Pastor, author and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Jesus became your sin. When you accept Christ, what happens is that by a mystical, powerful miracle, God takes all of your sin from you and lets them be put into the person of Jesus Christ on the cross.
And there your sin is crucified. 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 the series Foolproof as 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 if we're happy to 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. We'll have more on this special offer later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.
Here is Alan Wright. Yes, there can be pain in the discipline that we experience from the Lord, but it is not the kind of pain that we think of when we think of abusive parents and unjust laws and frustrations and anger in the world. All of that that we experience, sometimes we transpose those feelings onto God as if He is that way, and He's not, beloved. I can't give you a list and say, well, here are the things that would be like punishment, and here are the things that might be the discipline of the Lord.
I can't really give you a list like that because we walk in a unique relationship with God. But what I want you to see instead is the nature of God, and the way that God speaks to us, and what His heart is like. And once you know His heart, and you know how good God is, and you know what the sound of the voice of His love is like, you can know if there is a loving expression of the discipline of the Lord versus the condemnation of the enemy.
Let me just be plain about this. I think sometimes people, just because they experience something difficult in this world, they immediately start blaming God for it. Listen, God doesn't discipline in ways that even an earthly sinful parent wouldn't think of, wouldn't give my child cancer, or destroy his life, or do something to permanently hurt a child.
Who would do such a thing as that? Let me just be honest with you and tell you candidly that I've found over the years of walking with God, and I'm almost hesitant to even say this because it's tender to me, and I'm also embarrassed to say that the times that the Lord has disciplined me I see a pattern to it. And it has been that Lord is particularly mindful to help me and correct me if I ever misuse my words. And this has increased in my life. You know there's some scriptures about the Lord holding teachers, higher accountability, and some of that. Well I really feel this with my words, and it's not been just one time that this has happened to me.
Let me just give you a recent example that I think was the discipline of the Lord, and again it's unvarnished and I'm sorry to even have to share it, but I think I want you to know what discipline feels like. I rarely do this, but I was texting someone and we talked about another person in the text, which is a terrible idea in the first place unless it's something lovely that you're saying about the person. But I was sort of feeling egged on and some frustration and so I sent back a text. It didn't have cursing, it wasn't awful, don't think the worst of me about it, but it was still something negative about the person. And I don't have any idea how this happened.
I have no idea. I sent the text and I looked down and I hadn't sent it to the person I was gossiping with, I sent it to the person themselves. And it wasn't anything to do except just feel immediate, severe pain in my soul.
It wasn't one bit playful or funny to me at all. I wept. I just wept because I loved the person that I had just spoken negatively, I loved the person. And I didn't have any recourse except to pick up the phone. You can't get a text back, like you can't get your words back.
You can't stuff words back down in your mouth, can you? I didn't have any recourse except to pick up the phone and beg forgiveness and tell them how much I love them and how sorry and how please forgive me. And the kindness of God leads to repentance and this brother said, Alan, this kind of thing happens and I understand and I love you too and you're forgiven and we shall not speak of it again.
And I got off and wept even more. Now that may not feel like something severe to you, but it is to me because the Lord spoke to me in that. And I'm like, Lord, how could this have happened?
How could this even happen? I mean, I thought I'd do that. And I feel the Lord say to me, I have anointed the words of your mouth to bring blessing and never curse. I felt the discipline of the Lord. He didn't give me cancer. He didn't take away my child. He just corrected me.
And you know, the best discipline, by the way, parents, the best discipline that you can actually structure for a child is something that's not too severe, but actually lets the child feel the consequences of their actions. I just felt for a moment the consequences of my actions. You speak words that aren't life and it hurts somebody. And just because you thought you did it in the darkness, you ought to understand the Lord is saying, Alan, you're not doing it in the darkness.
Your words matter. And that mouth of yours has got one purpose in this world. I don't like that feeling, but I love God for it. Listen, don't think that something awful and evil comes along your life and a hurricane hits your house or cancer comes into your home, God's disciplining you. He loves you. Recognize the voice of the Lord.
That's what you want to do. Here's the difference between condemnation of hell and the conviction, the sweet conviction of the Holy Spirit. The devil shames and condemns, but God gives grace and conviction together. Condemnation or worldly grief, Paul calls it, says you are a mistake, but conviction, the godly grief, the conviction of the Holy Spirit says you've made a mistake, but you can change and you can grow. Condemnation says because you've done something wrong, you're less loved. See, that's why we've too much experienced in this culture.
And sometimes in our own homes and sometimes from other trusted authorities. It feels like because I've done something wrong, I'm just not loved as much. That's condemnation. And God never does that. But the conviction of the Holy Spirit says because you are so loved, I want to correct you about this. Condemnation will make you afraid of punishment and so you'll be driven away from God. But conviction of the Holy Spirit always wants to draw you towards Him. If you're ever feeling that you are afraid and wanting to get away from God, you are not hearing from God and that is not the discipline of the Lord. That is the accusation and condemnation of hell. I'll tell you that condemnation from hell will make you feel doomed. If you're feeling doomed by a mistake that you've made, if you're getting the assumption that it's disqualifying you, if it is making you get focused on your past rather than how tomorrow you can improve, if it's making you feel less hope in your life, that is not from God.
God is a God of hope abounding in hope and He has no interest in His children feeling doomed by their past mistakes. The conviction of the Holy Spirit will correct you and you may feel the sting of remorse for your sin, but you will feel so hopeful at the same time. I remember when I was called to the ministry and I was a senior in college and I was not even praying about it.
I was planning my life without even asking God what He wanted me to do with my life. And I had a call moment in ministry that some of you have heard me share many times. And I began to weep and I wept and I felt the presence of the Holy God of the cosmos in my little dormitory room. And I just was weeping and in the midst of it, I saw that my sin and my selfishness was before me and I had heard the voice of God come in the midst of it saying, Allen, I love you and you know I'm calling you to the ministry, don't you?
And I said, yes. And I would just say in that moment, I'd never felt more remorse over my selfishness and I'd never felt more hopeful in my life. You can experience both the sting of remorse and profound hope at the same time. And that's God. But where there's hopelessness, that's hell.
Why in the world do we ever want to refuse the sweetness and the beauty and the power of the truth of God's correction when He loves us more than we love ourselves and He knows what's best for us? If you get a hold of a good teacher, what do you do? You eagerly listen. I told you a few weeks back I had an opportunity to be in the mountains and took watercolor lessons. I've never painted with watercolor in my life. The lady teaching it was a pro for 35 years, a professional watercolor artist. She was fantastic. She was sweet. She was loving. I was horrible at watercolor.
I had no idea what I was doing. And she came over and stood next to me and she said, now Alan, I see I'm doing this gazebo, sort of, on Lake Susan in Montreat. She said, here, now pay attention to the light and see where the shadow's coming not on the water, but these very important shadows under the gazebo itself that are giving it depth and dimension. And I said, thank you, what else can you tell me?
I was this close to saying, could you take the paintbrush out of my hand? You get a hold of a good teacher, what do you want? Tell me more. Tell me more. What else can you show me? Because I am a child and I don't know what I'm doing here.
And I need some help with this. Don't be afraid of God. God loves you and He's not going to condemn you. Perfect love casts out fear, John said in his first epistle.
And the reason you can be confident in this, beloved, is because Jesus came and took the punishment on your behalf. We're happy to share it with you at our cost of only $15. Visit pastorallen.org to get your Seeing as Jesus Sees product bundle.
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Here once again is Allen Wright. The Gospel doesn't say that God doesn't care about justice. The Gospel doesn't say that God doesn't want to punish sin. No, if there's a just world, then wrong should be punished and right should be rewarded. And God is just. And the reason that you have any sense of justice is because the world was built on the foundation of the justice of God. No, the Gospel doesn't say that God doesn't punish sin. The Gospel says that God does punish sin and therefore He came in the person of Jesus Christ so that sin could be punished in the sinless Son of God.
This is what Isaiah prophesied in chapter 53. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions.
He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with His wounds we are healed. The punishment that should have been on us He prophesied instead was put upon the Messiah. And 1 Peter echoed this in chapter 2 saying that He of Jesus committed no sin.
Neither was deceit found in His mouth. When He was reviled He did not revile in return. When He suffered He did not threaten but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly. Judges justly. He Himself, Jesus, bore our sins in His body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed.
And this is better than most people think. What most people think and they've heard the Gospel put this way that the way God must be dealing with punishment is therefore it's like let's imagine a young man has committed murder and he's been found guilty in the courtroom and the judge is getting ready to issue the death penalty when all of a sudden the son's weeping mother enters into the courtroom and pleads with the judge, let me take the death penalty instead. And the judge says okay and she is executed instead of the son. And we tend to think this is what God's done for us in Jesus but this is not what God has done for us in Jesus. In the first place in that illustration the mother is not sinless. All have fallen short of the glory of God. Except for Christ. He was sinless.
He was perfect in every way. That woman was not infinitely glorious deserving of infinite blessing, but Christ was and is perfect, sublime, glorious, beautiful, and deserving of every blessing in the cosmos. He earned it. The mother in that illustration doesn't actually take the sin of her son. She might sit in the executioner s chair. She might take the needle or the gas in his behalf, but she doesn't take his sin. The son still bears his sin. The son would walk out of the room with his sin the same as it was before.
He just wouldn't be punished for it. I want you to understand that God has done something much more for you in Jesus. Jesus became your sin. When you accept Christ, what happens is that by a mystical, powerful miracle, God takes all of your sin from you and lets them be put into the person of Jesus Christ on the cross and there your sin is crucified. And it leaves you therefore before God without your sin. It means, beloved, that you are not just not punished. It means that you are forgiven. But it means not just that you are forgiven, but that you are transformed. Because you see the illustration of the woman in the courtroom, there was no transformational power in what she did.
There was no effect of her own shed blood. But the shed blood of the Lord Jesus, the Scripture says, is powerful unto your salvation. The shed blood of the Lord Jesus is powerful unto your redemption. The shed blood of the Lord Jesus and His sacrifice means that there is therefore no sin counted against you and therefore you cannot be condemned because God is just in forgiving you because He has punished your sin. Your sin has been punished in the person of the Lord Jesus, so there is no punishment that is left for you, beloved. If you are in Jesus Christ, you are holy, you are clean, you are set free, you are God's, you are an heir, you belong to God. You are a co-heir with Christ Himself. You're brothers and sisters to Jesus. You're already seated in the heavenlies with Him.
God doesn't have punishment left for you. So you can know that you can draw near to God no matter what, without fear. Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. What would change in your life if you started seeing God as the greatest teacher in the world who loves you infinitely and wants the absolute best for you at every moment? Wouldn't you want every word from His mouth? Wouldn't you want any correction He could bring in your life? And wouldn't it set you free to start recognizing that when that voice comes that's condemning and accusing, you could quickly say, that's just the voice of the devil or of my own flesh. That's not the voice of God. You can discern the voice of God, the promptings of the Spirit, and the sweet discipline of the Lord, because it comes in love. Once you get that, you become a lover of discipline because you're a lover of wisdom. And that's the gospel.
Alan Wright. I love the way he puts it there. It's the conclusion of this particular teaching, The Foolproof Discipline of God in our greater series, Foolproof.
Please stay with us. Alan is back in the studio in just a moment, sharing a part in Good News Thought for the Day. In his eye-opening 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?
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That's 877-544-4860. Back here in the studio, Alan Wright with me, and I think, you know, obviously the foolproof discipline of God, and I love the way you put that even in our program the other day. You said the difference between discipline and punishment and how there is a difference between God and us. When it comes to earthly relationships and even parenting, does that kind of transcend the same way? What we are doing when we're raising or correcting our children, that's a discipline more than a punishment.
Exactly. And we always teach parents, don't punish your kids, discipline them. Punishment is punitive. It is like, okay, there needs to be justice in the world, and so we're going to bring about justice by punishment.
That's what the criminal law system is designed to do, you know. But that's not the way of God. God's a father, and he's wanting to raise his children. He's wanting to grow us up. He's wanting us to learn and grow. You know, Daniel, I'm saying I want to live with the listeners today. So many Christians, as soon as something bad, some suffering comes in their life, they think, well, you know, God's punishing me because I've not been a good enough Christian.
And I just want to say this one more time. When you accept Christ, beloved, God isn't mad at you. He will not. And in a real sense, he cannot punish you for your sins because it would be unjust to make two people pay for the same sins. And Jesus has already paid for your sin. So God treats you like beloved sons and daughters.
He would never want to hurt you. He wants to teach you to help you and to guide you. And sometimes, in order to learn, there'll be things that are momentarily painful. But the discipline of the Lord is a wonderful gift. Receive it gladly and never run from it. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.
