The Messengers of Faith (Romans 10:14-17)

Rom 10:15 contains a phrase that has always intrigued me. How beautiful are the feet… Feet are not generally thought of as beautiful. When was the last time you told a person, “My, you have beautiful feet?” Probably never. We might say, “You have beautiful smile;” Or, “pretty eyes.” Or, we might admire a woman’s complexion or figure and man’s physique or stature. But feet? Babies’ feet are cute, but not mine.

But in context, Paul was speaking of a MESSENGER. Paul quoted Isa 52:7 “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the herald, who proclaims peace, who brings news of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns!””

I think it is safe to say the beauty here is not in the PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES of the messenger’s feet. The beauty is in the FUNCTIONALITY of the feet.

WHEN ARE FEET BEAUTIFUL?

When they are bringing good news.

Luke 8:1 “Afterward he was traveling from one town and village to another, preaching and telling the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him,”

The key thought here is – beautiful feet are functioning feet. They are beautiful not just when they are going somewhere but when they are going anywhere to share the gospel.

Main Idea: Every Christian is responsible for sharing the good news about Jesus.

And to make his point, Paul asked four important questions:

Four important questions (10:14-15a)

1. How can people call on Jesus for salvation if they don’t believe in Him?

The first question emphasizes the necessity of faith. Hebrews 11:6 “Now without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”

This refers back to verses 12-13, where two times, Paul recorded calling on Jesus as a sequence in the event of salvation. God “richly blesses all who call on him” (v. 12). And there is no distinction. Anyone and everyone who calls on Jesus are richly blessed. Then, God saved everyone “who calls on the name of the Lord” (v. 13). It seems to me that verse 13 describes what it means to “call on him.” We call on Jesus’ name, meaning that we call according to His will, His character, His power, and what He has already done: that is, provided the means by which we are redeemed.

The importance of this first question is that people cannot call on one they do not believe in. They must understand who Jesus is, what He has done, and the authority and power He has to respond to our call for salvation; which by the way is the point of the calling. What Paul describes as calling on Jesus is a request, or cry, for redemption. The person is not looking for some miracle or benefit, other than the miracle and benefit of redemption.

Of course, this implies that the person understands the need for salvation – personal sin – and the how of salvation – Jesus’ work on the cross and grace applied to faith. Today, we must ask ourselves the same question: How can we expect people to be saved if they don’t know who Jesus is and what He did to provide salvation for all who call on His name?

2. How can people believe in Jesus unless they hear about him?

The second question emphasizes the necessity of hearing the gospel Matthew 11:5 “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor are told the good news,”

Throughout the Bible, there is an emphasis on hearing. “He who has ears to hear, listen.”

In Paul’s day, telling and listening to stories was the primary way communication was delivered to people. Most historians believe that the literacy rate in the first century was somewhere between 5 and 10 percent. Reading was not a necessary skill in that day. The process of printing texts was very meticulous, time consuming, and required a high level of skill. The average person didn’t have books. “Books” were actually scrolls; and scrolls were long. For example, the Isaiah scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in a cave near the Dead Sea, was 35 feet long. can you imagine the sixe of bookshelves one would have to have just for the Bible?

Information was spread mostly by word of mouth. Paul reminded his readers in Rome that the stories about Jesus needed to travel from the mouths of believers to the ears of non-believers.

By his time, the Gospel of Mark was probably already written. But before the Gospel of Mark, there was a collection of oral stories about Jesus that were handed down, person to person. These stories about Jesus were the primary set of teachings for the church. These stories were also the way non-believing ears could hear about Jesus, and learn about his identity, his authority and power, and what he did to provide redemption for all who call on his name.

Today, God’s Word has been translated into hundreds of languages, and in most places, is easily accessible. Getting God’s Word into the hands and ears of non-believers is necessary. Yet, although the people around us have access to the Bible, books, and other print media, they still have ears to hear. And they desperately need to hear, not just read, the stories about Jesus. They need to hear our story: how we came to faith in Jesus, and the difference He makes in our lives.

3. How can people hear the stories about Jesus without a storyteller?

The third question emphasizes the necessity of a storyteller. Acts 1:8 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

God’s Word speaks to those who are reading or hearing it read with a listening ear. Yet, there is something extraordinarily powerful about a story, about an ear ready to listen, hearing stories about Jesus verbalized. People need to hear about Jesus so they can believe in him. And we are his storytellers.

We not only have the stories about Jesus in the New Testament, but we also have stories about Jesus that are written in our hearts by our own personal experiences with him. And those stories are powerful; and they need to be told.

I’ve identified the need for storytellers. Paul used the word preacher. When we hear that word, most of us probably have in our minds the image of a man standing on a platform, behind a pulpit, on Sunday morning, delivering a sermon to a congregation. But there’s more to the word than meets the mind’s eye. It’s a word that means “to proclaim a message.” The place, time, and style is not implied in the message.

There are many places and many ways to proclaim a message; especially in our day. In fact, spoken words are not always necessary. Loving people where they are sometimes speaks louder than words. That’s what James had in mind when he admonished his readers to put faith into action. “If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,’ but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it?” (James 2:15-16). Jesus instructed the disciples to, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good words and give glory to your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16) The ways we interact with people tells a story about Jesus.

Still, God has given us a mouth to tell others what Jesus has done for us. As I said before, we have our own stories to tell about our experiences with Jesus. And Jesus commanded us to tell them. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) A “witness” is one who tells what he or she has observed and experienced. How can people around us hear the stories about Jesus unless we tell them?

We need the same urgency and excitement the shepherds had when they experienced the infant Messiah in the manger. “They hurried off and found both Mary and Joseph, and the baby who was lying in the manger. After seeing them, they reported the message they were told about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.” (Luke 2:15-18) I think we can say that the village was not without a preacher.

Those shepherds proclaimed the story about Jesus, and notice what happened: those who heard it were amazed! People who are ready to hear, will be amazed by our stories about Jesus, if we will only tell them.

4. How can people tell the stories about Jesus unless they are sent?

The fourth question emphasizes the necessity of being commissioned. 2 Corinthians 5:18–19 “Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us.”

Here is where many of us get confused. God hasn’t called me to be a pastor. The church sends out missionaries to tell people about Jesus. I’m not a missionary. These are common responses to this fourth question. We’re confused about what it means to be sent and who is sent.

We’ve already seen that a “preacher” is one who proclaims a message. Another word to describe this function of the gospel message is herald. In the ancient world a herald had no authority apart from the sender. The herald only proclaimed the message when he was sent, and only proclaimed the message he was sent to proclaim. What Paul is saying is that God’s calling and commissioning are essential for the power and authority of our ministry of telling the good news. Paul is not saying that the message must be proclaimed by an ordained minister, but that if God is not behind the message, it will lack power and validity. The words will carry truth only by chance, unless the Lord is behind the message.

In John 17:18, Jesus was praying for his disciples, and announced to the Father: “As you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.” In other words, in the same way that the Father sent Jesus to preach the good news, Jesus sent his disciples to do the same: preach the good news. But one might say, That’s great; but that was for the 12 disciples, not me. I can see where you might have that opinion if you haven’t read further in Jesus’ prayer. “I pray not only for these but also for those who believe in me through their word.” (John 17:20). What Jesus prayed for the Twelve also applies to us. Jesus has sent us into the world to preach the good news.

That’s one of the main reasons that Jesus sent the Holy Spirit. Remember: “… you will receive power when the Hoy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses …”. Each one of us are “sent ones,” Christ’s ambassadors to a lost world, carrying and proclaiming the message of salvation. We are sent with a message, sent with power, and sent to people. But what do I say? I’m not trained in public speaking. What if they ask questions that I can’t answer? When we ask these questions, we’re sounding like Moses. Remember him?

Moses gave God several lame reasons why he wasn’t the one God should send to Pharaoh. “Who am I that I should go? What if the Israelites question my authority? What if they don’t listen? I don’t talk very good. Maybe you should send my brother, Aaron. He talks real good.” All kinds of excuses, all made without hearing God’s promise: “I will certainly be with you, and this will be the sign to you that I am the one who sent you: when you bring the people out of Egypt, you will all worship God at this mountain.” (Exodus 3:12)

The same God who calls, promises His presence and His power. And do not be confused: God calls and sends every believer to tell the good news. “Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us.” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19) Who is sent? We are! You are!

What is heard? (10: 17)

Paul emphasizes not only that people must hear, but what they must hear. In answering the four important questions, we said that in order for people to believe in Jesus they must know about him, and in order to know about him, they must hear stories about him: not only the stories written in the text of the Bible but also stories written in the text of our stories with Jesus, our experiences as followers of Jesus. Verses 14-15 elude to Jesus: How can they call on him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about him? Verse 17 makes it even more emphatic, more precise: “So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the message about Christ.”

Let’s break that statement down into two parts.

First, isn’t it amazing that “faith comes from what is heard”? That statement highlights what we’ve already discussed: that

• God chose to spread the good news about Jesus through us.

Psalm 19:1 states: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the expanse proclaims the work of his hands.” And we’ve learned from Romans 1:19–20 that “what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse.” Still, God’s mission strategy for today includes us, His people, sharing the gospel message to those who have yet received salvation from Jesus. But this also means that

• the people to whom we share gospel stories have a responsibility to listen.

Jesus said this powerfully in Matthew 11:15 “Let anyone who has ears listen.” John wrote in Revelation 2:7 ““Let anyone who has ears to hear listen …” In other words, if people are willing to listen, they will hear good news. But there is also an urgency in both Jesus’ and John’s statements. If you are willing to listen, you better respond right now, while there is an opportunity. The Bible is full of stories about people who heard God’s message but failed to respond. As a result, their hearts grew harder and their ears became deaf to God’s message.

Second, what is heard is most important. We’ve talked about this already, but Paul re-emphasizes the what of the message again. What is heard is

• the message is about Christ.