that so that you could be so aligned with God that he calls this, now you're a slave to righteousness. Verse 18, having been set free from sin, you've become slaves of righteousness.

And it's a little shocking to hear Paul use the term slavery in any type of metaphor to refer to the Christian's life because he is the one under the unction of the Holy Spirit who's taught us so much about how we're not slaves and how we're building towards Romans chapter eight, verse 15, where we will read, you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you've received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry Abba Father. I think this is why back in chapter six, that he says at 19, I'm speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. I think what he means by that is he's saying, I'm talking about a profound mystical spiritual principle and our flesh can only understand it so much. And so I'm using a human analogy, slavery, not to give every aspect of this clarity, but to help you understand this one aspect of the new connection, allegiance, affection, and desire of your life, that you're now like a slave to righteousness. It has its limits like every metaphor.

And he's almost announcing that to us ahead of time. Let's look at verse 16. Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you're slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? I'm pretty sure this is what Bob Dylan had in mind when he wrote his famous song, You Gotta Serve Somebody. You may be an ambassador to England or France. You might like to gamble. You might like to dance.

You might be the heavyweight champion of the world. You might be a socialite with a long string of pearls, but you're going to have to serve somebody. You're going to have to serve somebody.

It might be the devil or it might be the Lord, but you're going to have to serve somebody. And that song won a Grammy that year for the best male rock vocal of the year. And interestingly, John Lennon wrote an angry satirical song to mock Dylan's song. Lennon's song is so full of profanity that don't even go read it, but it includes the words, you got to serve yourself.

Ain't nobody going to do it for you. You got to serve yourself. It is a proposal of the modern age to say that Dylan is exactly wrong, and what is the truth is that you don't have to serve anybody, and so therefore don't let anybody tell you what you ought to do. And this is a fundamental difference in ideology, isn't it?

And you really got to come down on one side or the other of this. If you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, Paul's saying, your slaves are the one you obey. This is what Jesus was talking about in John 834. Truly I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. What Jesus means and what Paul is telling us in Romans, I think, means if you present yourself to sin and you say, I need you in order to have my needs met, whatever that sin is, whatever that habit is, whatever that thought is, whatever that behavior is, whatever that indulgence or whatever, then you're making it your master.

That'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 ourselves 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 the 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. And so when Lennon says you got to serve yourself, he's trying to propose an erroneous notion of freedom that says when no one is telling you what to do and you're under no submission to anything, that's when you are free. And this is where the biblical image of freedom departs radically from the modern notion of freedom. You will see this in everything in culture right now, all throughout TV shows and movies and commercials and what celebrities are saying, is that freedom is the absence of constraint, that freedom is when you no longer have to be encumbered by any authority or anybody telling you what's right or wrong. That's what the myth of freedom is in the modern age.

And what Paul is saying here is that's completely wrong. That in fact there is no such thing. That even if you were to do what John Lennon says, you just got to serve yourself, then what you're serving is your own self-absorption and pride. You're serving selfishness.

You're going to serve somebody. And freedom is a paradox because what Paul's saying is that you are free from sin, but you're free unto a relationship with Christ wherein everything about who He is now becomes the ruling priority of your life. Freedom is not a move from, oh, I was under constraint and rules and such and now all of a sudden I got nothing. That's not what Paul has been talking about when he says you're no longer under law and under grace.

And he's clarifying it here. I could give you many examples of how this just plays out in life, but I don't know. I've been trying to lose the same few pounds now for five years and something changes. You get a little age on you. And I think my problem is I like sweets. I do like sweets. And I've discovered a formula.

It's not a hundred percent scientific, but I'm pretty sure that it's scientifically true. After age 50, one dessert equals one pound. And so you can just count on that, you know, like you want one dessert, one pound. And I would like to be free. You know, there's this view says I am free to eat as much ice cream as I want to eat. And I am, I'm an adult and nobody's here to tell me that I can't.

I'm free. I have also read some of the research in addition to one dessert, one ice cream equals one pound. Too much sugar, shortens your lifespan, ups your blood pressure, heart disease, risk, may be linked to Alzheimer's, can lead to fatty liver disease and can lead to heart disease. And can lead to depression. So there's that too.

Do you see what I'm saying? There are two competing types of freedom. On the one hand, I want to be free to eat all the ice cream that I want to eat. And on the other hand, I want to be free to live a long time. You got to choose.

Which freedom do you want? Have you ever had a dream that you could fly? How many of you have ever had a flying dream?

I haven't had one in a long time. I love the times that I've had a dream of flying. And it's just so real. I'm just flying, just flying. I think in heaven we get to fly. Don't you think we get to fly? Surely we get to fly. Why would we want to fly so bad if we don't get to do it sometime? And you wake up and you're like, oh, I'd love to be on a fly. I just want to go up on a roof, jump off that roof. And you could go up and say, I am free. And go up on your roof and freely jump off and find out that you are a slave to gravity.

You got to choose which master you're going to serve. Your own desire to be able to freely jump through the air or the master called gravity. Let's go a little bit deeper. Science is learning what we've always known. We need friends. Some say loneliness is epidemic.

Isolation about kill us. We need friends. Everybody wants friends. We're designed for friendship.

But the modern notion of do whatever you want, serve yourself and no one else, that's what freedom is. That doesn't work in friendship, does it? That does not work in friendship. You can say, I want to be friends. What do you want to do? Well, I want to do what I want to do. Well, tomorrow what do you want to do? I want to do what I want to do then too. You can't go to the restaurant you want every single time and think that eventually your friend's not going to say, well, I'd like to maybe go somewhere else sometime.

You can have the freedom to do everything you want, but you won't be free to have friends. Let's go one step further. Marriage. Today's my wife's birthday and it's a good one.

It's got a zero on the end of it. Coming up on 38 years of marriage, let me just tell you this. You get married, you are doing one of the most counter-cultural things imaginable. You're taking the modern notion of freedom and just chunking it right out the window when you sit out there and say, I'm exclusively yours and you are mine. I am giving up all of these freedoms to be with other people in order to gain a deeper freedom. The joy of covenantal commitment that lasts a lifetime that is a treasure unspeakable. What I'm saying is that Paul means to clarify, you are going to serve somebody. And for the Christian, it is a enslaved connection to sin that's broken by the gift of Jesus. And now you can bond to Jesus. Alan Wright, our good news message.

You got to serve somebody. From the series, it's all right now. It's a teaching of Romans chapter four through seven. And pastor Alan is back here in the studio in just a moment with today's program. He's going to talk about it in just a moment with today's parting good news thought for the day.

Stick with us. 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 eyeopening 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 enjoy 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 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 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. Back now with pastor Alan Wright in the studio and our parting good news thought for the day.

So I don't know, are we talking pop culture? Are we talking St. Paul? You got to serve somebody. Who said it first?

Well, I'm sort of a Bob Dylan fan, but it comes straight from the apostle Paul's pen under the inspiration of the Holy spirit and Romans chapter six. This is what he's talking about is like, you know, you're, you're going to, there's a myth and today's society of freedom that says, Oh, there's no, I don't report to anybody. Yeah.

Yeah. And, and Paul's saying, no, you're either serving your own selfishness and your own sinful nature, or you, which ultimately means you're Bob Dylan was right. You might be the devil, right? Or might be the Lord, but in today's message and in coming days, we're exposing that, that myth that we don't in the end, serve somebody and finding the incredible good news and what it is to be set and what it is to be set free from selfishness and set free to serve the Lord. 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.