Send and Be Sent With the Gospel

Awana officially began in 1950. Lance Latham, the senior pastor of Northside Gospel Center in Chicago, and Art Rorheim, the youth pastor, started the clubs as a way to reach both churched and non-churched kids.

Their goal was to share the good news of Jesus and help children and young people serve Christ in their lives.

But that’s also every follower of Jesus’ responsibility.

Last week we ended on the greatest promise in the Bible. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Whoever means you.

But there's a question built into that promise, and Paul asks it in the very next verse. If whoever calls will be saved, then how does anyone come to call in the first place? A promise that good has to get out. It has to get from God's heart all the way to a person who has never heard it, and someone has to bring it.

Think of someone you know who has never called on the Lord. Maybe they never will. And most of us quietly assume the gospel will reach them some other way. Somebody else will tell them. A preacher on the radio, or a Christian coworker braver than we are. We assume our own staying out of it is safe, because the message will find them through some other route.

Paul takes that assumption apart in two verses. He traces the whole path a promise travels to reach a person, link by link, backward, until he arrives at the one link that has your name on it.

Open your Bible to Romans 10:14-15.

Romans 10:14–15 NKJV

14 How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? 15 And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, Who bring glad tidings of good things!”

Paul asks four questions in a row, and they run backward. He starts at the end result and works back to the beginning.

We Trace the Chain Back to Its First Link (vv. 14-15a)

"How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?"

You can't call on someone you don't trust. Calling requires believing.

"And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?"

You can't trust a Savior you've never heard about. Believing requires hearing.

"And how shall they hear without a preacher?"

You can't hear a message that no one speaks. Hearing requires someone to tell it.

"And how shall they preach unless they are sent?"

And no one goes out with that message unless they're sent.

If we turn it around and read it in sequence, God sends heralds, and those heralds proclaim. People hear the message and come to believe it. Believing, they call on the Lord, and those who call are saved.

We could look at it as six links in that chain: send, preach, hear, believe, call, saved.

That's the whole path a promise travels to reach one person.

Now, let me clarify one thing. Don’t think because our English version use the word preach and preacher that sharing the gospel is only the job of the professional Christian.

The word Paul used simply means to proclaim or to herald. The responsibility belongs to each one of us.

So let’s see what Paul is doing.

Back in verse 13 he said whoever calls will be saved. Now he's showing us how that calling happens.

Calling doesn't come from nowhere. It comes at the end of a chain that started when God sent someone to speak. Take away any link and the person at the end never calls.

Break the chain at the sending, and the message never gets proclaimed, so it never gets heard, and no one believes it, and no one calls. A promise that could have saved them never reaches them.

GREEK NOTE: The word behind "sent" in verse 15 is the verb form of apostolos, a "sent one." It's the same root Paul used for his own title, apostle. An apostle is a messenger under commission, carrying someone else's message on someone else's authority. Here the word points to the pattern God uses to save people. God sends, and the sent one speaks.

STICKY: The chain reaches them through you.

Notice where the whole chain begins. It begins with sending.

"How shall they preach unless they are sent?"

Everything else depends on that first move, and the first move belongs to God.

So Why Does God Sends People? (v. 15a)

God could have chosen any method he wanted. He could have written the gospel across the sky so every person on earth read it at once, or left creation to preach it, the way the stars declare his glory.

Instead, God decided that people would hear about his Son from other people.

God doesn't save through the evidence of creation, and he doesn't save through the law. He saves through the proclaiming of the gospel. That's the method He chose, and He has never changed it.

And God is the one who sends.

The one who shares the gospel has been compared to an ambassador.

An ambassador doesn't appoint himself. He carries credentials and instructions from the king or leader who sends him. The sending is God's to do. Jesus said the same thing when he told us to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. The workers are his to send.

He has been sending messengers for a long time, and he has sent some who didn't want to go.

Think of Jonah. God had good news of mercy for the city of Nineveh, and he chose to deliver it through a man who ran the other way.

Jonah got on a boat headed away from the assignment. And God sent him anyway, because the people of Nineveh needed to hear, and God had decided they would hear through Jonah. God's sending doesn't wait for us to feel ready.

Last week we heard God say whoever, and we heard our own name in it. Whoever means you.

This week God says the same thing, but he turns us around to face the other direction. The whoever who gets to go is also you. You are not only the one who was reached. You are now one of the ones God sends.

STICKY: The chain reaches them through you.

Paul ends by reaching back to the prophet Isaiah, and he paints a picture.

"How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!" That's from Isaiah 52:7.

Carry Good News on Beautiful Feet (v. 15b)

Picture the scene Isaiah had in mind.

A city is waiting for news from a distant battle. The people don't know yet whether they've been saved or destroyed.

Then a runner appears on the far mountains, coming fast, and someone on the wall can see by the way he's running that the news is probably good.

His feet fly down the slope. And the watchers say those are the most beautiful feet we've ever seen. Not because the feet themselves are lovely. Dusty feet, worn from the road. They're beautiful because of what they're bringing.

The word Isaiah uses for beautiful points to something in full bloom, at the height of its freshness.

One scholar tied it to the swift, eager feet of the runner, hurrying over the mountains to bring the word. The beauty is in the hurry. The beauty is in the good news that can't wait to arrive.

And what these feet bring is better news than Isaiah's runner ever announced.

Isaiah's messenger told a captive people they were going home.

Paul takes that same picture and hands it to us, because we bring news of a greater rescue.

Isaiah's runner announced freedom from Babylon. We announce freedom from sin, and peace with God that lasts forever.

The gospel of peace, Paul calls it. Glad tidings of good things. The best news that ever came down from heaven to earth.

Here's the part we shouldn't miss. Isaiah doesn't call the messenger's face beautiful, or his voice. He calls his feet beautiful.

Feet are for going. God chose to praise the part of the messenger that moves. The feet only become beautiful when they carry the news somewhere.

STICKY: The chain reaches them through you.

APPLICATION

So what do we do with a chain like this? Put a name on your link.

Every one of us stands on this chain somewhere.

Somebody was sent to you. Somebody proclaimed, and you heard, and you believed, and you called, and you were saved.

You're here this morning because the chain reached you. Now God turns you around and makes you the next link for somebody else.

So here's the one thing I'm asking you to do this week. Think of one person who has never called on the Lord. Not the whole lost world, that's too big to even imagine. One person. A name and a face. Someone in your family, in your network, or someone at your job. Write the name down where you'll see it.

Then take one step toward being the link that reaches them.

For most of us the first step is small. Pray for them by name every day this week. Ask God for one open door to say something true about Christ. And when the door opens, don't wait for someone braver to walk through it. You're the one who was sent to them. The chain reaches them through you.

You may never preach from a pulpit or cross an ocean. That's fine. Isaiah didn't praise the messenger's platform. He praised his feet. Your feet will do. They only have to move toward one person with good news.

VISION (close)

Picture a church where everybody knows their link.

A church where no one is waiting for the professionals to do the reaching.

The grandmother prays for the grandson who stopped coming. The man at the plant says a word to the coworker who needs to hear this good news.

Every person in the room knows that the chain of the gospel runs right through their own life, and they've decided not to be the link where it breaks.

That's a church with beautiful feet. Feet that move. Feet worn from going to the one person God put in front of them. And heaven counts those feet lovely, because of the news they bring.

Somebody was sent to you. That's why you're here. Now it's your turn to go, because the chain reaches them through you.

Let's pray.