Lawson Romans 10

Excuses, Excuses, Excuses! – Romans 10:18-21

OnePassion Ministries September 19, 2019

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Father, as we approach Your Word, we are mindful of our need for the Holy Spirit to be our primary teacher and to guide us into all truth. So, I pray that now as we start this study that Your Spirit would work in me to be a faithful secondary teacher and that the Spirit would be at work in each and every man who is here today. And for those joining us on live stream around the world, I pray that You would meet with everyone who is a part of our study. So, give us eyes to see, give us a heart to understand. We pray this in Christ’s name, amen. Okay, we are in Romans chapter 10 and verses 18 to 21 as we are methodically working our way through the book of Romans, and I want to begin by reading the verses that we are going to be looking at today, Romans 10 and 18 and following. And I think I should say this, I am headed to Ireland tomorrow and will be there for a week preaching just all through Ireland and then I fly to London and lead a church history tour throughout London, to Oxford, to Cambridge and various places. Then I fly to Los Angeles for a board meeting with The Master’s Seminary and University. So, I am going to be on the road a bit. I think we meet back here in three weeks, something like that. Maybe someone can go online and look while we are in the midst of our study, so I can make that announcement. Audience:        It is October 16th. October 16th, okay. Audience:        It is a Wednesday. And we are going to do it on a Wednesday so this can all fit in. And so, Kent, you are going to have to cancel your other Bible study so you can be here for this. So, Romans chapter 10, these verses are a little challenging to get the sense of them, but all Scripture is profitable and inspired. So, we just have to kind of hang with this. Beginning in verse 18, Paul writes, “But I say, surely they have not heard, have they? Indeed they have; ‘Their voice has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world,’ but I say, surely Israel did not know, did they? First Moses said, ‘I will make you jealous by that which is not a nation, by a nation without understanding will I anger you.’ And Isaiah is very bold and says, ‘I was found by those who did not seek Me, I became manifest to those who did not ask for Me.’ But as for Israel He says, ‘All day long I have stretched out My hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.'” As you can tell just by my reading through these verses, a little bit of a challenge to gain the sense of what Paul is saying here, but I have entitled this, “Excuses, Excuses, Excuses!” And that is really what is going on here, three big excuses. And so, by way of introduction, I want to say a deeply rooted flaw in our human nature is to make excuses. So, it is a part of our sin nature and it is an attempt really to escape responsibility, human responsibility, for what is incumbent upon us. And it is a refusal to take ownership for the opportunities that are entrusted to us as well as to pass the blame for our sin to others, and it has been this way from the very beginning. You remember what Adam said? He said in Genesis 3:12, “The woman whom You gave me.” Well, that was a twofold passing of the buck right there. It is the woman, and it is the woman “You gave me.” So, he is accusing not only the woman for his sin, but he is accusing God for giving him such a woman who led him into that sin. So, from the very beginning, from the opening of the Bible, we see this fatal flaw within humanity to make excuses. And so, that is what Paul is addressing here with specifically the nation Israel, though the principle applies to all of us. He is confronting the excuses concerning why Israel has not believed the gospel, and it really fits in the context immediately after Romans chapter 9, which is all about divine sovereignty and unconditional election, the potter and the clay, etc. And so, it would be very easy for someone to then to say, “Well, if God is sovereign, then I am not responsible for the choices that I make.” And so, Romans chapter 10 intentionally follows Romans chapter 9, that no one can play that card with God, that though God is perfectly sovereign and He is the one who determines the destinies of all those who will be in heaven, nevertheless, every man remains responsible before God for the decisions that he makes. And I will put it this way, everyone in heaven is there by divine choice and everyone in hell is there by human choice. God allowing people to go their own way. So, how do we reconcile this? Well, there is a sense in which we cannot reconcile this in our finite minds. These lines intersect far above our heads, but we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. We can’t play one off of the other. Both are true. God is divinely sovereign, absolutely sovereign, and yet man is absolutely responsible for the decisions and choices that he makes. Someone once asked Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great preacher, “How do you reconcile divine sovereignty and human responsibility?” And Spurgeon said, “I don’t have to reconcile friends. They have never had a falling out.” And so, they have never had a falling out. They don’t need to be reconciled. Both are true, but the fact is none of us can reconcile the mysteries of the Trinity. None of us can reconcile the mysteries of the hypostatic union of Christ, that He is truly God yet truly man. None of us can reconcile the mysteries of the inspiration of Scripture. Is this the Word of God or did Paul write it? None of us can reconcile the mystery of how we even live the Christian life. Do I live it? Does God live it in me? So, every great doctrine in the Bible has inherent mystery within it. And if you only believe what you can understand, you are not going to believe anything. It takes a step of faith. It takes trust and faith in God and in the Word of God. And so, here is yet another one of those tension points in theology. So, Romans chapter 9, absolute divine sovereignty, no question. We can play hardball with Romans 9. In fact, we did play hardball with Romans 9. But we come to Romans chapter 10 and there it is. And it says in verse 13, “Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” In verse 1, Paul says, “My heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation.” Well, that was settled back in eternity past. Yet within time, Paul is burdened for the lost, and he is praying to God for them. So, as we come now to verses 18 through 21, there are three main headings that I want to set before you. And I really believe in simple outlines, so I have reduced this as simply as it can be. And in verse 18, Paul says concerning the nation Israel and their unbelief. He says, number one, “They have heard.” They have heard the gospel. They have heard the truth, and they cannot play the card, “Well, I haven’t heard.” Oh, you’ve heard. You’ve heard in volumes. So, he says in verse 18, “But I say.” And as Paul says “But I say,” he is anticipating an imaginary objectioner. He is anticipating what is in the minds of certain people, and he did that in Romans chapter 9 as well. He did it in verse 14 of Romans 9, “What shall we say then? Question mark. There is no injustice with God, is there?” Question mark. He addresses that. And then in verse 19 of Romans 9, he does the same thing. He raises the question that people have in their mind before they can actually ask it. It is like a very good courtroom attorney. So, as we are now in chapter 10, that is what he does in verse 18, “But I say.” And really, that means, “I know what you’re thinking. So, let me just go ahead and say it. Let me go ahead and put it on the table.” “Surely they,” referring to Israel, “have never heard, have they?” Now Paul is not raising this for himself. He is raising it for those who have this question in their mind, especially with many Jews. And so, he will immediately answer this, “Indeed they have,” meaning they have heard. Of course, they have heard the truth. I mean, think about this. Throughout the whole Old Testament, they heard the truth. I mean, it was a Jewish wave of prophets that were sent to address the nation Israel. They heard it throughout the whole Old Testament, but they have also heard it in the New Testament already. Romans was written in about the year 57 AD, and for less than the last thirty years it has been non-stop gospel preaching to the Jewish people. And so, to make his point, he now quotes Psalm 19 verse 4, and he says, “Their voice has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” Now, that is from Psalm 19. And in Psalm 19, it is referring to what we call “general revelation” that goes out to every single person who is alive on planet earth. It goes out through creation. Anyone can look at creation and should rightly come to the conclusion there is a Creator. I mean, how simple is that? And that the creation bears witness of what the Creator is like. His fingerprints, His DNA, are seen all through creation. I mean, you can just let look up into the sky and come to the conclusion as you look at the planets above, “This God, this Creator, is transcendent. He is high and lifted up.” I mean, you can just look at these hurricanes that are blowing into the East Coast and surmise, “He is a powerful Creator.” We can look at the changing of the seasons and the rain that comes and come to the conclusion, “He is a faithful Creator.” The sun comes up, the sun goes down at the predictable time, etc, etc. That is what Psalm 19 is all about. There is not a person on planet earth who does not have the witness from God of the existence of God and that God is there. Paul now uses Psalm 19 here in verse 18 as an illustration, as an analogy, as a figurative analogy of gospel preaching that goes out far and wide. Now, not everyone has heard gospel preaching. I mean, we know that, but the point here that Paul is making is that just as general revelation has gone out to the ends of the earth, even so gospel preaching has already gone out far and wide and it is loud and clear. And Paul is using this in what we call with “hyperbole,” which is a figure of speech. It is an exaggerated statement in order to make a very profound point. And so, that is what Paul is saying here by quoting Psalm 19. So, when he says, “their voice,” in this context refers to the voice of preachers. Their voice has gone out far and wide to all the earth. And when he says “all the earth” it means all the known world, and at this point it is the Roman Empire. It is the Middle East. It is northern Africa. It is the southern part of Europe, the Roman Empire wrapping around the Mediterranean Sea. That is what is in Paul’s mind here. And we know that even from Colossians 1 verse 6 when he says, “The gospel which has come to you, just as in all the world.” Well, it is understood it hadn’t gone to the Eskimos in Alaska yet by 57 AD, and it hasn’t yet come to the Auca Indians in South America, but it has gone to the known world, the Roman Empire. And so, that is how Paul is using this language. He says, “And their words to the ends of the world,” and that is just a repetition of what he has just said. So, Paul’s point in saying this is that the Jewish person in the first century cannot say, “Well, we haven’t heard the truth. That’s why we still are in unbelief.” No, you have heard the truth because God has sent out wave upon wave not only of gospel preachers, but even farmers and housewives and what we would say today, “laypeople.” They have gone out far and wide. And I want to show you this. Turn back to the book of Acts, to Acts chapter 2, and this is really worth turning back. It is two verses that are very easy to just overlook in the book of Acts. Acts chapter 2, and I want us to look at verses 9, 10, and 11, so three verses, those who were gathered together on the day of Pentecost when Peter stood up to preach. I want us to understand that he preached to those far beyond his own zip code, that there was gathered there on the day of Pentecost an international congregation. And after Peter preached on the day of Pentecost and three thousand were converted, they stayed for a short time to be further instructed in the things of the Lord, but then they went back to their hometown and their native land. They took the gospel with them immediately. That is how quickly the gospel spread, and these are all Jewish people. These are not even Gentiles. So, beginning in verse 9, look at this list. “Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, the districts of Libya, Cyrene, visitors from Rome both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs.” That is who heard the preaching on the day of Pentecost. And let me just take a moment with you and just outline where all these places are, because I had to look them up because I haven’t been to all of these places yet, okay? Alright, so let us just walk through this list to have a good understanding of how quickly, immediately, the gospel spread into the Jewish community. So, the Parthians, that is present day Iran, present day Iran, and he begins with the Middle East down to Judea. So, the Parthians to Judea, these are very well organized as Luke puts this together. Not this Luke. The first Luke. The Luke who doesn’t sneeze in the middle of my studies, this Luke, down to Judea. This is all the Middle East. So, the Parthians, that is present day Iran. The Medes, that is the Parthian Empire which is in that larger area. The Elamites, that is Southwest Iran. Mesopotamia is the area between the Tigris and the Euphrates River. And interestingly enough, I have learned “Mesopotamia” actually means “between the rivers,” so that is that area there that is flowing through the area. And then Judea is from the Euphrates to Egypt. So it is covering Palestine. Now he shifts into Asia Minor, and Cappadocia is modern-day Turkey. That is in the central part of modern-day Turkey. Pontus is northern Turkey, and Asia refers to the coastline of Turkey on the Aegean Sea. And then Phrygia is further inland in Turkey, so towards the inland. And then Pamphylia, that is the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. So, it is just blanketing Asia Minor and then we drop down to Africa. Egypt is modern-day Egypt and included the city of Alexandria, which is one of the major, major hubs of Christianity in the first century. And then, Libya and Cyrene is west of Egypt on the North African coast on the Mediterranean Sea. And then Rome, that is in Europe, and that is the capital city really of the known world of the Roman Empire at this point. And then the Cretans, that is on the island of Crete that is in the middle of the Mediterranean Ocean off the south coast of Greece. And then the Arabs probably refers to south of Damascus, but could go even further on the east of the Jordan River. So, I mean this is like a wide dispersement. And you talk about the infinite genius of God to birth the church on the day of Pentecost with this international contingency there to hear His sermon and for the power of the Holy Spirit to come and for three thousand people to be saved with one sermon and then for them to be dispersed and to go back to their homelands immediately overnight. There is unleashed a force for gospel witness into the known world. So, yeah, we understand what Paul is saying in Romans 10. Yeah, their voice has gone out to the ends of the earth. That was the ends of the earth at that point as it relates to gospel witness. Now, listen to two quotes I have, one from Justin Martyr who lived in the middle of the second century. He wrote, “There is no people, Greek or barbarian or any other race, however ignorant of arts and agriculture,” meaning they are just scattered way out in the uninhabited areas, “whether they dwell in tents or wander about in covered wagons,” meaning they are just nomads out in the desert, “among whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered in the name of the crucified Jesus to the Father and Creator of all things,” close quote. So, about the middle of the second century what Justin Martyr is saying even if you go out in the middle of nowhere where people are living in tents and covered wagons, they are already giving praise to the crucified Lord Jesus Christ. That is how wide and quickly the dispersement of the gospel was in the first and second century. And then later at the end of the second century and first part of the next century, Tertullian said, “We are but of yesterday.” By that he meant Christianity just got started like yesterday, okay? “We are but of yesterday, yet we already fill your cities, your islands, your camps, your palaces, your Senate, and forum.” We have filled up every city, every building that there is in the Roman Empire with Christians, with their Christian witness. And people, actually historians, have wondered why did the Roman Empire come down, and there are multiple theories as to why the Roman Empire imploded from the inside. Well, one main reason that is given is because of Christianity and the spread of the gospel. And Tertullian goes on to say in this quote, “The only place you won’t find a Christian in the entire Roman Empire is in pagan temples.” So, if you want to escape Christianity, just go into a pagan temple. Otherwise, 99.9% of the terrain, you are going to run into a believer because the gospel is spread so quickly. So, for Paul’s first point here, Israel is accountable because you have heard. And human responsibility before God, you have heard the gospel. And I want to say to every man here today, “You’ve heard the truth.” I mean, we are studying the book of Romans. I mean, you have had the ace of spades, the ace of diamonds, the ace of hearts, and the ace of clubs put on the table every time you have come in here. I mean, you have had the truth at the highest level of the Word of God placed before you, and you are responsible for what you have heard. Now, second, he advances the argument yet further. After saying, “they have heard” in verse 18, he now says in verses 19 and 20, “they have understood.” It is one thing to hear; it is something else to understand. And Paul says, “Not only have you heard with your ears. You have understood with your mind.” And so, he says in verse 19 to take this yet further, “But I say.” And as Paul says that, it is his way of indicating, let me paraphrase it, “I know what’s on your mind. I know what you’re thinking. I’m going to get out ahead of you. You’re thinking, ‘Well, yeah, we have heard, but we just couldn’t connect the dots.'” So, Paul is going to head that off at the pass before they can go any further with that train of argument. And he says, “Surely Israel did not know, did they?” He puts it in the form of a question. And the answer is, “Of course, they understood! The gospel is very simple. You are a great sinner. Christ is a great Savior. Do I need to go back over that? Christ is a great Savior. You are a great sinner. Great sinners need a great Savior, and there is only one Savior and it is Jesus Christ, and you must repent of your sins and believe upon Him. He is the Son of God, and for Israel He is the long-awaited promised Messiah. I know that you understood our preaching and the witness that was brought to you.” You know, the word “know,” “Surely, Israel did not know, did they?” I am reading out the New American Standard. The word “know” there in this context really means “understand.” And if you have an ESV, it is actually translated that way, “understand.” The word means to recognize, to perceive, or to take in knowledge and to realize what it is saying. And so, Paul is saying, “Not only have you heard, you’ve understood. You are responsible.” There are a lot of things I hear I don’t understand. I mean, if you tried to explain something to me on how to fix my cell phone, I can hear what you are saying. I don’t understand what you are saying. But with the gospel, Paul says, “Surely, they did not know, did they?” And the anticipated answer is, “Yes, you did know. You knew about Christ crucified and raised from the dead. You understand justification by faith alone.” And so, Paul now quotes Moses and then he will quote Isaiah. And it just bears our careful attention here to see how he goes from point A to point B. He is underscoring they are responsible for what they have understood, and he will now quote Scripture first with Moses to talk about God’s discipline upon His own people because of their refusal of the gospel. And what is implied is, “You understood, but you didn’t receive the gospel. So, therefore, I’m going to have to punish you for your unbelief.” That is the leap here as we go to the Moses quote. So, he is quoting Deuteronomy 32 verse 21, “First, Moses says.” And let me draw this to your attention, too. It is the present tense “says.” This is still speaking today. It is not just what Moses said, you know, however many years ago, over three thousand years ago, thirty-four hundred years ago to be exact. He is still speaking today through His Word. “First Moses says, ‘I,'” God is the speaker here, “‘I will make you jealous.”’ The “you” refers to Israel in its unbelief and God will make Israel jealous. He will provoke the nation of Israel to jealousy because they will see the blessings that were promised to them if they would only believe. They will see it coming to a people that they considered to be no people whatsoever, referring to the Gentiles. So “I will make you jealous by that which is not a nation.” And “not a nation” literally translated is really “not a people,” and it is a very demeaning expression that the Jews had for Gentiles. And it kind of means you don’t even exist, you are a non-entity, you are just not a people. And the Jew will see these Gentiles that they have supposed, “you don’t even exist on God’s map,” now receiving the blessings of salvation that God promised to Israel, but Israel has turned up its nose at the gospel, and so God has brought punishment on the nation and brought grace and favor to the Gentile. It makes the Jew jealous for what they are receiving, not jealous for God, because God is extending His arms all day long to the nation Israel. We see that in verse 21. No, here is the deal. They don’t want God on His terms. They want what God offers. They want the gifts of God, not God Himself. It sounds like the health-wealth prosperity gospel to me. They want the goodies from God without having to deal with God Himself, and so they are jealous for what is coming to the Gentiles, yet they are responsible for their unbelief. They are suffering for their own hardened heart. They are suffering for their own refusal to believe the gospel. And no one in Israel can say to God, “Well, You didn’t choose me,” or “I wasn’t one of the elect.” Well, that may be true. No one can know that until your last breath. You don’t know that you are not one of the elect, so stop playing that excuse. You may be one of the elect. If we would have said in the first century, the number one person who is not one of the elect would have been Saul of Tarsus. We would have reasoned and assumed he is the furthest away from God. He will never be saved. No. And even Saul of Tarsus was so self-deceived. But God saved him. So, no one in Israel can say, “Well, it’s just the sovereignty of God for my sin.” No, you are the reason for your sin. God is not the author of sin. You are responsible for your decisions. That is why you are suffering God’s punishment right now for your sins. So, that is Paul’s reasoning and bringing in Deuteronomy 32 verse 21. I hope I have made that as clear as I can make it and it is a little bit difficult to navigate through this section. So, he then gives the rest of Deuteronomy 32:21. He says, “By that which is not a nation, by a nation,” and the word “nation” just simply means “a people,” referring collectively to the Gentile people. “By a nation without understanding will I anger you.” As they continue in their unbelief, Israel, as they suffer for their own rejection of their own Messiah, rather than it humbling them and bringing them to repentance, it has the opposite effect and only makes them even angrier. That is almost like when someone asks the question, “Will people in hell, will they ever repent? Won’t they finally come to their senses and humble themselves?” The answer is no. They are only getting angrier in hell. That is why the gnashing of teeth. That is what that means. You are just gritting your teeth in anger and fury against God. So, the hardened heart actually only becomes harder and harder, but Paul’s point here is that you are doing this to yourself. You are the one who is becoming angry with God, who is extending His arms all day long to you to come to Him in repentance and faith. That is what is taking place here. And when he says, “A nation without understanding,” that was how the Jews referred to the Gentiles at that point, that not only are they not a people, they don’t have any understanding either. They don’t have the prophets. They don’t have the covenants. They don’t have the oral tradition. They don’t have the Scriptures. They don’t have any understanding. And now, Israel sees what is becoming a Gentile church and Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles. This is making them all the more furious. This is like a child who has a toy, and there is another little baby put in the same playpen and the other kid takes the toy, and now we have got a brouhaha going on because their toy has been taken from them. And so, the blessings of the gospel have been transferred to the Gentiles. And rather than the Jew becoming humbled by this, they are actually more furious and say, “These are the people who don’t know anything. Why would God be good to them?” So, that is what is going on here. We are back in Romans 10. I am looking at Acts 2. In verse 20, he adds another cross-reference to heighten this responsibility that Israel has: “And Isaiah is very bold and says.” What that means is Isaiah is even bolder than what Moses is, and Isaiah puts it out even stronger. And so, he now quotes Isaiah 65 verse 1. And all I am doing is just following Paul’s train of thought here and Paul’s logic on this. So, we read, “I was.” “I,” God is still the speaker. “I was found by those,” and the “those” refer to the Gentiles, “who did not seek Me.” And this is something of a prophecy really of what was to come. Because remember when Israel had the gospel, what did they do with it? They just hoarded it. In fact, when God told Jonah to go preach the gospel to the lost people in Nineveh, he gets on a ship and goes in the opposite direction. I mean, it is like being at Dallas at DFW Airport. God says, “Go to JFK in New York,” and Jonah goes, “No, I am getting on a plane going to L.A. I mean, I’m going in the opposite direction. I don’t want them to have the gospel. They are just not worth saving.” And then even after they are saved, you remember Jonah gets under a plant and all he does is pout because they got converted? He just wanted to hoard the whole thing for themselves within the nation Israel, and that is not an unusual attitude. It probably represents the nation of Israel at that time. They didn’t want the Gentiles to get in on this good thing. It is like you know a secret and you don’t want anyone else to get in on this real estate deal. You know you want to keep it for yourself. So, it is kind of a prophecy of the Gentiles coming to faith in Christ. Israel doesn’t want to share this with the Gentiles. So, “I was found by those who did not seek Me.” Here is the irony. Even Israel didn’t seek the Lord. They wanted their own self-righteous religion, and that is why you have the Pharisees who are just self-righteous up to the top of their head. And that is why you have got the Sadducees who were the liberals, and that is why you have got the scribes and all these different little pockets of people. They weren’t seeking God; they were seeking a self-made religion of their own way to God. “I was found by those who did not seek Me, I became manifest to those who did not ask for Me.” What God is saying is, “I had to make Myself known to the Gentiles or they would have never found Me, but I have been with you all along,” God is saying to the Jewish people. “All you had to do was open your eyes and open your ears. You didn’t even have to walk across the street. I have been with you all along. It is the Gentiles who didn’t even know about Me. I had to go manifest Myself to them. It was under your nose all along. How much more responsible could you possibly be? You heard it, You understood it, and now you are suffering because you didn’t respond to it. “But you can’t lay blame,” God is saying, “with Me. That’s your own doing. Those are the choices you made.” And so, “I became manifest to those who did not ask for Me.” Now, there is a third heading, and Paul advances this even yet further to stress, and I just want to repeat this, to stress human responsibility. You have the responsibility to act upon what you have heard and what you have understood, and don’t tell me you are not numbered among the elect because you don’t even know that and you couldn’t know that until the day you die in unbelief. So, here is the third heading, “They have been invited.” So, he is pushing the fence posts out yet further. He starts off with “You have heard.” Then he moves to “You have understood.” Now, he advances this to “You have been invited all day long and you won’t come.” So, notice what he says in verse 21. And he will now quote the next verse in Isaiah. Isaiah 65 verse 2, and we see here what a Bible preacher the Apostle Paul is by the way: “But as for Israel.” And I just want to stress chapters 9 through 11 really deals with the unbelief of Israel as a section. “But as for Israel He,” referring to God, “says.” Now, that is interesting. Earlier he said “Isaiah says very boldly,” but here it is “God says” for the next verse. It is God speaking through Isaiah. That is the way it is with Scripture. There is a dual authorship for every passage of Scripture. There is the secondary author. That is the human author. There is the primary author that is God. So, “But as for Israel He,” God, “says, ‘All day long I have stretched out My hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.'” “All day long” is figurative language here for “century after century after century.” I mean, Moses lived like 1400 BC. Abraham was 2000 BC. David was 1000 BC. I mean, we can do the math on this. For centuries, God has been calling out and extending His arms, and it is the long-suffering of God. Israel can’t say, “Well, we didn’t hear and we didn’t understand.” God has been calling you. He has been extending His arms to you and beckoning you and summoning you to come to Him by faith. Even Jesus said, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem! I would have gathered you in as a mother hen gathers in her chicks. I have been calling out to you.” So, the responsibility is laid at the feet of the person. Nobody can blame God, and that is why there will be a final judgment and everyone will give an account of themselves to God. And no one can say, “Well, it was the eternal decree of God and sovereign election and this and that.” Well yes, that is all true, but this is also true, so much so that you are held accountable by God for the decisions that you make. So, “All day long I have stretched out my hands. I have urged you, pleaded with you, to a disobedient and obstinate people.” Wow! Those are strong words. “Disobedient” means “to refuse to obey.” You just refuse to obey. You are stubborn. You are stiff-necked. It means “to not allow one to be persuaded.” It is what the word literally means. And “obstinate” means you are just resistant to God. You are stubborn, as I have already said, and stiff-necked. And to be stiff-necked means it is like an ox who hunches up his shoulders and refuses to let a master put a yoke around his neck. You just do this when God tries to put His easy, sweet, forgiving, gracious yoke around your shoulders. You just become stiff-necked and refuse to submit to a master who will graciously lead you into green pastures and besides still waters and who will lead you to heaven. You just want to go your own way and to do your own thing. So, therefore this is on you, the consequences of your own sin. And Israel was dispersed to the nations in the year 70 AD. God brought Titus Vespasian from the Roman Empire down into Jerusalem. They leveled the temple. Not one stone would be left upon another, and they dispersed the nation Israel to the corners of the known world. And it would not be until like 1948 when Israel would come back to their land, but they are still dispersed. There are more Jews living in New York City than there are living in Israel today, and they are still suffering for their rejection of the gospel and their rejection of their Messiah when God hand-delivered Him to the nation Israel. Well, so what is the point for us? What is the application for us? Well, three things, and it is just walking back through what we have said. I give you three words. The first is “know.” You know the truth. I mean, we have been talking about Israel in the first century. We are not talking about each one of us in the twenty-first century. You think about all the people in the world. I just saw something on Instagram from Union Seminary, wherever that is on the East Coast, where they are bowing down in seminary before flowers and confessing their sins. Of course, they have no sins. To flowers lest the flowers be angry with them. I thought this was a joke. People were sending this to me from all over yesterday, and then all of a sudden it popped up on mine. You think about what insanity and blasphemy is being taught in a seminary like that, those graduates going out and standing in pulpits and pumping out that kind of sewage. Think about what you have heard by contrast. Think about the responsibility that you have before God to have had the pearls and the treasures of the infinite grace of God hand-delivered and set before you, many of you for your whole life growing up in Christian homes and being in Christian churches and certainly in this Bible study. No compliment to me, all glory to God for His Word. It has been a full disclosure of the truth. Every time we walk into this study, we are just heightening our responsibility to God. So that is “know.” You know the truth. Second, “understand.” You understand the truth. It has been clearly explained to you, literally word by word, phrase by phrase, with great deliberation and even at times depth, unpacking the unsearchable riches of the grace of God. How responsible are each one of us? And you know what? I am even more responsible than you are because I have been living in this to prepare these messages. That is why James says in James 3 verse 1, “Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing as such we shall incur a stricter judgment.” The greater exposure to the truth, the greater the accountability to God, the greater will be the judgment on the last day. And so, just to remind us of our responsibility to God, you have heard it, you understand it. It has been explained to you. And you have been invited. Many of you, for years and years and years, you have been invited by the text of Scripture, by gospel preachers, by Bible teachers, by Christian parents, have urged you to follow the Lord, have pled with you to be a follower of Christ and to walk the narrow path. I grew up in a Christian home and I had everything that I just mentioned laid at my feet. I am a debtor to my parents, to so many preachers who have taught the Word of God to me over the last fifty years. How great is my accountability and my responsibility to God to live up to what has been made known to me! Well, the same is true for each one of us in this study, and I want you to ponder that, and I want you to think about this. And I am so thankful to God for this study and thankful to God that you are here because of the joy of our fellowship and the joy of being in the Word. But also, we need to be mindful that there is a serious side to this as well of our increased exposure to the truth of the Word of God and the accountability that we will give to the Lord on the last day for what the stewardship of the truth that has been entrusted to us. So, I am going to stop right here. I admit this to myself these verses were somewhat of a challenge to me. I thought I had it neatly packed on Monday. I thought I had it neatly packed on Tuesday. I thought I had it neatly packed on Wednesday. And I got up crazy early this morning, and I am still trying to get it all into the suitcase, but this is the best interpretation I can give you and the best application on these verses. When you go verse by verse through a book in the Bible, you are not given the luxury of skipping the harder verses to deal with, to move on to the easier ones. So, may God give you, me, us, understanding of these, even these verses that we have looked at, and I want you to think about how this relates to your life.

Gospel Preaching – Romans 10:14-17

OnePassion Ministries September 12, 2019

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Father, thank you so much for Your Word, that we have the record of what You have to say to us as permanently recorded. And as we now open pages of Scripture, we ask that Your Holy Spirit would be the Instructor, the Teacher. I pray that You would bless these men, that You would build them up in their faith as we look into Your Word. I pray for those who are watching by live stream that You would meet with them right where they are. So, put Your hand upon me strongly for good and use me now to teach Your Word. I pray this in Christ’s name, amen. All right men, we are in Romans chapter 10. So, I hope your Bible just automatically flops open to the book of Romans right now. My pages in Romans are about to come out. I already had them once re-stitched back in, but that is a good problem to have. We are in Romans chapter 10, and to put a title on this lesson, it is “Gospel Preaching,” gospel preaching. And we are going to look at verses 14 through 17 this morning as we keep working our way through the book of Romans, and I think you will see why I am calling this “Gospel Preaching.” Beginning in verse 14, “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!’ However, they did not all heed the good news; for Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed our report?’ So, faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” The central idea of these verses is the preaching of the gospel. And the importance of the preaching of the gospel cannot be overstated. From cover to cover throughout the entire Bible, God has sent waves and legions of preachers to preach the gospel. It is God’s primary means to get the Word of God out. It is by the preaching of the Word. The prophets of old were gospel preachers. Moses was a gospel preacher. David was a gospel psalmist. Isaiah was a gospel preacher. Jeremiah, Ezekiel were gospel preachers. And as we come to the New Testament, it is just more the same. John the Baptist was a gospel preacher. Jesus Christ Himself was a gospel preacher. God had only one Son and He made Him a gospel preacher. Jesus for three years trained gospel preachers, and He sent them out to preach the gospel. Peter was a gospel preacher. On the day of Pentecost, he just picked up where Jesus left off. Stephen was a gospel preacher. Paul was a gospel preacher. John was a gospel preacher. And when you trace church history, the greatest eras of church history is when God has raised up gospel preachers, and the low valleys of church history is when God has withheld His preachers. So, the passage that we have before us in some ways is a snapshot of the entire Bible. And in some ways, it is a snapshot of the entirety of church history. So, we are not surprised as we come to these verses to read what Paul states, the chief importance of gospel preaching. It is what the Puritans used to refer to as the primary ordinary means of grace. There are many other means of grace. The means of grace comes through one-on-one witnessing. It comes through parents teaching their children the gospel. It comes through counseling. The gospel comes through singing. The gospel comes through teaching venues. But those are secondary to what is primary, and what has always been primary from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible and throughout church history has been the preaching of the Word of God. So, as we look at these verses, and I know most of us here today are not preachers, but you are dependent upon preachers and this is a very important passage in your spiritual life. And there are some here today who are even praying about, “Has God called me to preach His Word?” and I know watching on live stream. So, this is a very relevant passage. So, I want you to note first as we walk through this text, the necessity of gospel preaching, the necessity of gospel preaching, and we see it in verse 14 and the beginning of verse 15. Now, let me comment on this verse and a half before we begin to look at it. What we have here is a series of questions. It is a series of four rhetorical questions. A rhetorical question is really a statement. A rhetorical question raises a question and the answer is so obvious that the one who raises it does not bother to answer it because the answer is self-evident. That is what we have here. And in these four questions, they all begin with the word “how.” You will see the word “how” mentioned four consecutive times, and they are all linked together. They are inseparably linked like links in a chain. And what Paul does is Paul starts at the end and works backwards to the front. So, what he is arguing for here is the necessity of gospel preaching. So, the first question is at the beginning of verse 14 and he says, “How will they call on Him in whom they have not heard?” The answer is obvious. No one can call on the name of the Lord until they have believed in the Lord. Now, “call.” “How will they call on Him?” That is synonymous with saving faith and it is mentioned in the previous verse, verse 13, “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” And it is mentioned in the verse previous to that at the end of verse 12 that “He is Lord of all abounding in riches for all who call on Him.” So, that is synonymous with saving faith. That starts at the end, the connecting point when someone calls upon the name of the Lord. Now, to be distinguished is the word “believed” at the end of that question, because here Paul uses “believe” in a way that is less than saving faith. He uses it here really for just head knowledge. No one can call on the name of the Lord with saving faith until they have the head knowledge about Christ. Really, it is to believe about Christ. And that is how Paul is using the word here. It is to be distinguished from “call on Him.” In order to call upon Christ, you must know about Christ. You must know who He is. You must know why He came into this world. And more than just know it, you must be persuaded of it. You must be convinced of it by really the work of the Holy Spirit inside of your heart. And so, believing the facts about the gospel precedes calling upon the name of the Lord. Saving faith never takes place within an intellectual vacuum. There must always be the cognitive facts of the gospel, the absolute truth of the gospel that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, that He is the virgin born, sinless, crucified, sin-bearing Savior who was buried, who was raised on the third day, who ascended back to heaven, who is seated at the right hand of God the Father. And as verse 13 says, “And whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” You must believe that in your heart before you can call upon Him for salvation. And so that is where Paul begins his series of questions here. “How can you call on Him in whom you have not believed?” And the answer is “You cannot.” So, now with the second question, he will take another step backwards. And he will then say, “How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard?” Again, the answer is, “They cannot.” No one can believe the facts of the gospel until they hear the facts of the gospel. And so, preceding believing the facts of the gospel, you must hear the facts of the gospel. And it is interesting he doesn’t say, “In whom you have not read,” but “whom you have not heard.” And again, the emphasis is it is expected that the gospel would primarily go out preached in order to be heard, not so much written in order to be read, but preached in order to be heard. Martin Luther, during the Reformation, once said that the church is not to be a “pen house,” but to be a “mouth house.” In other words, it is not to be a reading club, though obviously we read our Bibles and we read books that help us understand the Bible, but the tip of the spear primarily when you come to church is not to have someone read something to you; it is to have someone preach something to you. The gospel is designed in the genius of God to be heralded, to be proclaimed, because there is an energy level and a depth of convictions that comes when the Word of God is to be preached. And so, the highest rung on the ladder for how the gospel is to go out, it is to be preached and it is to be heard. And so that is why Paul continues to make this emphasis: “How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard?” And the answer again is a negative. No one can believe the facts about the gospel until they have heard the facts about the gospel. Now, I want to show you something here in that question that would easily escape our looking at this, but to be very specific, this does not say that they heard about Christ. Please note how it reads in your Bible. It actually says that they actually heard Christ. Now, that is an important distinction because in every act of preaching there is really to be two preachers, one who is seen, but One who is unseen. And when the written Word is preached, it is actually the living Word, Jesus Christ, who is speaking through this Word. And for someone to call on the name of the Lord, you must actually realize that it is Jesus Christ Himself who is speaking through His written Word and that the authority of Christ Himself is coming through the preaching of the Word of God. And you are not merely hearing a man; you are hearing Jesus Christ Himself. Now, you see the man and you hear the man, but behind the man stands Jesus Christ. And in reality, though you are not hearing the audible voice of Christ, you nevertheless in your heart are hearing the authority of Christ Himself and you are hearing the truth of Christ Himself. You are hearing more than a man. You are hearing Christ Himself. And I trust that even this moment as I am teaching this that God is giving you ears to hear Christ Himself speak through the pages of His Word as I am opening this up. This isn’t me speaking. This is Christ Himself who is speaking, and that needs to be brought to your attention as we even look at that question. You must hear more than a human preacher. You must hear Christ Himself who is calling out and who is speaking to you. And I would say to you, with all humility, Christ is speaking right now through me to you by means of His written Word. Leon Morris, who was an excellent New Testament commentator, has gone to be with the Lord, but in his commentary on Romans he writes at this point, “The point is that Christ is present in His preachers. To hear them is to hear Him.” Now, admittedly, there are a lot of bad preachers out there and you are not hearing Christ through them. You are hearing all about them. You are hearing all about the culture. You are hearing all about society. You are hearing all about human wisdom and worldly wisdom, and Christ is not present in them and Christ is not speaking through them. They are drawing from their own well. Christ has abandoned their pulpit. But when men stand up with an open Bible and they read that passage and they explain the passage and then they exhort with the passage, Christ is in that and He is speaking through His written Word. So that is the second question that Paul raises, “How will they call on Him in whom they have not believed?” And the answer is that they cannot. But if you truly believe and if you truly call on the name of the Lord, you discern the power of Christ in that message. Now, the third question. And Paul is working his way backwards to the beginning. And the third question is, “How will they hear without a preacher?” And this underscores that God has chosen to work through means. He has chosen to work through human means. God could have it written in the skies. God could have gospel tracts dropped out of the clouds. God could send legions of angels. But that is not how God has chosen to work. God has chosen to work by raising up fallible weak human instruments so that the power belongs to God and the power does not belong to the frail human instrument. The power is in the message and the power is in the Holy Spirit who is working through the message through a very weak vessel. So, look at the third question. “How will they hear without a preacher?” And the answer again is a negative. They cannot hear Christ preach through His written Word except there be a preacher who takes the written Word and opens it up and proclaims it. Now, “preacher” here is really in a verb form, and it really literally is translated “without one preaching.” And it is a Greek word. It is the most prominent Greek word in the New Testament for “preaching.” It is a Greek word kerusso, and it actually means to lift up the voice and to announce and proclaim and to declare. It would be much like what we would think of a town crier who would be going through the streets of a town and lifting up his voice so that everyone can hear. The word does not mean “to share.” The word does not mean “to talk.” The word means actually “to announce and proclaim.” And it is drawn from the culture of the day where Caesar had his heralds in the palace, and Caesar would issue to his heralds his imperial decree. And he would then dispatch and commission his heralds to go throughout the Roman Empire. It was the only way of communication. And they would go into the towns. They would gather the people around them. They would cup their hands, lift up their voice, and say something like this, “Hear ye, hear ye this day. Rome has won a great victory. Rome has annexed another kingdom into the Empire.” There was to be no negotiation. They were not allowed to withhold any part of the message. They were not allowed to add any of their own personal opinion or perspective to the message. Or the message would be something like this, “Hear ye, hear ye, this day,” as the people gathered around. “Caesar has a son. There is an heir to the throne of Rome.” As soon as the message was given, as he represented Caesar in each of these cities, he was then to report back to Rome. He was to go back into the palace, and he would give an account of himself to Caesar, had there been a full disclosure of the message that had been entrusted to him. And if they were faithless and tried to tone down the message or withhold any part or add anything to it, it would cost them their life, and they would be immediately executed. That is the very word kerusso here. And as Paul writes to the Romans, to the church in Rome. Oh, they are very familiar with this word. That is where the heralds lived. That is where the heralds carried out their business. That is from whence they were dispatched and where they returned to. And so, that is the historical background to this word, “How will they hear without a preacher?” And the answer is, “They will not.” And it has always been God’s means to call His heralds before His throne of grace and to give them His Word and to send them out into the highways and into the byways of this world and to commission them to go into all the world and to proclaim and to herald the truth that is recorded in this book. So, that is the third question that Paul raises, and again it speaks to the necessity of gospel preaching. Now, he takes a fourth step back and here is the fourth question. It is at the beginning of verse 15. It begins again for the fourth time with the word “how.” And he comes now to the beginning of this succession of questions. “How will they preach?” How will they herald? How will they declare, “unless they are sent?” And the answer is, “They cannot preach with the hand of God upon them unless they are sent.” Now, “to be sent” implies that there is a sending body, that they are commissioned and sent out. And though not stated in the passage, but as we appeal to other passages of Scripture, it would be a local church where there are the elders who lay hands on one that they have examined, that they believe he has been called by God to preach the Word, that he is sound in doctrine, that his life is pure before God. And they are the sending agents. But standing behind the elders of the church is the Head of the church Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who sovereignly chooses His preachers. He is the one who raises them up. Paul said in Galatians 1:15, “I have been set apart from my mother’s womb to preach the gospel to the Gentiles.” Jeremiah, in Jeremiah 1 verse 5 says, “Before I was born the Lord knew me and consecrated me to the office of preaching His message.” Now, I want you to just keep your finger here and turn back to Acts 13. I just want you to see one passage, and we’re going to be coming right back to Romans 10. But in Acts 13, I just want you to see how this works out in reality in the New Testament. And in Acts 13, we read in verse 1, “Now, they were at Antioch.” And this will be the first sending church, the first church to send out preachers in the book of Acts. And so, we read verse 2. He gives the names. And the prophets and teachers, they really were like the elders of the church. They were preaching as prophets and they were teaching the Word. And it says in verse 2, “While they were ministering to the Lord.” Isn’t that interesting? When the preacher preaches the Word of God, the ultimate congregation is God Himself, and it brings pleasure to the heart of God to hear His Son proclaimed and to hear His Word rightly divided. And so, “They were ministering to the Lord and fasting. And the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.'” Now, please note on this, as they sent out these preachers, they didn’t send the B team. They didn’t send the junior varsity. They sent Paul, who was the strongest preacher of them all and they sent with him it says “Barnabas,” which means “son of encouragement,” so that the preacher would be encouraged. He needed to have someone at his side who would be encouraging him as he is preaching the Word. So, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Saul, meaning Paul, didn’t volunteer for this. This wasn’t his idea. This was thrust upon him by God. God says, “I have called them to do this.” And every preacher must know that he is God-called. He is not mama-called or he is not self-called. He has got to be God-called. And he must know in the depth of his soul that he is God-called because if we had time to read the rest of Acts 13 and 14, Paul’s running into buzz saws in every town that he goes to preach. He needs to know that he is there by divine appointment. He needs to know that God has sent him there. So now, here is what I want you to see. Verse 3, “Then, when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.” The elders sent them away. But please note the next verse. Who is standing behind the elders and who is working through the elders to send out these two preachers? “So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit,” do you see that? They went and started Paul’s first missionary journey. The reason I had us turn to Acts 13, and you can come back to Romans 10, is that I want you to see the importance of a preacher being sent out, first by a sending body, most always a local church, but behind that must be God Himself. You can’t be self-appointed. You can’t just be a volunteer. You need to know that God has put His hand upon you to send you out. And let me just make this application because I know most of us aren’t preachers per se like this. You need to attend a church where there is a God-called preacher. And if there is not a God-called preacher, you need to get out of that place and go find somewhere where there is a preacher who is standing up with this book and Christ is speaking through that man. And you need to stand with that man and you need to encourage that man. You need to be a Barnabas to that man, because he is going to have the devil come in at him head on. He is going to have a target on his forehead as he preaches the truth of the Word of God. But you need to be sitting under a God-called man who opens the Bible and preaches the Word of God. Otherwise, it would be like going to a restaurant, but they never serve you food. You know, “Why in the world am I here?” And you keep paying your money and they never bring you the food. I mean, it is insane. And you go, “Oh, my daddy used to eat here and they served him food.” Well, they are not serving food now, and your daddy wouldn’t be here now if they weren’t serving the food. So, you need to be someplace where there is someone who has been sent by God, who preaches the Word of God so that people can call upon the name of the Lord. So, this is where this all starts. Now, I want to make a theological point here. As we look at these verses before we move on any further, what is obvious is no one can be saved unless they hear the gospel. And the question is always raised, “Well, what about those who have never heard?” I want you to hear this loud and clear. If someone dies without Christ, whether they have heard, whether they have not heard, they step out into eternal punishment. They are a sinner just like the one who has heard is a sinner. Adam’s sin has been charged to their account over six thousand years ago just like it is charged to the account of someone who has heard the gospel. In the womb, the sin nature of their parents was passed to them and they became a sinner while they were still in their mother’s womb. And for the rest of their life, they have committed sinful acts against the law of God that God has written upon their heart, an inner sense of right and wrong and morality. They have sinned against the high court of heaven. And when they die, they go straight to hell. And let me just say this and I will say it softly. They deserve to go to hell. It is right and just that they would go to hell. You don’t go to hell because you rejected the gospel; you go to hell ultimately because you are a sinner. That is why we are so committed to sending out preachers. That is why we are involved in missions. That is why we are involved in the work of evangelism. There is no other hope. If someone could be saved without ever hearing the gospel, the kindest thing we could do is never preach to them because that would then render them accountable. No, according to this text, it is abundantly clear that no one can call upon the name of the Lord and be saved unless a preacher is sent and they hear the gospel; and more than that, they hear Christ speaking through that preaching to their heart. So that is why we are so committed to getting the Word of God out. No one is in a neutral zone. No one is standing in the middle riding the fence. It’s the kingdom of darkness or the kingdom of light. What we have just looked at is the necessity of gospel preaching. Second, I want you to see the beauty of gospel preaching. And Paul writes in verse 15, “Just as it is written,” and he now quotes from the Old Testament. He quotes from Isaiah 52 verse 7, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!” This is an incredible verse. He doesn’t just say “beautiful.” He says, “How beautiful!” The word “how” here is a separate word in the original language and it is a demonstrative expression. It is like “Oh! How beautiful are the feet of those who bring glad tidings!” Now, the “feet” refer to the feet of the preacher, the one who is sent in the question at the beginning of the verse. The feet carry the gospel. The feet take the gospel to others. And the word “those,” “are the feet of those,” “those” refer to those who are sent with the gospel. Now, they are bringing good news which is the gospel of good things. And “good things” is a different word here and it refers to justification, sanctification, reconciliation, redemption, expiation, all of the great truths that are contained in the gospel of Jesus Christ. But what strikes us as strange is that it is beautiful feet. I don’t know about you. I didn’t marry my wife for her feet. I mean, I loved her soul, but…okay, okay, Kent, okay, come on, come on. Do not “boo” during the Bible study. I suffered defeat. Okay, so we will stop there. Because feet are not beautiful in and of themselves. But God is going to have a beauty contest one day in heaven at the judgment seat of Christ, and the winner of the beauty contest at the judgment seat of Christ are those who had beautiful feet who carried the gospel to someone else, whether it is across the street, whether it is down the hall, whether it is across the ocean, wherever your feet would take you, God says, “Those are beautiful feet.” What an incredible imagery here, and let me give you just an illustration of this. In 490 BC, so this is like over five hundred years before Paul wrote this, there was a battle at the city of Marathon. And it is from this comes the marathon race, and the Persian Empire attacked the Greek city of Marathon. And the Greeks withstood the assault and they defeated the Persians, and they won a great victory in defending the city of Marathon. So, they called a herald. They called a runner by the name of Pheidippides, and they said, “Run to the city of Athens with this message that we have conquered and we have won and we have defended our city.” Athens was 21.2 miles away, and Pheidippides ran as fast as his feet would take him with this good news of the victory that had been won at the city of Marathon. And as he burst into the city, he ran to the officials. The people gathered around him waiting to know the outcome. I mean, would the Persians be marching against them next. Or, “Have you withstood them?” And Pheidippides cupped his hand and he said, “Hail, we are the victors,” and with that he collapsed dead. His lungs could not uphold him any longer. And so, in honor of this race with the good news was birthed the running of the marathon. That is the historical background really behind this as an illustration. Paul doesn’t have Pheidippides in mind, but it does give us insight into what this is indicating, How beautiful are the feet of those who are running with the gospel of Jesus Christ to others, not strolling and not shuffling their feet, but running! And so, why must these feet be running? Well, we need to ask this question. Because time is passing and souls are perishing and death is coming and eternity is looming and heaven and hell are waiting. I mean, there is no time to waste. And whether you are young, whether you are old, whatever time you have left here on the earth, you have got to be a part of either running with the gospel yourself or supporting someone who is running with the gospel, but we’ve got to get the gospel out as fast as we can. So this is the beauty of gospel preaching. And those feet may not be beautiful in our eyes, but they are dazzling in the eyes of God, and they are dazzling in the hearts of those who hear the message and are saved. Now, I wish I could just end the study right here and we just end on this up note, but that is not reality, is it? And so, I want you to note the next verse. I want you to see the tragedy of gospel preaching, because not all gospel preaching is beautiful in the eyes of those who hear it. And so, verse 16 begins with the word “however.” So, you know this is turning in another direction. When someone comes up to me and they give me a complement and then I hear the comma, “however.” I don’t even want to hear the rest of the sentence. I mean, it is not going to be good news. You know, the comma, “but.” The comma, “nevertheless.” Well, that is what we have here, the “however,” and we just kind of brace ourselves a bit. “However,” in other words by sharp contrast, “they,” that refers to those who heard the gospel, “did not all heed the good news.” That is how it reads in New American Standard. This is a rare time I am going to give it to the ESV and even to the King James, okay? So, mark your calendars right here. It is better translated, “obeyed,” obeyed. Now, there is a play on Greek words going on here and it is the exact same word for “hear.” That is why in the New American Standard it says, “heed,” except there is a prefix in front of it, “under,” and to “hear under” means “to listen up,” which is synonymous with “obey.” Now I am going to stress the importance of this here in just a second. Now, I did some spade work on this, and this word that is translated here “heed” or for some of you “obeyed” in your translation, it is used twenty-one times in the New Testament. Nineteen of the twenty-one times, it is actually translated “obey.” This is one of only two times this word is not translated “obey.” This is the exception, not the rule. The other is in Acts 12 when they knocked on the door, when Peter is standing there knocking on the door and they are inside praying for him to get out of prison, and then they went and answered the door. I think this actually is best translated “obeyed.” “However, they did not all obey the good news.” Now, here is why this is important and why I am stressing this technicality to you. The gospel is more than an offer. The gospel is more than an invitation. It is an offer. It is the free offer, and it is an invitation, but it is more than that. It is a command that you either obey or disobey, and to refuse the free offer of the gospel and to refuse the invitation of the gospel is for you to be standing in rank disobedience to God because the gospel commands you to repent. It doesn’t suggest. It does more than offer. It commands your obedience of faith. And just to remind you of this, when we started this study in Romans about eighteen years ago in chapter 1 verse 5, that was before Ford was even born is when we started this, back when Ford was just a Chevy, you know. So, in Romans 1 verse 5, Paul talks about that the gospel is to bring about the obedience of faith. All true faith is obedient faith. Disobedient faith is an oxymoron. Disobedient faith is a contradiction in terms. Disobedient faith is like saying, “A heavenly devil,” or something. I mean, it is just an oxymoron. The moment you call upon the name of the Lord for salvation, that is your first step of obedience that leads you into the Christian life. Colossians 2 verse 6 says, “As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” You receive Him by the obedience of faith, and we grow and mature by the obedience of faith. This is very important for us even in our presentation of the gospel and in our listening to other gospel preachers. This puts authority into gospel preaching. We are not saying, “Pretty please.” We are not saying, “Could you? Would you? Should you? Maybe.” No. We are saying, “God has sent me here this day as His herald to command you to commit your life to His Son Jesus Christ. This is more than just a good idea for you. This comes with the authority of heaven itself.” And so, the tragedy is he says, “However, they did not all believe the good news.” What a tragedy! The good news, that you wouldn’t believe the good news! And you know what this speaks to? It speaks to the stubbornness of the human heart. It speaks to really total depravity and radical corruption, that the greatest message in the history of the world could be presented to you and you turn your nose up and you walk away from it and you are now living in rank disobedience. You are now in, as R.C. Sproul would say, “cosmic treason” against the King of heaven for you to continue to live in unbelief. So, the end of verse 16 says, “For Isaiah says,” and he now quotes another passage from Isaiah. This is from Isaiah 53 verse 1, which is probably the most important chapter in the entire Old Testament. “Isaiah says,” and let me also draw this to your attention. Please note the verb tense here, “says.” Listen, Isaiah said that, you know, over two thousand years ago, almost three thousand years ago. But as Paul writes this, he puts it in the present tense. No, Isaiah is still speaking right now through this passage of Scripture. This message is the living and active Word of God. So, “Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed our report?'” And the answer to that implied to that rhetorical question is, “Not all. Relatively few.” And you and I can expect the same as we share the gospel. Not everyone is going to receive our gospel witness. And when you go to church, if you invite people to come to church to hear the gospel being preached, as we all should do, not everyone we invite to church to hear gospel preaching is going to believe. You may bring your parents. You may bring your in-laws. You may bring a friend, a work associate, a neighbor, and you know this is the greatest news in history of the world and you are so excited about it. You bring them and they go, “What’s the big deal?” Well, “Lord, who has believed our report?” And the answer is, “Not many. Very few.” But this leads now, and we will wrap this up, to the glory of gospel preaching in verse 17. The glory of gospel preaching, and while many refuse the gospel, others will believe and be saved. And so, we read in verse 17. This is one of the great verses in the Bible. I love this verse. I love quoting this verse. “So,” and that has a summation feel, the word “so.” He is pulling forward now to a bottom line, verses 14 now into 17: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” Let me draw some things to your attention here, the word “word,” “hearing by the word.” That is not referring to the written word. It is not logos. It is rhema, R-H-E-M-A, which means “the spoken word.” It means “an utterance” by a living voice. It means, a speech or a discourse. We would say, a sermon. Faith comes by the preached word. Faith comes from the declared Word. There is a unique power that comes when the Word is preached through a human vessel, that whom God empowers and Christ is speaking through him. The other thing I want to draw to your attention where it says, “of Christ.” In this instance, it is not referring to the word “from Christ.” That is what we call a genitive of source. This is the word about Christ, and it is what we call a genitive or an objective genitive. Technically speaking, it is the message about Christ crucified, raised from the dead, ascended at the right hand of the Father, ready to save whoever will call upon Him. And this really points back to verses 9 and 10 that we looked at last time, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” Verse 9 is talking all about the crucified resurrected Christ. And in verse 13, “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord,” that refers to Christ, “will be saved.” And so, at the end of verse 17, when he says, “By the word of Christ,” he is saying, “the preached word about Christ.” Think of what the Apostle Paul had to say in 1 Corinthians 2 verse 2, “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” In 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 23, “We preach Christ crucified.” Paul made this emphasis on the preaching of Christ. It is really the engine that is driving the car of what God is doing in the world and in the building of the church and the reaching of the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel is meant primarily to be preached. It is also meant to be shared. It is also meant to be read. It is also meant to be sung. It is also meant to be counseled with. Of course, it is all of the above, but the emphasis that Paul is intentionally making here is the unique place in the world for the preaching of Christ and Him crucified. So just to wrap this up, let me just give you some action points. Number one, you need to seek it. You need to seek out a church that preaches the Word about Christ, that is a gospel preaching church, that is not an entertaining church. Listen, we are not here to entertain the goats; we are here to preach the gospel and build up the saints. We are here to call out those who belong to the Lord through the preaching of the gospel. You need to seek it out. If you have to drive fifteen more minutes, twenty more minutes, thirty more minutes, an hour, whatever, it is worth it to be under the preaching of the Word. So, seek it. Second, sit under it, be there regularly, be under the preaching of the gospel. Even we as believers glory in hearing the gospel preached, do we not? That is why we are to take the Lord’s Supper on a regular basis so that the gospel is continually being preached to us who have already believed it. Third, soak it up, drink it in, follow it in your Bible, take notes, meditate upon it, act upon it. And then fourth, support it, support it with your attendance, support it with your prayers, support it with your encouragement, support it by inviting people, support it with your financial resources. There cannot be a greater investment of your resources than helping bring about the preaching of the gospel here and around the world. So, that is why we have called this section, verses 14 through 17, “Gospel Preaching.”

Jesus is Lord – Romans 10:9-13

OnePassion Ministries September 5, 2019

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Father, what a joy it is to come back together for this men’s Bible study. Your Word means so much to us and You have opened our eyes and our hearts, and You have really transformed our lives. In many ways through this study, You have deepened us, and we need to be deepened. And so, as we come now to this study, we ask for Your grace, the ministry of Your Holy Spirit to be actively at work in this room in our hearts. I pray for these men that You will bless them to the fullest extent, that it is Your desire to shower Your grace upon them. For those watching by live stream, just attend to their spiritual needs, to their hearts, as well as every other need that they would have. So, put Your hand strongly upon me, draw from my preparation, as well as just years of study. Help me to put this in a clear and simple way so that we can understand. We praise You for sending Your Son to be our Savior. We acknowledge He is Lord and ask now You would open the windows of heaven, pour out Your blessing on this study. In Christ’s name, Amen. Okay, we are still in Romans, okay? Romans chapter 10, and this morning depending upon how quick I can talk and how fast you can listen, my goal is to look at verses 9 through 13. And I would love to be able to take that in if it is possible. So, Romans 10 verses 9 through 13. The title of this lesson is “Jesus is Lord.” And I don’t know that I can come up with a better title for any study than “Jesus is Lord.” So, I want to begin reading in verse 9, “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” Did I read the end of verse 9 or did I skip over that? Okay, I think I did. I don’t think I have ever asked that question. Verse 11, “For the Scripture says, ‘Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.'” Verse 12, “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; for ‘Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.'” The keyword in these verses is the word “Lord.” It is mentioned four times here; once in verse 9, twice in verse 12, and once in verse 13. So, that is the thread that runs. That is the steel girder that is holding up the superstructure of these verses. And it is this statement, “Jesus is Lord,” that you see in verse 9. The word “as” in my New American Standard, “Jesus as Lord,” “as” is not in the original. It is in italics to show it is not in the original. It is just “Jesus” and it is implied “is Lord.” This is the cornerstone truth of all Christianity; Jesus is Lord. And it was the earliest creedal confession of the Christian faith to say, “Jesus is Lord.” When someone was baptized, they would say, “Jesus is Lord.” And when Christians would meet on the street, they would say, “Jesus is Lord.” It is the briefest confession of faith, and it was the most common confession of faith. Sometimes, they would say, “He is risen,” but more times than not, they would say, “Jesus is Lord.” And it really became the signature statement of the first-century church. Now, this was in total contradistinction from the entire Roman Empire obviously, because the entire Roman Empire was built upon the foundation of countless gods (plural small ‘g’) and goddesses. And time really does not permit me to walk us through all of the gods and all of the goddesses. It began with the Greek gods and then it bled over with new names into Roman mythology. But just to give you a fly over and to give you some appreciation for this, there was Apollo who was the god of the sun, there was Bacchus who was the god of wine. There was Ceres who was the god of agriculture. Cupid, the god of love. Diana, the goddess of hunting. Flora, the goddess of flowers. Fauna, the goddess of animals, on and on and on and on. Jupiter, Juno. Jupiter was the king of the gods and was the god of weather, the god of thunder and lightning, and was really over all of the other gods. So, there are layers and superstructure within the gods. There is Mercury. There is Neptune. There is Pluto. There is Saturn. There is Venus. It is just on and on and on. And I don’t want to be pulled totally into all of this, but it helps us understand that when the early church said, “Jesus is Lord,” it flew in the face of the polytheism of the day, where there were countless gods. And when they said, “Jesus is Lord,” they were also saying, “He is the only Lord,” and “He is Lord over all of everything.” See, they had a god for this and a god for that and a god for this and a god for this. They had a little god for everything, all imaginary gods. And when they said, “Jesus is Lord,” it just cleared the table of every other god and goddesses and said there is only one Lord over all, and it is Jesus Christ who has been sent by God the Father. On top of that, Caesar was lord, and that began even before the birth of Christ, with Caesar Augustus. “Augustus” means “the august one,” and that was 27 BC, before Christ was even born. And with each decade, it just increased and increased the veneration of Caesar until it got to the point by the end of the first century every Roman citizen once a year had to appear before a Roman official and bring incense and worship Caesar and say, “Caesar es kurios,” “Caesar is Lord.” And the believers were put in the vice grip, “We cannot say, ‘Caesar is Lord.'” We can only say, “Christos es kurios,” Christ is Lord. And so, this statement that we see here in verse 9, it just rises to the highest level of first-century Christianity, and we need to understand just what a dramatic profession of faith this was. I mean, we have had religious freedom, and that just rolls off the tip of our tongues so easily, but for these early believers, they had to back it up with their own life. So, “Jesus is Lord.” So, as we walk through these verses, obviously I have an outline for you. I haven’t changed over the last several months. So, the first thing I want you to note is “the verbal confession,” the verbal confession, and that is at the beginning of verse 9, “That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord.” I mean, let us just as Kent would say, “Tap the brakes right there,” and stop right there. I can’t tell you how many note cards I have thrown away just trying to open that up and realizing I will never finish the rest of this study. “If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord.” It is absolutely necessary in order to be saved and to be right with God to confess out loud with your mouth the reality of what is in your heart, that Jesus is Lord. The word “confess” is a Greek word, it is a compound word, homolegeo. Homo, “homo-” means “the same.” Legeo means “to say.” Homolegeo means “to say the same as,” that we say the same about Jesus as God the Father says about Jesus. We say the same about Jesus as Jesus claimed for Himself. We say the same about Jesus as the entirety of Scripture says about Jesus. So, “to confess” means more than just the verbal words in the air; it means to embrace what God the Father says about His Son and what the Bible says about His Son, that if you confess with your mouth. And when he says, “with your mouth,” he means openly, publicly, unashamedly. There are no secret agents in God’s army. There are none of us camouflaged to blend in with the world. We are all outspoken with our mouth disciples of Jesus Christ. And we profess with our mouth to a listening and watching world, “Jesus is Lord.” Whatever that may cost us, “Jesus is Lord.” Now, let me give you some cross-references here that I think would be important for you to hear me read, and you can jot these down. The first is Matthew 10:32 and 33. How important it is to confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord.” Jesus says, “Everyone who confesses Me before men, I will confess before My Father in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.” You don’t want Him saying, “I don’t know him,” on the last day if we were to say, “I don’t know Christ,” before a watching world. And then in Mark chapter 8 and verse 38, Jesus said, “He who is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” And what this is saying is if you have true saving faith, there will come out of your mouth the profession that Jesus is Lord. Now, just the mere saying of those words does not open the door of paradise and you are in, because Matthew 7:21 says, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven.” So, there is nothing magical about just saying, “Jesus is Lord,” as though that is the skeleton key that opens the door that is in heaven. As we will see at the end of verse 9, there must be a heart reality. “And believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead.” But for us who have this heart reality, we see the non-negotiable, supreme importance of us making this public profession of faith, “Jesus is Lord.” And that was the significance of baptism in the first century, was that it was a public profession of faith often in front of vast multitudes of unbelievers, some of whom would be your boss, some of them would be your family who were still unbelieving. And it would cost you. You would be put out of the synagogue, all business relationships would be broken, your parents might have a funeral for you though you are still alive and you would have a mock funeral because in your family’s mind you do not exist anymore. “You are cut off from us because of this profession and confession you are making: Jesus is Lord.” But we see from verse 9, it is not incidental; it is fundamental, because the end of the verse says, “You will be saved.” So, what does this mean, “Jesus is Lord”? Well, Jesus is His name, Lord is His title in reality. It is like saying, “President Donald Trump.” “Donald Trump” is his name. “President” is the title. The name is “Jesus.” It means, “Jehovah saves,” that He is God come in human flesh to save His people from their sins. Matthew 1:21, “You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” Luke 19:10, “He has come to seek and to save that which is lost.” He came here on a mission of salvation and that is inherent in His name and it is revealed in His name Jesus. Now, when you add “Lord” to this, I mean, you have upped the ante because “Lord” was a title for deity. And in fact, there are so many places even in the book of Romans where sometimes “Lord” refers to God the Father, sometimes “Lord” refers to God the Son. And it becomes almost an interchangeable title and it speaks to the co-equality of the Father and the Son, and of course we would add “and the Spirit as well.” The word “Lord” is the Greek word kurios, K-U-R-I-O-S. I spell it only because it is such an important word. It means “The Sovereign One.” It means “Master.” I am going to give you some synonyms just to feel the weight of this title. It means master, ruler, despot, governor, owner. It means “the Supreme One.” It means “the One who has supreme authority.” “All authority in heaven and earth has been given unto Me,” Matthew 28:18. It means the one who possesses sovereign power, that He is at the top of the organizational chart of the entire universe, co-equal with the Father and the Son, and everyone and everything is under His feet. That is what the title “Lord” means. I want you now to get this. It is the predominant way that Jesus is identified in the New Testament. In the entire New Testament, Jesus is identified as “Savior” only ten times. He is identified as “Lord,” I haven’t added all this up, it is somewhere between five and seven hundred times. Some commentaries tell me seven hundred. I have looked it up in the Greek lexicon. I had it down to 653. I have noticed now some of these are for the Father. So, without me adding up every single one of these, it is between five and seven hundred times “Lord.” And, I made a couple of note cards I left at home because I had mercy on you, where I just took Matthew and just went through the Gospel of Matthew every time Jesus is called “Lord.” It is off the chart. So, ten times “Savior,” five to seven hundred times “Lord.” Hello? You don’t have to have a degree in statistical analysis to understand that the weight is being put on the lordship of Jesus Christ. It does not diminish His saviorhood; in fact, it elevates His saviorhood that the One who is Savior is Lord over all. And all that matters is what He did and what He says and it doesn’t matter a hill of beans what anybody else says about salvation. He is Lord. Now, let me give you a couple of more statistics here. You take the book of Acts, the preaching of the book of Acts. In twenty-eight chapters, Jesus is identified as Savior two times. He is identified as Lord ninety-two times. It was the tip of the spear of the apostolic preaching of the gospel that Jesus Christ is Lord. And if we just take the book of Romans, “Lord,” kurios is used forty-four times, thirty of those is for Jesus, six of those is for the Father. And the other six, it could go either way, Father or Son. It is a little hard to tell what is the antecedent. So, what I am wanting to impress upon you is the predominance in the New Testament of the emphasis on the lordship of Jesus Christ, that He is large and in charge of everything. And when you profess that Jesus Christ is Lord, you are saying, this is what you’re saying that, “I cease to be running my own life. I cease to be my own master, I cease to do my own thing and do my own will, that I am a bondservant of my Master, Jesus Christ, and I have become the slave of Christ. He is my Master.” Every slave has a master. And before we were converted, sin was our master; and now that we are converted, Jesus is our Master. To confess “Jesus is Lord” means quite simply He is everything and I am nothing. To confess “Jesus is Lord” means for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. It means for me when I say, profess, “Jesus is Lord,” that I transfer my entire life into His nail-pierced hands. It means that I say as He said in the garden of Gethsemane, “Not My will but Your will be done,” that I live for Him and not for myself. And when I profess “Jesus is Lord,” everything that I am, everything that I own, and everything that I have is under His dominion and belongs to Him and I am simply a steward managing His possessions that He has temporarily put into my account and put into my hands. He is the sovereign Lord over every inch and every ounce of our entire being. That I don’t have a life. I exist to serve my Lord and my Master, Jesus Christ. My time is His time. My treasure is His treasure. My talent is His talent. It all belongs to Him. And so, it means He is Lord over every square inch of my life. There is nothing outside the profile of my life. He is Lord over my time, He is Lord over my tongue, He is Lord over my work, He is Lord over my recreation. It means I am on a new path. I am heading in a new direction. I can’t ride the fence. I can’t have one foot in and one foot out. I can’t just talk it. I have got to walk it. It means that I am devoted to living a radically different lifestyle. That I have broken from the pack. I have broken from the world. That I am under new management. Jesus Christ is Lord, and I am His slave and His bond-servant. That is exactly what this means. So, this is the verbal profession and it is not just words. It is the realization of the reality that comes with my life under the lordship of Christ. And if anything, I have understated this. I have not overstated anything. And this begins the moment of conversion. This doesn’t begin ten years down the road when you finally decide to kind of get on board with things. It begins the moment you come through the narrow gate you are saying, “Jesus is Lord.” You take your first step forward in the kingdom of God, “Jesus is Lord.” You walk into the waters of the baptistery, “Jesus is Lord.” You go to work, “Jesus is Lord.” You come home, “Jesus is Lord.” Jesus is Lord over all. So, let me ask you this question. “Is Jesus your Lord? Is this your confession with your mouth openly, publicly, ‘Jesus is Lord?'” This leads now, second, to “The Internal Commitment.” First was “The Verbal Confession.” Now, Paul digs beneath the surface, and it is the internal commitment because he goes on to say in verse 9 after he writes, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord,” and now it is like he lifts up the hood and looks into the engine. He pulls up the plant and looks at the roots, and he says, “and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead.” That is really the heads and tails of the same coin. It is not a one-two punch. It is the heads and tails of the same coin. There is the outward profession and there is the inward possession. And so, down in the heart, it is more than just words that you are saying, “Jesus is Lord.” Down in your heart, you believe that God raised Him from the dead. The word “and” is very important. It shows how inseparably bound these two are. It is a package deal. They are fused and welded together. It is not a multiple choice. Either you could just profess it, say the magic words but not believe it, or even the possibility you could believe it but never say it or never tell anybody. The New Testament doesn’t recognize any such person. It is a package deal. If you truly believe it in your heart, you will profess it with your mouth. It would be impossible. “What God has joined together, let no man separate.” And so, this goes now beneath the surface, and he says, “and believe in your heart.” The word “believe” here does not just mean you sign off on a doctrinal statement or a confession of faith. The word “believe” here means “to entrust your life to.” It means to commit your life to. It is like when I stood at the front of the church and my wife, Anne, came down the aisle. I am saying “no” to everyone and everything else. I am saying “yes” to this one person, and it is a total commitment of my life to this person. Well, times a trillion to the Lord Jesus Christ. I mean, it would be idolatry to have this kind of a commitment to our wife but not to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is supreme over all. And so, whatever is represented in the wedding ceremony, pure and wholesome as that is, it is times ten thousand times ten thousand to the Lord Jesus Christ. I am saying no to everyone and everything else, and I have an exclusive loyalty to Jesus Christ. I have an exclusive fidelity to Jesus Christ. So, the word, “believe” is the Greek word pisteuo. And the word “faith” and “believe” just come from the same word. “Faith” is the noun, “believe” is the verb. Now, true saving faith has three elements, and we have talked about this before, but give me one more opportunity to state what you already know. Mind, heart, and will. Mind, emotions, and will. Mind, affections, and will. All three of those are a part of true saving faith. With the mind you must first, and it is in this order by the way, you must first know the truth of the gospel, basically that you are a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior who offers salvation to you as a free prepaid gift. And then with the emotions, you must be persuaded of the truthfulness of this and be convicted of your need of this. The Holy Spirit has come into the world to convict men of sin, righteousness, and judgment; and that is a part of true saving faith, the inward persuasion of the Holy Spirit. It goes far deeper than just my words as I teach this. It is the Holy Spirit tugging strong on the heart, “You need this.” And then with the will, there has to be the act of the will where you take the deliberate decisive step of faith to leave the kingdom of darkness and enter into the kingdom of light. You take the decisive step of faith to step through the narrow gate, and it takes place in a moment. He says, “In your heart.” “And believe in your heart.” That goes deeper than the mouth, the first part. And what we see here is the inseparable connection in true saving faith between the mouth and the heart. What is down in the well comes up in the bucket. What is down in the heart comes up out of the mouth. And the “heart” here just represents the depth of your soul, your innermost being. You peel back all the layers and it is the real you. Now, Kent gave me this illustration a couple of days ago of a sinking ship. And the captain comes on the loudspeaker and says, “We have hit an iceberg. The ship is going down.” Number one, saving faith by this analogy, you have to know that you are in a dangerous, precarious situation. But then second, when you hear him say, “Everyone, get in lifeboats,” you need to be persuaded that this is really true. If you are just still sitting in your room, don’t tell me you are persuaded of the truthfulness of this. You are not really convinced. It is not until there is an alarm that goes off inside of you, you are convinced this is the truth. But then as an act of your will, you need to get up out of your stateroom and go on deck and get into a lifeboat and be lowered down in order to be saved. So, it is not enough just to know that we struck an iceberg, and it is not enough to just even be persuaded. You have got to actually take the step of faith and get into that lifeboat. And that is a good analogy for true saving faith. It involves the mind, the affections, and the will. And what is it that we are supposed to believe? Well, he tells us in verse 10 that God raised Him from the dead. “God” here refers to God the Father “raised Him from the dead.” This is significant for three reasons. Number one, it tells us Jesus became a man because God cannot die. Jesus had to become a man and take on true humanity in order to die upon the cross for our sins. And upon the cross, it was the humanity of Christ that died, not His deity, because deity cannot die. Deity is immortal. Deity is eternal in both directions, from eternity past to eternity future. So, that is the first thing, is implied in this. Second, in His death, He bore our sins in His body on the tree. He died as our substitute. He died a vicarious death upon Calvary’s cross for us. And then third, He was raised from the dead, and that tells us that His atonement was an all-sufficient atonement for all those for whom He died. And the Father was so pleased with the death of Christ that the Father raised Him from the dead. It is the ultimate apologetic. It is the ultimate validation. It is the ultimate authentication that Jesus Christ upon the cross paid in full the sin-debt of His people, that He actually saved us from our sins upon that tree. And if Jesus had remained in the grave, you and I would know that it was a faulty atonement with many holes in it, insufficient to save us if Jesus is still in the grave. The Father raised Him as the ultimate accreditation of the triumph of His death at the cross. So, that is why that is so important. So, what Paul wants us to see in verse 9 is that there must be the verbal confession and the internal commitment, which then leads to number three, “The eternal consequence.” And that is at the end of verse 9. And we are just slicing verse 9 literally almost word by word here, but it is so rich we want everything that verse 9 has to tell us. The eternal consequence is the last four words of verse 9: “You will be saved.” “You,” individually, personally, not a group, you personally will be saved. Now, you need to know this is a future tense verb and it is looking forward to the end of time. It certainly speaks of the certainty that you will be saved, but it is also the futuristic looking to the end of the age that you will be saved from divine wrath in eternal hell. You will be saved from everlasting punishment, which we all so justly deserve. And this word “saved” is very prevalent in this context. At the end of verse 10, “salvation” in noun form. At the end of verse 9, it is in verb form. And then at the end of verse 13, “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” And then earlier in chapter 9, the last word of verse 27 was “saved.” This is a section here all about being saved. That is just a good Bible word. Sometimes, I have had a couple of people say, “Is that a Baptist word?” Well, it is even better than it being a Baptist word; it is a Bible word. And everyone in this room needs to be saved, and everyone listening by way of live stream needs to be saved, and everyone not listening needs to be saved. And we would ask, “Saved from what?” R.C. Sproul wrote a book called Saved from What? And he goes through what you don’t need to be saved from. You don’t need to be saved from loneliness, a bad job, a bad boss, you know, whatever, whatever. You need to be saved from God. You need to be saved from the wrath of God. And just to give you a chapter and verse, Romans 5 verse 9. “What more then, having been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.” That is what salvation is. It is ultimately being saved from the wrath of God in eternal hell. Now, we don’t hear much about that, and it is just almost like it is impolite conversation in mixed company to say the word “hell.” You know what you call a hellfire brimstone preacher? You call him a Bible preacher, okay? And Jesus had more to say about hell than anyone in the Bible. Jesus had more to say about hell than He did about heaven. So, that should tell us something. And when we read this, “You need to be saved,” and the word “saved” means to be rescued from peril. It means to be delivered from imminent destruction. And Romans 1 verse 18 says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” And so, this is the great eternal consequence, is that you will not go to hell. Hell is more real than Dallas, Texas. Hell is more real than Arlington, Orlando, Tampa, wherever it is you live. Hell is a real place on God’s map. And it is a real place that He has prepared for the devil and His fallen angels, and it is a real place for everyone who dies without confessing that Jesus is Lord, and it is a real place where everyone goes who does not believe that God the Father raised His Son from the dead as a verification of the sufficient atonement of Christ upon the cross. So, this leads to number four, “The doctrinal clarification.” Or really we could call it “The scriptural clarification,” the scriptural clarification, because verse 11 and verse 13 are both quotations from Scripture out of the Old Testament. So, Paul is a master teacher, and even as he is writing Scripture, he is weaving Scripture into Scripture. So, this is a two-edged sword. This is a double authority. He is writing not only with apostolic authority, but he is citing scriptural authority. So, as we come to verse 10, he now clarifies what he says, and he actually reverses the order. And in verse 10, he actually starts with the heart and then proceeds to the mouth. In verse 9, he started with the mouth and proceeded to the heart. And he reverses the order just to show us how inseparable the two are in true saving faith that whatever you believe in your heart concerning Christ, you will profess with your mouth. And also, let me bring this to your attention. This is just a great observation. The next four verses all start with the word “For,” F-O-R. Excuse me, it started with verse 10. Now, in verse 11, “For the Scripture says.” Verse 12, “For there is no distinction.” Verse 13, “For whoever will call on the name of the Lord.” And in the middle of verse 12 is another “for,” right in the middle. So, there are the four consecutive “for(s)” in the next three verses. The word “for” simply introduces an explanation. So, Paul doesn’t just put it out there on the table. He now backs it up with deeper substantiation of what he has just said. So, he is a master teacher in this regard. So, the board is in the nail, and he just drives the nail into the board deeper and deeper and deeper. That is what he is doing in verses 11 through 13. So, he begins verse 10, “For with the heart.” So, that is the internal commitment, “with the heart,” with all that you are on the inside. “Heart” here is kardia. We get like cardiac arrest, you know, heart failure. That is the word here, and it just means all that a person is on the inside. “With the heart, a person believes.” And so, he is restating what he just said in verse 9. Now, here’s what he adds that is new: “resulting in righteousness.” And this is justification by faith. This is the imputed righteousness of Christ by the Father to the one who believes that Jesus is Lord and has been raised from the dead. And this righteousness is credited to the account of the one who believes. I mean, you have never lived righteous a day in your life, not perfectly righteous. You have never met the standard, but the very moment that you believe Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised Him from the dead and you commit your life to Him, in that split second the result is righteousness. God transfers the righteousness of Christ into your account, and it is what verse 12 calls “abounding riches.” It is just grace upon grace, forgiveness upon forgiveness. Righteousness stacked up from here to the heights of heaven have been transferred to your account. It results in righteousness. And then he adds: “and with the mouth.” And the word “and” is very important. “And with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” So, salvation and righteousness are used as parallel terms here. And this salvation that enables us to escape the wrath of God is because of the forensic declaration, which means the judicial legal declaration, the gavel of God comes down and in the courts of heaven you are pronounced to be righteous. So, he follows that up in verse 11 with another “for.” “For the Scripture says,” and he now quotes Isaiah 28 verse 16. And just a little small nugget here, “says” is in the present tense. This Scripture is still speaking. It was written hundreds of years before Paul included this. It was speaking in Paul’s day, present tense. It still speaks in the twenty-first century, “Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.” I have never met anyone who said, “I am so sorry I committed my life to Jesus Christ.” I have never met anyone who said, “Well, Jesus over-promised and under-delivered.” I have never met anyone who said, “I am just disappointed in what Christ has brought to the table for me,” and I never will. In fact, I will stop preaching the day I hear anyone say that. And if someone does say that, I will say, “You are a false convert, and you don’t know the Lord of heaven and earth and His Son, Jesus Christ.” “Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.” Your only disappointment will be that you didn’t commit your life to Christ earlier. Your only disappointment will be you played the role of a fool all those years and lived for the world and lived for fool’s gold when you could have had the riches of heaven transferred to your account and the guilt of sin removed from your shoulders and you could have been washed clean by the blood of the Lamb. Your only disappointment is that you didn’t do it sooner, that you didn’t run to the cross earlier. But once you have committed your life to Him, you will never be disappointed. And that is what the Scripture says. And then in verse 12, he follows up to give us clarification of the word “whoever.” One thing about Paul that I like, and Peter does it as well, when he quotes a verse there is usually a follow-up verse that explains or comments on the previous verse before he goes to the next cross-reference. So, for those of you who are teachers, learn this pedagogical tool. When you go to a cross-reference, you need to explain the cross-reference. So, that is what Paul is doing now in verse 12. He is going to explain the word “whoever.” And so he says, “There is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him.” So, the point of verse 12 is whether you are a Jew or whether you are a Greek, if you are breathing, you need to call on the name of the Lord and He is Lord over all. There is not one Lord for the Jew and another Lord for the Gentile. There is not one Lord for a male and another Lord for a female. There is not one Lord for a white man and another Lord for a black man. There is not one Lord for this or that or this or that. There is only one Lord, Ephesians 4:5, and He is, “Lord over all.” And so, the “whoever” in verse 11 is explained in verse 12. There is no distinction. Jew and Greek have the same problem, sin. Jew and Greek have the same and only solution, Jesus. And Jew and Greek must have the same response, which is a heart commitment and a verbal confession of Jesus Christ. And so, just to wrap this up, we come to verse 13. And just so you will know, this is the fifth consecutive “for,” F-O-R. And so, Paul now quotes Joel 2 verse 32. It is what Peter read on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. I think it is verse 21, “Whoever.” And so, it is really a followup to verse 11 and 12, this idea of whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you are. Whether you are a Jew or a Greek, young or old, male, female, “Whoever will call,” and that repeats verse 12 at the end of verse 12, “will call on Him.” “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord,” name represents all that Jesus is, “will be saved.” Now, I want you to see here how important it is that you name Jesus as Lord at the moment of conversion. And there is some bogus teaching going on that says you can have Christ as Savior, but you don’t have to commit to Him as Lord. So, it is like going through a buffet line, “I’ll take a little dessert first and I’ll hold off on the steak until ten years later.” No. I have used this illustration with you before. If I knock on your door, and you say, “Who’s there?” I say, “Steve Lawson.” You say, “Steve, come in. Lawson, stay out.” I can’t come in. It is all of me or none of me. Same with Jesus. You either get Jesus Christ the Lord or you get none of Him, and He must be Lord of your life in order for you to be saved. You may not understand the full ramifications. You probably won’t understand the full ramifications, but you have presented your life as a living sacrifice on the altar. You have entrusted your soul, every inch and every ounce. You didn’t just put one foot across the line. You put both feet into the boat and committed your life to Jesus Christ. And we see that so very clear. Now, I am looking at the clock. I just need to give you this. So, what are the marks of such true saving faith that you would really call upon the name of the Lord? Because, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven.” I mean, you talk about easy words. Let me just give you four words. Number one: submission. When you say, “Jesus is Lord,” you are saying, “I am in submission to the Master, to the Ruler, to the Sovereign Jesus Christ. I have submitted my life to Christ.” Matthew 11:28, Jesus said, “Take My yoke upon you.” And so, you are like an ox now who has a yoke around your neck and the Master is in the wagon. And when He pulls to the left, you go left. When He pulls back on the reins, you stop. When He cracks the whip, you go forward. You are an ox pulling a wagon and Jesus is the Owner, the Ruler, and the Master of your life. Second word is “priority.” To say, “Jesus is Lord” means that He is the most important Person and the number one pursuit in your life, and everything else and everyone else is a far distant second. Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these other things will be added unto you.” Jesus said in Matthew 10:37, “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.” Submission. Priority. Number three, obedience. When our Master speaks, we listen and we obey. Jesus said in Luke 6:46, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” That would be a total inconsistency, impossibility, incredulity. If Jesus is Lord, it is your heart’s desire to do what He says. Do we always do it perfectly? No. But when we don’t, we feel convicted and we feel bad about it, and we confess it to the Lord and get back with the program. Romans 1:5 talks about the obedience of faith. Saving faith is inseparably bound with obedience. And the last word I have already used, number four is commitment. To say, “Jesus is Lord,” means that you are saying, “I am willing to go anywhere, to do anything, with anyone, to pay any price, at any time. That you are all in, that you are committed to the Lord, that you say as Isaiah did in Isaiah 6:8, “Here am I. Send me!” So, that is what it means to say, “Jesus is Lord.” I am submitted, He is my priority, I obey, and I am committed. That is what that means. Do we ever waiver from that? Not fundamentally, only at times practically. But then we confess, we read our Bible. We go, “You know, I’ve got to move forward with this.”

Christ and the Law – Romans 10:4-8

OnePassion Ministries June 20, 2019

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Father, as we come now to the study of Your Word, we recognize we are totally, completely dependent upon the Holy Spirit to guide and direct us into the understanding of Your Word, as well as to be challenged by the Spirit to put it into practice in our own lives. I pray that You will use me really just as a secondary teacher to help explain this text, but we pray the Spirit would be the great Illuminator and Enlightener. Open our eyes that we may behold Your Word. Lord, I thank you for these men. I pray that you will, this summer, just continue to mature them in the Lord and grow them in the grace and knowledge of Christ. I pray that You would now fill me with Your Spirit and stir up within me the gift you’ve put within me so that we can dig into this text and understand and apply what it says. Father, we pray this in Christ’s name. Amen. Okay men, we are in Romans 10, Romans chapter 10, and I want to read verses 4 through 8. I hope we can get to all of these truths. The title of this is “Christ and the Law,” Christ and the Law. Beginning in verse 4, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. For Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on law shall live by that righteousness. But the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows, ‘Do not say in your heart, “Who will ascend into heaven?” (that is, bring Christ down), or “Who will descend into the abyss?” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).’ But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’ – that is, the word of faith which we are preaching.” Admittedly these verses are somewhat difficult to understand what they mean as we give an initial, cursory reading of them. And whenever we begin to study a passage of Scripture, we always need to find the big idea – what is the central theme, what is the dominant thrust in a passage – and it often is discovered by what is the key theological word in that passage or what is a repeating word. In this case, it’s actually both. The central theme is found in the theological word “righteousness,” which is repeated. It’s found four times in this passage. Once in verse 4, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness,” twice in verse 5, and once in verse 6. So that’s really kind of the pillars that uphold the highway that runs through this text. This text is about righteousness, the righteousness that Christ has secured, the righteousness that you and I need, the righteousness that we cannot earn, and the righteousness that we receive by faith. So in many ways, the word “righteousness” is even the key to the whole book of Romans. The key passage in the entire book of Romans is Romans 1 verse 17, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written, ‘But the righteous man shall live by faith.'” So the number one key word in the entire book of Romans is “righteousness,” and so here we find it four times in this passage. The word “righteousness” literally means “perfect justice” or “perfect equity.” And the best illustration that I can think of is the statue of Lady Justice, who is often found as a statue in our courts of law. Lady Justice is an allegorical figure drawn from ancient Greek, and she’s really the personification of justice. And as I describe the statue, you’ll immediately recognize Lady Justice. She is a woman standing with blindfolds on, which indicates that justice is to be impartial. It should show no regard to wealth or to status or to power, and so she has blindfolds on so that she would administer equal justice under the law to all. And then, in her right hand, are a pair of scales, and the scales actually are perfectly level, they’re perfectly balanced, and they’re suspended in midair, they’re not resting on anything. And this is intended to indicate that she is weighing the evidence in the balance, and whatever is put on one side of the scales in evidence, the other side of the scales is the verdict and they’re not out of sync. In other words, this is really in Leviticus, “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” that the punishment fits the crime. And whatever the evidence says, there will be either the retribution or there will be an acquittal. And the fact that they are level is really what the word “righteousness” means. It’s perfect justice, perfect equity. And in her left hand she actually has a sword, and the sword is to indicate that the justice that she administrates is done swiftly and there cannot be an override, it’s the final word. And she speaks with authority, and she speaks with power as indicated by the sword. And as she’s holding the scales, they’re suspended in mid-air and it is that it’s not resting upon any mere human opinion, but purely on weighing the evidence and then rendering the verdict. The word “righteousness,” the reason I tell you all this is that it’s represented in these scales, because for you and me, we are weighed in the balances by God. And our entire life, every deed, every thought, every word, everything that we did, everything we didn’t do, the entirety of our life is put on one side of the scales. And we are being weighed in the balances by God, and that’s true. And on the other side of the scales is the perfect holiness of Almighty God. And we are measured, not against the corporate average of humanity concerning its morality, we’re not being graded on the curve. There is no grace with justice. And we are weighed and compared against the perfect spotless, without blemish, holiness of God, flawless. And of course, we fall short of the glory of God. And the wages of sin is death, and God does not grade on the curve, or God would cease to be a perfectly just God. And so, the only way to bring these scales into perfect conformity, to be level, is for someone to live a perfect life, for someone to be born under the law and to live in our place, and to live a perfect life, and for their life to be interposed in our place. And so, for our life to be taken off the one side of the scales and for the perfect life to be put on the other side of the scales, and now it’s in perfect conformity. And that is what is called “righteousness,” perfect equity, perfect justice. And of course, we know who that is, there’s only been one person who’s lived a perfect life under the law of God, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, that really is the meaning of the word “righteousness.” To put it another way, it means “conformity to a standard,” and that standard is the character of God, the perfect holy character of God. And the Bible even says that just even one sin is sufficient to bring the verdict of eternal death and the second death against us. Well, that happened over six thousand years ago, when Adam sinned his sin was charged to our account, and that alone was sufficient to condemn us before a holy God in heaven. And so, God in His mercy and God in His grace has intervened and done something for us that we could never do, because we cannot reverse our life and start all over and try to live a sinless life, and even if we could, we still could not meet the standard that God has, which is absolute perfection. Matthew 5 verse 48, Jesus said, “You shall be perfect, for My heavenly Father is perfect.” In Leviticus 11:44, “You shall be holy, as the Lord God is holy,” and that’s in Leviticus 19:2 as well. So as we are looking at this passage and we see this word “righteousness,” what that means is for our life to be in perfect conformity to the holiness of God. Well, as you and I know, our lives are not in perfect conformity to the holiness of God, and quite frankly that’s bad news. The good news is that God has sent His Son not only to die for us, but to live for us as well. And it’s His perfect life lived in obedience to the entirety of the law of God that is put on the side of the scales, where our life once was, when we believe in Jesus Christ. So, I hope you can follow the analogy for this word “righteousness.” So, let’s look at this text and walk through this passage. And starting in verse 4, I want you to see “Righteousness Fulfilled.” Righteousness fulfilled, in verse 4, let me read this verse again. This is a critically important verse. “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness,” in other words, for the attaining of righteousness, “to everyone who believes.” So, what this is saying is that Jesus Christ, in His sinless life and in His substitutionary death, is the end of the law for the achieving of righteousness. Now, what does this mean, “the end of the law”? Well, this does not mean that the moral law of God, when I say “the moral law of God,” I mean that which is succinctly summarized in the Ten Commandments. This does not mean that the moral law of God is now annulled or canceled. And I want to just very quickly show you why we know that is not the case. And if you’ll turn back to Romans 7 just very quickly, Romans 7, and I’m just going to have to do this pretty quickly, on the fly. In Romans 7, beginning in verse 4, Paul speaks of the law as still having binding authority and binding effect in our lives and in his life. And so in verse 4, for example, “You were made to die to the Law.” It doesn’t say the law died; we died to the law. In verse 5, “The sinful passions were aroused by the Law,” this is in New Testament times. Verse 6, “We now have been released from the Law, having died to that,” which simply means released from the condemnation of the law when we put our faith in Christ. In verse 8, “For apart from the Law, sin is dead.” Verse 12, “The Law is,” present tense, “holy, and the commandment,” which is a synonym for the law, “is,” present tense, “holy and righteous and good,” even in Paul’s day. Verse 14, “For we know that the Law is spiritual,” present tense. Verse 16, “I agree with the Law,” present tense, “confessing that the Law is good,” present tense. And now come to Romans 13, very quickly, I just want you to see this in your own Bible, Romans 13 verse 8, as Paul gets into the practicality of living the Christian life, which will start in Romans 12. But in Romans 13 verse 8, ” Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another, for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the Law.” Verse 9, “For this,” and now he quotes the law, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Verse 10, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law,” present tense. So, the moral law of God is still binding on our lives. The Ten Commandments have every bit the right to command our lives and direct our lives, and the only one I would tweak is the Sabbath, and we’ll save that for another discussion. But when we read in Romans 10 verse 4 that Christ is the end of the law, I do not want any of us to have the wrong perception that now we can live a lawless Christian life. The Ten Commandments are still binding. I could take us to multiple other passages to demonstrate this. So, what this is saying is a couple of things. Number one, Jesus is the only one who kept the moral law of God and perfectly obeyed it. And it is His perfect obedience to the law of God that has fulfilled all righteousness and has secured righteousness for us. In the act of justification, when we believe upon Christ, God credits righteousness to our account, God imputes righteousness to our account. We all know that in this room, sola fide. So the question is, “Where did this righteousness come from?” Well, God doesn’t just create it ex nihilo, out of thin air, it is a righteousness that Christ obtained for us through His sinless life, and that is the righteousness that is put into our account by Christ’s obedience, His perfect obedience to the law of God. So, that’s the initial understanding that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. It’s a Greek word, telos, that means “fulfillment” or “realization.” Now, there is also another dimension to this. The law of God is divided into three segments as it’s found in Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, the moral law, but there’s still two other segments. There is the ceremonial law, which is the priest, the priesthood, the sacrifices that would be brought as a type, or a picture, of the Lamb of God who would one day take away the sin of the world, all of those priestly sacrifices. Christ is the end of the ceremonial law in that He was the one true, perfect sacrifice offered upon the altar of Calvary’s cross. And in the shedding of His blood He made the perfect blood atonement, as He our great high priest offered Himself up upon the cross. And so, there is now no need to bring an animal sacrifice into a worship service. Christ is the termination and the cancellation, the annulment of the ceremonial law and the entire sacrificial system of offering a goat or a lamb as a sin offering on our behalf. So that is why we do not practice the Day of Atonement, Leviticus 16, because Christ is that one final, great atonement. And that is why also we are so opposed to the Catholic Mass, which says that Christ’s atonement on the cross was insufficient to save us, and there must be a continual flowing of the blood of Christ from heaven into a communion cup or into a cup, and that is the real blood of Christ and the real body of Christ. Well, that is a total defiance of even this text that Christ is the end of the ceremonial law. There is no further sacrifice of Jesus Christ in heaven. So, what this is saying is that Christ is the fulfillment or realization of the moral law, and He is the end of the ceremonial law to obtain righteousness…for the obtaining of righteousness. Now this is what you and I desperately need. We’ve talked about this before, I’m not going to elaborate on it, we need more than forgiveness of sin. If all you have is forgiveness of sin, you’re not ready for heaven. If all you have is forgiveness of sin, all you have is the removal of sin that has been washed away by the blood of Christ. But all that does is bring you back to zero. You must have a positive righteousness in order to stand approved by God in heaven, and so we desperately need this righteousness to be credited to our account. If all we have is the washing away of our sin, we just stand naked before God. We must be clothed with this perfect righteousness that was obtained for us by Christ in His active and passive obedience to the law of God and to the will of God. So, let me just give you two quick cross-references which are really worth noting at this point. 1 Corinthians 1 verse 30, “Christ Jesus became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.” Jesus became righteousness for us. Again, through His sinless life, living a perfect life, His final act of obedience was to give His life upon the cross. That perfect life is what is placed on the other side of the scales that meets the requirement of the law of God on our behalf. The other verse is Philippians 3 verse 9, as Paul gives his own personal testimony. And it says, “And may be found in Him,” referring to Christ, it’s first a negative then a positive, “not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law,” Paul is saying I could not obtain this righteousness for myself. I can’t live a perfect life. He then says, “but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith.” So we must have a righteousness that is given to us, and this is the beauty of the gospel. Listen to this, the righteousness that God requires, God provides. And God gives freely to sinners who have no righteousness of their own. And it is a righteousness that God gives to us that has been obtained by His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me give you one more verse, 2 Corinthians 5:21, twenty-one words in the Greek language. “He,” God the Father, “He made Him,” God the Son, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him,” close quote. So, Christ has obtained this righteousness on our behalf. Christ has met the standard of the law of God on our behalf. And God the Father takes the perfect righteousness of Christ and gives it to us, and this is really what we call “the great exchange” at the cross, the great exchange. The worst about us, our sin, was laid upon Christ. And the best about Him, His perfect righteousness, laid upon us. This is the grace of God and the mercy of God that our sins are taken off of us and laid on Christ, and He became our sin bearer. 1 Peter 2:24 says, “He bore our sins in His body upon the cross.” “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on behalf,” again, 2 Corinthians 5:21. So our sins transferred to the Lord Jesus Christ, and that was all symbolized on the Day of Atonement when the high priest would lay his hands on the scapegoat, and it symbolized the transfer of our sins to the innocent sacrifice, and the scapegoat was then released into the wilderness to take our sins far, far away. But the Father must also lay His hands upon us and transfer to us the righteousness of this Lamb of God, the righteousness obtained or secured by the obedience of Jesus Christ on our behalf. So, the Father has laid His hands upon Christ, transferred our sins to Christ. And when we believe upon Christ, He lays His hands upon us and transfers Christ’s perfect righteousness to us. So, in Romans 10 and verse 4, there is a wealth of theology that is really standing behind this verse. This is the tip of the iceberg of a vast knowledge of sound doctrine concerning our salvation. Now, that leads us to the second heading. We’ve talked about “Righteousness Rulfilled.” I want you to see “Righteousness Received,” and that’s at the end of verse 4. There’s a qualifier. Everyone in the world is not made automatically righteous because of the atonement of Christ. It is qualified by this. It says, “To everyone who believes,” to everyone who believes. Now, “everyone” here is open-ended, this is the “whosoever” of the gospel, whoever you are, whether Jew or Gentile, whether male or female, whether circumcised or uncircumcised, to everyone. And this again indicates that there is not one way of salvation for the Jew and a different way of salvation for the Gentile. No, no, no, everyone who believes indicates the exclusivity of this righteousness being received by faith alone in Christ alone. And there’s not another way for someone who is in another religion to have this righteousness. It does not come through Mohammed, it does not come through Buddha, it does not come through Brigham Young, it does not come through anyone else or anything else. This righteousness comes from God through Christ alone, and it is received by faith alone in Christ alone. That’s the clear teaching of this. Now, let me remind us what “believe” means, “to believe.” It’s a Greek word pisteuo, and it means, and this is worth restating. It means “to trust in,” it means “to rely upon,” it means “to have faith in,” it means “to commit to,” it means “to submit to” and “to surrender to.” Those are all synonymous statements. Those are all just restating with different words that emphasize different aspects of true saving faith. In other words, it’s not enough just to have mental assent in the mind and in the heart. It’s not enough just to know the facts of the gospel. Saving faith requires a decisive choice of the will to entrust your life to Jesus Christ. It means to come to Christ, not with your legs, but with your heart, and to come all the way to saving faith in Christ. And it is a faith that is not a blasé faire, casual, nonchalant faith. It really involves a crisis, whereby you turn away from all your own self efforts, and you confess your own sin, and you actually commit all that you are to the Lord Jesus Christ. The best analogy is in a wedding ceremony, where the husband commits…the groom commits all that he is to this woman, and he is forsaking all other relationships, forsaking all other women, exclusively now committing his life to her in sickness and in health till death do me part. And she then reciprocates and makes the same commitment. Saving faith is not less than the commitment you’ve made to your wife, I can assure you that. It is an even far greater commitment than what you have made to your spouse, as you entrust your life and with a surrender and a sacrifice of your life to Christ. So, that’s what it means to believe, and it means to acknowledge that your own efforts cannot meet the standard. Your own self-righteousness is really, according to Isaiah 64 verse 4, as filthy rags in the sight of God. And those “filthy rags” out of the Hebrew literally means “a woman’s menstrual rags” that are unclean under the law of God. That’s the best that you have to bring to the table. God says, “Filthy rags in my sight.” So that’s why the hymn says, “In my hands no price I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.” So it’s received exclusively by faith. So, before I move any further, I trust that you have received this righteousness that Christ has secured on your behalf. And there is no other basis to find acceptance with God in heaven than to receive this perfect righteousness, and it is received by faith alone, not faith and works, but by faith alone. And if you do not have this righteousness, one day when you stand before God, you will be weighed in the balances, and you will be found extremely wanting, and you will be without any perfect righteousness, and the righteousness that you will have to offer to God are nothing more than filthy rags, bloody rags in His sight that are loathsome in His sight. And that is the best you have offer. That’s not even your sin, that’s a whole another mountain range that’s added to that side of the scales. And so, we are hopeless and helpless if we trust in ourselves and rely upon our own righteousness to bring the scales into balance when we are measured by God on the last day. We must have someone who has lived a perfect life stand in our place and His perfect life and His perfect death put on this other side of the scales that meets the requirement, and as those scales are held God sees that we are righteous and we now have a right standing before God. And there is nothing that we can contribute to this side of the scales, not even one fleck of morality or church attendance or prayers or service to others adds even one fleck of dust, one particle of dust to this side of the scales. Christ has done it all. Christ has secured it all on our behalf. So that’s verse 4. Let’s look at one more verse, and verse 5. This is “Righteousness Failed,” righteousness failed. In verse 5, it begins with the word “for,” which is an explanation of verse 4. “For Moses writes,” and so Paul who has mastered the Old Testament, he mastered the Old Testament even when he was an unconverted Pharisee. He can just pull out of the back of his mind Old Testament citations. And now as he writes under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, there is a quickening of his mind as he writes. And so he says, “Moses writes,” he doesn’t tell us immediately, but it’s Leviticus 18:5 and Nehemiah 9:29, for you my excellent note takers, and Ezekiel 18:9. And for those of you really at the head of the class in note taking, Ezekiel 20 verse 11. I can’t waive that one off. The nail has already been driven into the board, okay? Alright, so “Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness based on law shall live by that righteousness.” Now that looks innocent enough, like, well sure, we should all practice righteousness, we should all live by righteousness. I mean, none of us would disagree with that at the initial reading of this verse. I mean, Paul’s not going to say, “I really want you to live unrighteously,” okay? So, but there’s more than what initially meets the eye, and we know that because of the beginning of verse 6 that starts with the word “but,” which is a total contrast. “But the righteousness based on faith,” that’s verses 6, 7, and 8. So verse 5, this righteousness is really an attempt at self-righteousness in total contrast to a righteousness received by faith in verse 6. So what verse 5 is saying is that everyone who relies on their own righteousness will be held accountable by God to meet that standard. If you want to get on that treadmill and say, “Okay, I’m going to practice righteousness, I’m going to live by righteousness, and I’m going to meet this standard,” then you are never going to meet the standard. We know that. We know that earlier from Romans 3 verse 23, “We’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” we know that. So verse 5 is really “Righteousness Failed,” that’s why I’ve given it that heading, that no amount of our trying to practice the law and live by the law can meet the standard of the law, and our self-righteousness is completely futile. And this is an example of interpreting a passage within context. So, we come now to verse 6, which is number four, “Righteousness Found.” And verse 6 begins with, you know, the contrastive conjunction “but,” which means “by total contrast,” “stark contrast,” on the total other hand of what verse 5 was saying, okay? The righteousness based on faith. So what was in verse 5 was not a righteousness based on faith, was a righteousness based on works, one’s own self efforts. But the righteousness based on faith, and the word “faith” is the same as the word “believes” at the end of verse 4, “but the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows,” now here’s a figure of speech for you, who is the speaker? The speaker is righteousness. And this is a figure of speech known as personification, where an inanimate object is revealed as speaking. So this is righteousness speaking to us, “speaks as follows,” and Paul now quotes Deuteronomy 30 verse 12, “Do not say in your heart.” Now here’s what’s behind this. So where are we going to find this righteousness? How do I obtain this righteousness? “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ Question mark, parentheses, “that is,” comma, “to bring Christ down?” Question mark, close parentheses. And you may say, “What in the world does that mean?” Well, if Christ is the only obtaining of righteousness for us, and if I need this righteousness, do I have to ascend to heaven where Jesus is in order to receive this righteousness? And do I have to bring Christ back down to the earth in order to have this righteousness? That’s the thinking of Paul really quoting Moses in Deuteronomy. Then in verse 7, “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ and bring Christ up from the dead.” That’s not really referring to hell, it’s just referring to the subterrain parts of the earth. I mean, the depths of the ocean and the sea. Do I have to go down into the deepest valleys of the earth and find Christ someplace and bring Him back up so that I can receive righteousness from Him? And so the presupposition is, Christ does have this righteousness. He did secure this righteousness. How do I get this righteousness from Christ? Do I have to go up to heaven where He is and bring Him down to have it? Do I have to go down to lowest parts of the earth, bring Him up in order to get it from Him? Verse 8, “But what does it say? ‘The word is near you,'” and so he quotes Deuteronomy 30 verse 14. In other words, the answer is right in front you. It couldn’t be any more near. It’s staring you in the eyes. In fact, it’s even closer than that. He says, “In your mouth,” do you see it? You have already given the answer. You’ve already spoken the answer, it’s come out of your own mouth, it’s on the tip of your tongue. “When you confessed Christ,” that was the answer. And if you’ll look in verse 9, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead you will be saved.” Look at verse 10, at the end of verse 10, “with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” The answer to where you will find this righteousness, you’ve already confessed it, you’ve already said it. Now remember, Paul’s writing this to believers in the church at Rome. At this point, this is not an evangelistic appeal. “It’s in your mouth,” and then he goes further and he says, “and in your heart.” You already possess it, you already own it internally, and it’s in your heart, and that’s what he will say in verse 9, we’ll look at this later, “And believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.” So this righteousness, you don’t have to go look for it. You don’t have to go to heaven and bring Christ down. You don’t have to descend to the lower parts of the earth and bring Christ up to have it. It’s near you. How near is it to you? It’s already on the tip of your tongue, it’s in your mouth, it’s already in your heart. You’ve already believed, and it’s in your heart. And then he gives the synonymous qualifier, “that is, the word of faith.” And “the word of faith” is just simply the gospel message that in it the righteousness of God is revealed by faith, Romans 1 verse 17. So, this righteousness, it’s in your mouth, it’s in your heart, it’s in the Word of God, it’s in the word of faith, and then he adds at the end of verse 8, “which we are preaching.” And just to underscore this, the primary means for getting this message out is by the verbal preaching of the Word of God. First and foremost, the message is to go forth from a human being who opens his mouth and who speaks forth the Word of God. It is not intended to be visually presented; it is intended to be verbally presented. And by the way, that’s why the best preachers are not on television; they’re on the radio. It is to be verbally presented. There are some good ones on television, but the worst are on television. I’ll withhold names to protect the guilty. It is intended to be preached. Old Testament prophets, Christ, a preacher, apostles, preachers. God has appointed teachers and preachers and evangelists. So there we have it, men. Where are you going to get this righteousness? It’s already on your mouth, it’s in your mouth, it’s in your heart, it’s near to you. You have believed in Jesus Christ, and you have received this righteousness that Jesus secured on your behalf through His sinless life and through His substitutionary death. Okay, it’s a miracle. I got through it. Okay, I did it. Well, you’ll want T-shirts, “I survived Romans 10, 4 through 8.”

Prayer for the Lost – Romans 10:1-3

OnePassion Ministries June 6, 2019

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So, it is good to see you. I know I need to begin in a word of prayer as we hop into the Word. So, let me lead us in a word of prayer. Father, we bow before Your throne of grace this morning. We come in the name of Jesus Christ, knowing He is our only point of access because You are so perfectly holy and we know the truth about ourselves that we are unholy. We praise You that You have provided His perfect righteousness and forgiveness for us that we may now come boldly and confidently because our sins have been washed away and because we have been clothed with the perfect righteousness of Christ. And as we come now into Your presence, we come desiring to be taught by You and by Your Spirit and Your Word. And so, as we look into Your Word today, I pray that You would open our eyes, open our hearts, enlarge our hearts, activate our wills, be mightily at work here today. I thank You for these men, their commitment to Your Word, that they would rise early and even drive a great distance to be here, and I pray that You would more than make it worth their effort. May there be much gold and silver that we will mine from the quarry of Your text this day. So, work through me now, stir up within me the gift to teach, to preach. Help me speak with clarity and accuracy. I pray this in Christ’s name, amen. Amen. So, the rest of you men, yeah, come on in, who are just now arriving. We are in Romans 10. Romans 10. So, I invite you to take your Bible, turn with me, and I want to start as I always start by reading the passage that we are going to be looking at. And I advertised it at verses 1 through 3. I am going to read through verse 4. We will see how far we can dig into this passage. But Romans 10 beginning in verse 1, “Brethren,” and I am reading out of the New American Standard in case you are wondering. “Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation. For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” As you can tell, we have started a new chapter in Romans 10, and we just concluded a blockbuster chapter, Romans 9. There is no chapter in the entire Bible that is more profoundly direct about sovereign election than Romans 9. So, we have just scaled Mont Blanc. We have just scaled Mount Everest in studying the doctrine of sovereign election, that God is the potter and we are the clay, and He has made from the same lump of humanity some vessels for destruction and other vessels to be put on display to showcase His grace. So, as we come now to Romans 10, I think we should be somewhat surprised the way that Romans 10 starts, that Paul is burdened in prayer for the salvation of people. And we could easily conclude, “Well, if God is sovereign, then why pray? If God has already chosen those whom He is going to save, then why in the world would we even pray?” And that is a very natural question to ask. In fact, if we don’t ask that question, we are not really thinking through the issues. And yet, here we see the very first verse in Romans chapter 10 is Paul says his heart’s desire and his prayer to God for them is for their salvation, and he has just told us that their salvation has already been foreordained and predetermined from before the foundation of the world. And what I want us to see here is the fact that Romans chapter 9 in no way negates praying for the salvation of those who are lost. In fact, it actually motivates us to pray for the lost, because if God is not sovereign, you are just wasting your time in prayer. You need to go talk to lost people; don’t talk to God if God is not involved in this and if God is not sovereign. The mere fact that God is sovereign in salvation means we should talk to God about this, because God is the only one who can intervene and overcome the resistance of the unbelief in the hearts of unbelievers. So, this is not inconsistent; this is perfectly consistent with the doctrine of sovereign election. If we only held to Romans 9 and did not hold to Romans 10, we would be what we would call hyper-Calvinists. And hyper-Calvinists have come to stinking thinking. They have come to the imbalance and the abuse that because God is sovereign, therefore there is no need for me to witness, there is no need for me to preach, there is no need for me to pray, there is no need for me to live a godly life, there is no need for me to build bridges to lost people. I have told you before I would rather you be a card-carrying Arminian than to be a hyper-Calvinist, because Arminians at least try to win people to Christ. Hyper-Calvinists just sit in a closet and twiddle their thumbs and stare at their naval and parse verbs. They don’t try to reach the world for Christ. They are not praying for lost people. So, Romans 10 is a very important parallel chapter with Romans chapter 9. And I do not want any of us to fall into the pit of thinking, “Well, God is sovereign, therefore I’ll just sit back and be a spectator of what God’s doing in the world.” No, we must be a participant in what God is doing in the world. And I will have more to say about that in just a little bit, but this is simply by way of introduction to this chapter. And I think it really speaks to the fact, and I will just put my cards on the table here at the outset that we need to be praying for lost people. We need to be praying for the salvation of those who are around us who are without Christ. And we all need to have a top five list, a top ten list. We all need to have a list of people that we are praying for that they would come to the knowledge of Christ, and they don’t need to know that they are on this list. And they may even be people who profess to know Christ, but as we are with them, with any measure of spiritual discernment, there is reasonable doubt that they actually do know the Lord. Well, we need to come alongside of them with our prayers and pray that if they are not converted that God will make this very clear to them and bring them to a saving knowledge of Christ. And it may even be people in our own family. It may be people that we work with. It may be people that we go to church with. We need to lovingly be in prayer for their salvation. So, let’s begin to look at this passage, and I’m going to have to apologize. I have only a two-point message, alright? You are still going to get the whole cake, but I have only sliced it into two parts. So, we will see how we do on this. The first thing that stands out to me is verse 1, and I have just put this heading, “Paul’s Burden” or “Paul’s Prayers.” Paul begins, “Brethren,” and he is addressing his fellow believers in the church at Rome. I would remind us that Paul has never yet been to Rome. He has never met these people, yet he feels such a kindred connection with them in Christ that he knows he is united with them in the same spiritual family because they have been born again like he has been born again, and so he addresses them as “brethren.” He says, “My heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them.” There is a lot to say about this. He has a heart desire. Paul is not a cold, lukewarm, stoic, hyper-intellect who has no emotions. Paul is a brilliant intellect and he is an astute theologian, but it is in no way divorced from having a heart of passionate zeal for those who are without Christ. Paul has a felt religion, and you and I need to have a felt religion, an affectionate religion. You and I need to know what it is to have our heart filled with great affection for God, an affection for believers, an affection for those who are without Christ. And that is what Paul is expressing here. And this is just really the tip of the iceberg for all this within the depths of Paul’s heart. And that desire is expressed in prayer. He says, “My heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them.” It wasn’t enough that Paul just felt something for those without Christ; he must do something for those who are without Christ. And the greatest thing that you can do for someone without Christ is to pray for their salvation and to witness to them. Paul is unable to witness to the entire nation of Israel but he can certainly pray for them. And that is what Paul is expressing that he does. This word for “prayer” is an important word for prayer, and it is a rather aggressive word. And it means to be pleading and petitioning. It means to be seeking and to be asking and to be knocking on heaven’s door. It means to be entreating. This is not Paul just going through a little checklist, a punch list of names in a Moleskine who he needs to pray for, but Paul’s heart is in it and he has identified with them in prayer for their salvation. And that is the way we must be as well. He says he prays to God, and “God” here refers to God the Father. I want to continually draw our attention to who I believe is the forgotten member of the Trinity, God the Father. And every time I see this, I want to bring this to your attention. We pray to the Father through the Son in the Spirit. We go before the throne of God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ and for the extension of the name of Christ, for the extension of the kingdom of Christ, and we come in the Spirit, meaning we are empowered and led and energized by the Spirit to come before the Father’s throne of grace. And this is how Jesus taught us to pray in Matthew chapter 6, “Pray then in this manner,” not “in these words,” as if it is just to be parroted back, but “in this manner: ‘Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name.'” There is nothing necessarily intrinsically wrong with praying to Jesus Christ. I don’t want to leave that impression. But, even Jesus Himself is pointing to the Father and telling us to pray to the Father. And that is what Paul is doing. He says, “For them.” “My heart’s desire and my prayer to God, for them.” We ask the question, who is the “them?” And in the context, it is obvious that the “them” refers to Israel. Romans 9 through 11 is a unit in the book of Romans that addresses the salvation of Israel. And it is really not a parenthesis. It is a very natural extension from Romans chapter 8. And in Romans chapter 8, Paul first addressed the sovereignty of God in salvation. Romans 8:29, “Those whom He foreknew,” meaning those whom He foreordained to love. And he said earlier in Romans 1 verse 16, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” You put those two verses together, Romans 1:16 and Romans 8:29, and you would ask the natural question, “Then what happened to Israel? If the gospel has to go to Israel first, and if God has chosen those who are going to be saved, then why isn’t Israel in large numbers being saved?” And so, in Romans 9, Paul’s point is God never chose all of Israel to be saved; “Jacob I loved, Esau I hated.” Even within one family, within the nation Israel, they weren’t all sovereignly chosen by God to be saved. So, that is why now in Romans 10 he says his “prayer to God for them is for their salvation.” The “them” refers to who he was addressing in Romans 9, the nation Israel. And, it is only natural that Paul would be focused on the salvation of Israel. You would say, “Ask why?” And the reason is, number one, well, the gospel was to go to them first, Romans 1:16, but Paul is also burdened because he himself is a Jew. It is only natural that you would want those who are the closest to you to be saved, and Paul once was where they now are, an unconverted Jew. And so, it is natural now that he is saved that he would pray for those who are as he once was. So, his heart’s desire and his prayer to God for them he says in verse 1, “is for their salvation.” It is only right to pray for the salvation of people who are without Christ. And it is important that he says “salvation” here because there are some of our brothers who when they address Romans 9 say it has nothing to do with salvation, that God is only choosing people for service but not salvation. That is a part of my background. That is how I grew up hearing that explanation. Well, I’ve already said that Romans 9, “Vessels of wrath prepared for destruction and vessels of grace,” he is not talking about nursery workers. He is talking about the eternal destiny of people. And now in verse 1 of Romans 10, it is all the more clear that Romans 9 was all about salvation, the eternal destiny of people being in the hand of God to predetermine where they would spend eternity. And so, I think it is very important that we take note of the word “salvation” here. Paul actually prays for their salvation. And I want to just give you some reasons why we should pray for the salvation of lost people. Number one, God commands that we pray, does He not? That in and of itself should be all the reason we need. And I was trying to think of a good cross-reference, and this morning it came to mind, John chapter 14 and verses 12 through 14. I want to insert this as a cross-reference right now. In John 14 verse 12, Jesus is in the upper room with His disciples the night before His crucifixion. He is preparing them for life and ministry after His departure, right? So, He is addressing them in matters of ministry 101 for after His departure. And so, in verse 12, “Truly, truly I say to you,” John 14. I have told you that underscores the importance of what is to follow. “Truly, truly I say to you.” “Amen, Amen, I say to you.” It is almost like He is rapping them with His knuckles on their forehead to get their attention. “He who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do because I go to the Father.” Now, what are these works? Well, these works are the very works for which Jesus came into the world to do. “I came to seek and to save that which is lost.” And when Jesus called these disciples, He called them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” At the very heart of what these works are, it is reaching a lost world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the fulfillment of this will be in Acts chapter 2, when Peter stands up on the day of Pentecost and preaches and he performed greater works than Jesus ever performed. Jesus never preached and three thousand souls were saved in one sermon. Now, Peter could not do better works in quality, but he could do better works in quantity. He could not do better works in depth, but he could do greater works in breadth. And so, when Jesus is talking about greater works here, He is not talking about better works in quality, but greater in outreach. So, please then note the next verse if you have ever wondered in context how this fits together in John 14, “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” In context, what is He indicating that they should be asking Him for, and it is that they would perform greater works in the immediate context. That is very clear. And so, Jesus is instructing the disciples the night before He was crucified that they need to be praying that they would perform greater works. And I think the tip of the spear is in evangelism and in reaching the lost for Christ. It will certainly include discipleship and follow-up discipleship and nurturing and maturing those who come to faith in Christ. I mean, that is in Matthew 28 verse 20, “teaching them all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” But first and foremost, these greater works would have to do with reaching people for Christ, being fishers of men, seeking and saving that which is lost. And it is incumbent, Jesus is teaching them, that you would pray in this regard that God with set open doors before you, but that God would open eyes and open hearts of those who are without Christ. So, that is an important cross-reference. So, why should we pray for unconverted people? Well, number one, because God commands it and Jesus commands it. So, if we don’t pray for lost people, we are living in disobedience to God. And you can also put down 1 Timothy 2 verse 1. The second reason is that God has appointed not only the end of all things, but the means to accomplish those ends. Not only has God appointed the salvation of the elect, but God has also appointed all the means to reach the salvation of the elect. That begins with sending His own Son into the world to live a sinless life and die a substitutionary death. That is a part of the means of the salvation of the elect. And that also includes sending the Holy Spirit into the world who will convict men of sin and righteousness and judgment. That is also a part of the means of the salvation of the elect even within the Trinity, what the Trinity does as means to the salvation of those who were chosen, but it also involves you and me as well as necessary means. And just to give you some of those necessary means, there are five necessary means. One is prayer, that we pray for the salvation of those who are without Christ and God is pleased to work through our prayers. Second is preaching, the preaching of the Word of God. God has ordained the public proclamation of the Word of God for the reaching of the lost. Third is personal witnessing, that you and I would fill the streets of our city with our own testimony of telling others about Jesus Christ. If God wanted, God could have written the gospel in the sky, and we just sit back and twiddle our thumbs. God could have sent a band of angels like He did in Luke 2 to announce the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, but He hasn’t done that. God has chosen to use weak, fallible people like you and me to spread the eternal message of the gospel. And then fourth is godly living. We must back up our witnessing by modeling the message and by living in a manner that is consistent with the gospel that we preach. So, we can’t preach one thing and live another way. That cancels out our witness. And then fifth would be to love the lost and to reach out to the lost and show kindness to lost people, not slamming doors in their face but inviting them to come through our door and to sit down with us and to be able to share the love of Christ with them. It has been well said, “People don’t care how much you know till they know much you care.” And there is an element of truth in that. So, for these reasons we need to pray. One, God commands it. Number two, God has appointed not only the end, but the means to accomplish those ends. Number three, Jesus prayed. You recall how He wept over Jerusalem, which is surely an expression of His heart even in His own prayers to the Father. And then fourth, just this simple point, God answers prayer. I mean, we don’t want to ever end up in a theological posture where we come to the conclusion that God doesn’t answer prayer. I mean, you are probably converted because your mother prayed for you. You are probably converted because your father lived a godly example before you and took you where the gospel was being preached. God answers prayer. Now, let me just add a footnote. Does prayer change the sovereign will of God? The answer is no. And let me just tell you this. You don’t want to change the sovereign will of God, because that would imply you are wiser than God, smarter than God, and you have got a better plan than God has. So, don’t think your prayers are going to change the eternal decree of God. It is not. It would be like throwing a snowball at the Rock of Gibraltar. It is not going to move. But as I just said, you don’t want to change the sovereign will of God. Now, let me just add one more footnote. You and I don’t know who the elect are, so therefore we pray for everybody, and therefore we witness to everybody. Sovereign election is God’s business. The eternal decree is a divine secret that will never be made known to us until we look in the rearview mirror and see what has already happened. We have no insight into the future other than some prophetic passages in Scripture of what God’s going to do in the future. Our concern is not trying to pry open the closed book in heaven of God’s eternal decree. That is God’s book. That is God’s business. You leave that with God. Our business is to go into the highways and the byways and to go into all the nations and to preach the gospel to everyone and to pray for those who are without Christ. And we leave the results to God, okay? So, I think that is a balanced approach what we have just said. The primary point that we are making in verse 1 is Paul’s burden, Paul’s prayers, and this needs to be our prayers and these need to be our burdens as well. Now second, starting in verse 2, Paul’s reasons, because Paul now begins to unfold reasons why he is so burdened in prayer for his fellow Jews. And it will become obvious in verses 2 through 3 especially that these for whom he is praying are without Christ. So, please note the first word in verse 2, “For.” F-O-R. That introduces an explanation of what he has just said. This is one of Paul’s favorite words in the Bible. And if you’d allow me just to hit the pause button for a second, and just draw this to your attention, verse 2 begins, “For I testify about them.” Verse 3 begins, “For not knowing about God’s righteousness.” Verse 4 begins, “For Christ is the end of the law.” Verse 5 begins, “For Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness.” Four verses in a row all begin with the word “For.” If I was an editor and I do editing of things that I write, I would be striking out. I can hear R.C. Sproul in my ears, “Stop repeating yourself. Start using synonyms.” Well, Paul is stuck on the word “for,” but he is a master teacher and he is unraveling explanations why he is so burdened in prayer. And if that is not enough, look at verse 10, “For with the heart a person believes,” verse 11,” For the Scripture says.” Verse 12, “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek.” Verse 13, “For whoever will call on the name of the Lord.” I won’t wear us out with this, maybe I already have, but Paul is constantly explaining what he just said. And for those of you who are preachers and teachers, you need to be always giving follow-up explanations for what you just said. It is not enough just to say it. You need to explain why you just said what you said. That is why I just gave you five reasons why we should pray for the lost. We need to be always explaining, and that is what Paul is doing here. So, verse 2 he begins, “For I testify,” and the word “testify” here is a Greek word. I am going to pronounce it because you are going to hear the English word in it, martureo. You can hear “martyr” in it, and it means “to solemnly bear witness in a court of law.” And in the first century, those who were witnesses for Christ, many of them ended up being martyrs; certainly, the apostles. And so, it just became synonymous that if you are a witness you are a martyr because you are going to pay a price for being a witness for Christ. It is the word that Paul uses here, and it really testifies how true and authentic what he is saying is. “I testify as if I’m in a court of law about them.” Well, the “them” continues to be the unconverted Jews. So, he is narrowing his focus at the moment. And this is interesting because Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles, but he’s still burdened for the Jews. And this should tell us that we need to be burdened for people not just in our zip code but in other zip codes. “I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge.” I mean, this tells us you can be fired up and you are still headed to hellfire, that you can be sincere and be sincerely wrong. You need to tweet what I just said. That you can be zealous for the truth, I mean enthusiastic, excited, lit up, and still be on the broad path headed for destruction. That zeal without knowledge does you no good. And so, the word “zeal” here, zelos, means “heated fervor and excitement of mind.” And so, it is not that the Jews in Paul’s day were unemotional or insincere. He acknowledges they have a zeal for God. He says, “but not in accordance with knowledge.” Everything begins with knowledge. Everything begins with the truth, and until you know the truth you can’t get there from here. Until you have the truth, you are in darkness and are separated from Christ. And there are many churches that put zeal ahead of knowledge, and those churches unfortunately have many unconverted people in them. Everything must begin with knowledge, the renewing of your mind. Then your affections and your emotions are the result of your knowledge of the truth. But without the knowledge of the truth, it is a false zeal, and it is an empty enthusiasm. You are just whipped up over the style of music. You are just whipped up and it is kind of a crowd hysteria. It is like Pavlov’s dog. You just know it is the time to be filled with zeal because everyone else in the building is filled with zeal. But if there is no knowledge and no truth being taught, everyone is self-deceived and they are not coming to Christ until the knowledge of the truth is being put forth. And this was true of ancient Israel, and it is true of many churches. It is true of false religions. And so, “knowledge” here is a word that really it is more than just objective facts. It is a Greek word epignosis that also includes a discernment of understanding these facts. So, it is not just that you know where the maps are in the back of the Bible. It is not just that you can cite the kings of the Northern Kingdom. It is not just that you can cite the twelve names of the apostles. It is more than just the facts. It is the discernment to sort through the facts to come to the knowledge of the gospel and your need for the gospel. And Paul knows all about this because this is where Paul once lived. And I am just going to give you these cross-references without turning us to these cross-references, but Galatians 1:13 and 14, Paul said that he was once “more extremely zealous.” I mean, that is superlative on top of superlative. He wasn’t just zealous; he was more zealous. And it is not just that he was more zealous, he was more extremely zealous. No one was more zealous than Saul of Tarsus. He was running so fast, just in the wrong direction. He had letters in hand to go apprehend the Christians and drag them back to Jerusalem and put them to death. That didn’t accomplish anything. And then, the other cross-reference is Philippians 3:4 through 6, where Paul says, “As to zeal,” he was, “a persecutor of the church.” So, Paul has already lived this and he knows all about this. And that is where he once was until on the Damascus road God came crashing into his life by the sovereignty of God. Paul would have never been saved if it had not been for the sovereignty of God. He would have been the last person on planet Earth who would have been saved had it not been for sovereign grace to overcome his stubborn resistance and his uncircumcised heart. So, verse 3, he now follows up, “For not knowing about God’s righteousness.” He is talking about the unconverted Jew, and we could extend this to the unconverted Gentile today. So four, he is giving a further explanation of what he just said in verse 2. Here is why they have a zeal for God but not in accordance to knowledge; verse 3, “For not knowing about God’s righteousness.” “Not knowing” repeats what he just said in verse 2; it is “not in accordance to knowledge.” So, he says, “Not knowing about God’s righteousness.” And there is a twofold way in which they were ignorant of God’s righteousness. Number one, they were ignorant of God’s high standard of righteousness that it requires perfect obedience to the law of God in order to have a right standing before God. They were totally ignorant of that. They thought God graded on the curve. They thought as long as they were better than the Egyptians or the Assyrians or some pagan tribes someplace, then they were okay with God because they had the Word, they had the prophets, they had the covenants, they had the temple, etc. No, they were totally ignorant that just one sin against God will damn your soul forever. It is that flagrant of an offense against an infinitely holy God. And if you break one commandment, you have broken them all, James 2 says. They were totally ignorant of God’s standard of perfect righteousness and perfect holiness. Second, they were ignorant of the righteousness that God provides in the Person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, that what God requires God supplies. And that is what Romans 1:17 is all about, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; for it is written: ‘The righteous man shall live by faith.'” So, they were also ignorant in their striving to reach this standard, that one, they couldn’t reach the standard. Two, that God has provided the provision that they so desperately need, and they are so stinking prideful. They are too arrogant to accept the free gift. They are going to do salvation the old-fashioned way. They are going to earn it. They are going to earn their way to hell is what they are doing. And so, he goes on to explain in verse 3, “Seeking…” And let me just comment on this. The word “seeking” comes from the same root word as “zeal” in verse 2. So, they were zealously seeking. In fact, the word means “to crave something.” They were wholeheartedly seeking, not just shuffling into church every other Sunday and sitting on the back pew, coming in fifteen minutes late. No, they were wholeheartedly seeking this says, “to establish their own.” “Their own.” And what is to be implied is their own righteousness, their own self-righteousness, their own works righteousness, their own law righteousness. They were doing everything within themselves to pull themselves up the ladder, to climb the ladder to reach God, and they were totally ignorant of the standard that God requires. And he now gives us the reason why they were seeking to establish their own righteousness. He said, “They.” He is referring to the same group, unbelieving, highly religious Israel, “They did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.” God is offering to them a perfect righteousness in the gospel and in the act of justification by faith, and they will not lower themselves. They will not subject or submit themselves to this free offer in the gospel. And this word “subject,” do you see that in your Bible? “They did not subject themselves.” I want to comment on this word “subject.” It is a compound word. The prefix is hupo, H-U-P-O, which means “under.” The main root word is tasso, T-A-S-S-O, which is a military term, which means to fall in in an orderly manner,” and the idea is to come under a commanding officer. It is the same word that is used in Ephesians 5 that wives are to submit themselves to their own husbands. They are to lovingly, sweetly, but volitionally come under. They are to line up under the headship of their husband; same word that is used here. And Israel refused. They heard the gospel from Christ. They heard the gospel from the apostles. They heard the gospel from the planting of these churches in the first century. They just refused to subject themselves to the righteousness of God. And that is really at the heart of unbelief. It is pride. It is arrogance. It is insisting to go your own way, to do your own thing, to try to follow God on your own terms. They were too prideful to extend an empty hand to God to receive the free gift of His righteousness, and the reason is they refused to assume the role of a beggar because that is where it begins. What is the first beatitude and the second beatitude? “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” “Poor in spirit” means to be a beggar. Poverty, lower than poverty level, you have absolutely nothing. You are like a beggar on the side of the road and Jesus is passing by in Jericho, and the beggar can’t even look up into the eyes of Christ and extends an empty hand. You bring nothing to the table. That is what Jesus says we must be and do in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. You have nothing to offer God, and you have nothing to offer to contribute to your righteousness before God. Israel would not humble themselves, get off their high horse, come down on their knees, and extend an empty hand to a sovereign holy God in heaven. Instead, they were hell-bent that they are going to earn their salvation. So, I am going to stop right here because I see the clock, and I want us to be able to talk among ourselves. And this next verse is a hugely important verse, and it is so important I don’t want to just jam this in at the end of this study. I want to be able to unpack it. So, we will meet June 20th next time, which is what, in two weeks? So, we will be here in two weeks. Please be here. I am expecting you to drive from Colorado, from Longview, from Big Town, Big Springs, whatever that is, Springtown. I know Fort Worth will be here. So, I need you. Although, I think you may be out of town, Fort Worth. But anyway, I need you all to be here. So, let us just stop right here, and let me just end with a word of application, okay? I said I’ve stopped, and now here I go again. That is what Paul does in Romans. There is like five benedictions. You know, you think the letter is finished and he tees it up and goes again. It is very simple. Number one, we must pray for lost people. That is the big idea that leaps off the page. And it is the sovereign election of God that should motivate us because we are praying to a God who can overcome the stubborn resistance in the hearts of unconverted people. We have every hope as we pray. Second, you and I must have a zeal for God that is in accordance with knowledge. We must have a zeal that is with knowledge. And it is not either/or; it is both/and. You must have knowledge of the truth, and everything begins with the truth. But the truth should produce zeal in you. That is a Christ-like quality. You remember in John chapter 2, Jesus said, “Zeal has consumed Me for My Father’s house?” You and I need to be consumed with zeal. And the word “zeal” simply means fervent, fiery. We don’t want to be a stoic, emotionless Christian. Now, we all have different personalities and different temperaments and it comes out different ways in different ones of us. So, I am not to be like you. You are not to be like me. You need be you. I need to be me, in how our emotions come out of us. But having said that, if you don’t have emotion for Christ then I wonder to what extent you really know the truth? Because the truth is like gas on fire, yeah, gas poured on fire. It ignites your soul. So, we want to have zeal with knowledge, zeal produced by knowledge. And so, I want to encourage all of us. And at the end of the day, only God can really produce this zeal. You can’t whip yourself up into zeal. It is a Spirit-produced emotion within us if it is authentic and genuine, but it is the byproduct of the knowledge of the truth. The deeper you go into the truth, the higher you will be inflamed with zeal. But you cannot start with zeal. You have to start with the knowledge of the truth. Okay, I really mean it this time. I am landing the plane.