Untitled Sermon (39)

We will continue our study. We are in a very important section of scripture and it is one that we all must reflect on. This is a section that not only discusses authentic face but it discusses salvation and the tools given to us to lead others to salvation.

We have seen Paul's heart and his a motion towards his Jewish kinsmen and this great desire for him to see the Jewish people received salvation. And so he is expressing something here that is not just routine for him but it is something deeply emotional for him.

Paul is a man who loves his people and he would be willing to endure h*** for all eternity if that meant to saving his Jewish kinsmen. He would be more than willing to sacrifice himself not just for his immediate family but his entire national people.

I know you all would be willing to gladly give up your life to spare the life of an immediate loved 1. But are you willing to Sacrifice your own life for a stranger for towns over? Paul is talking about his people even those he has not met yet.

It is important to Paul and to the Jewish people that he properly communicates authentic faith and salvation. We have seen that there is such a thing as false assurance as a false faith. That very thing does exist so we should not be content with some of the practices that are taking place.

It would be wise of the church to look at the mistakes of history to be careful so that We do not to repeat these mistakes. But I am afraid we already have and I am afraid we currently do. We have all of our own traditions that we were raised up in that we hold so tightly to and we think it is biblical truth.

Do not think for a moment that it is not you I can most certainly guarantee every one of us in here has a form of tradition though we are bringing to the scriptures as if they are as holy as the scriptures themselves.

This was the same mistake the Jewish people made. They created their own traditions And affirmed those traditions as biblical truth. Let me give you all in example that I have given before. The statement you have to accept Jesus into your heart as Lord and savior in order to be saved is not said in The Bible.

You have to accept Jesus is not found in The Bible. And yet American Christianity is so dogmatic about that statement.

That I have had actual conversations with people were I said you know that statement is not stated in scripture and when I proved them it's not or ask them to produce where it is in the scriptures they get upset and say it doesn't matter that's what you must do to be saved.

Now it seems to me that is the requirement of salvation then the scriptures would state it and would state it numerous times. The teaching arises because The Bible does teach their salvation is through Jesus Christ. That only by faith in him and by the grace of God are you saved.

And that you must have Jesus. And people are going well if that is true then this is the only method it can be true you must accept him. But that statement can only be true if your salvation was by your power and your power alone. Another teaching you will not find in scripture

So they come to this conclusion based on their ideology of the autonomy a man, based on their ideology of who we are as people, and they go because I am this person who can freely think who can freely act I must be in control of my own free fate.

Therefore I am the one who is the master of my fate and I am the 1 That will decide if I in saved or not. So if salvation is the work of man then yes that would be true that would be the logical conclusion. But the scriptures do not state salvation is by man.

But we get to crazy about it because we have wrapped up our tradition or better said traditional upbringing into the scriptures. We are essentially making the same mistake that the Jewish people made.

We are proclaiming something that is not in the pages of scripture yet we will fight it tooth and nail when questioned on it. You have to see the error in that. If you do not then you have a problem.

Now this is not something that just all of the sudden was here, the church had to build to the point to where it is at today. And whenever truth is sacrificed and whenever honesty is sacrificed, heresy is bound to creep in sooner or later.

And if it is not heresy that winds up creeping in sooner or later what does wind up happening is a softened it message is created. And if it is not A softened message then it is one that the congregation demand be shorter.

People are no longer willing to sit through a sermon, which used to be hours. Now the average church goer demands 30 minutes or less. That's right they treat the church like Domino's pizza. Another example of how consumerism has crept into the church.

People want their sermons 30 minutes or less and I am aware of sermons that are only 10 minutes long. I would not know how to preach to off I only had 10 minutes. But that is what the people want because that is what it was led to.

The inevitable End Of a suffered doctrine of a week theology. I was involved in a ministry where the deacons demanded that the pastor keep his sermon around 20 minutes. They did not like when the sermons when I work 20 minutes now we are cutting in to lunch time.

And whenever a guest preacher would come they would hand the guest preacher a hard candy and tell him put this in your mouth while you preach and then when it dissolves that's when you're done preaching.

So when the pastor of that church resigned the asked a few men to step in the pulpit and preach. I was one of those men chosen. Along with me there was one other guy picked and that eventually we Were able to fill our pulpit.

Between myself the other gentleman and the interim pastor, We put an end to such an attitude. And we started to say, the sermon takes as long as it takes. Could be 20 minutes could be 50 minutes, the sermon takes as long as it takes.

Now the specific ministry was not a progress of ministry. They was a traditional style ministry. It was your Cliché classic Southern Baptist church. This attitude existed because they were carrying on with it traditional upbringing that they had.

But we will explore this thought a little further let's go ahead and unpack our verses for today.

Romans 10:14–15 NASB95

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!”

Now verse 14 and 15 should really be read with verse 16 and 17 as they do go together. There are a lot of questions that are raised up in a lot of people's minds when they read verse 14 and 15 When they think about what was just taught in chapter 9.

Chapter 9 proclaims that salvation is by the will of God and not by the will of man, Paul uses That language. And now we are over in this section that has a lot to tell us about faith and salvation and a lot of people ask themselves if chapter 9 is true then how do we make sense of verse 14 and 15?

And unfortunately we are not going to be able to answer that question to day but verse 16 and 17 shed light on that which is why I say that this section should be read together. And we will read this section together we just have to get through these 2 verses before we can move on to that next section.

Last week if you remember, We covered that True Spirituality requires mind and emotion. We discuss those who are so wrapped up in the emotional that they never used their mind to discern anything. And then we talked about those who are strictly in their head, strictly in their mind and that they have no emotional connection to the truth.

And we discussed how important it is that both be applied in the life of the Christian. We love God with all of our heart mind soul and strength.

The issue we are seeing is that some people choose to love God with all of their mind and all of their mind alone and others choose to love God with all of their a motion and all of their emotions alone.

And what we read in the pages of scripture is not good enough. Because God does not want a part of you God wants all of you. God commands to have all of you. And it was in this section that we covered last week where AI asked you all do you see the Emotional side of Paul.

I mean we have already seen the emotional side of Paul in this letter but it was right here and what we covered last week that I wanted to bring this up. Because it was the perfect combination of heart and mind.

And last week we discussed the whosoever. My translation says whoever but traditionally it has been translated as whosoever in this section. I explained that the Greek word is the word paz. It is the same word use when God says that he wills for all to come to salvation. That word all.

No often people would use that text to refute reformed theology But that is a dressing a subject without proper context. It also gets dangerously close to universalism. God wills for all man to come to salvation. And people go do you see what God wills?

Yes I do, so Why doesn't every individual become saved if it is God's will that they be saved? And the common responses Because of free will. So then we conclude based off that statement, as you can not conclude any other, that man's free will is mightier than God's will.

Out of curiosity who here is comfortable agreeing with that. Well that was something we addressed last week, when the scriptures a dress the world coming to salvation, it is not a dressing it as individuals. This scriptures do not address it as individuality.

It is nationalistic language. When Jesus proclaims that God so loved the world, that is not to be understood as every individual because that is not what he is saying to nichodemus. What he is saying to nichodemus is that God so loved every nation not just the nation of Israel.

This does not mean we can't include the love of God to individuals, that's just not what is being said in that verse. A Jewish leader was hearing that God had a plan for the entire world and not just the nation of Israel.

And the same language is used here in this section When Paul made it clear that there is no distinction between the Jew and the Greek or between the Jew and the Gentile. To further the word all or the Greek word paz Does not mean all without exception.

It means the whole, the whole of something will come to salvation. And so that word is translated in many different ways because of the deep rooted meaning behind the word. But one thing that word does not mean is all without exception.

You can not have a doctrine of h*** and still hold on to that word meaning all without exception. And you can not have a doctrine of an All-powerful God who is helpless when he comes up against the will of man.

And when you open up the pages of scripture the last thing you see is God's will surrendering to man's will. So we need to be careful on how we define certain words and what language we aren't using. Because you may not be directly saying something wrong but the conclusion of what You are teaching is where the issue lies.

None the less we still have the word all, or whoever in this section. The word whoever does not place The control within the hands of man. It is just a simple statement all who will believe will be saved.

So now Paul is moving forward and telling the reader how one becomes a part of the whoever. In the method that Paul wants us to look at is the act of preaching.

Whoever believes will be saved but here is the issue folks how do we get this information to people who do not know. How can they believe in someone they never heard of? You can't call upon somebody that you don't believe in and you can't believe in somebody that you have never heard of.

How will Jesus be known if we are not preaching Jesus. Preaching is regarded with high asteam in the pages of scripture. We have this office of overseer whose role is to educate and equip the saints for Christian ministry.

Today we celebrate individualism. A foreign concept to The scriptures. The scriptures everything is in communion. But in our culture it's all about individualism. Even the way we as christians market certain bibles. You do not see much family bibles anymore.

What you see now our personal study bibles and journaling bibles and personal sized bibles, we do not see things being marketed as communion together. And so because individualism Is so dominant in our culture, it would strike some As odd that preaching is so important.

Why do I need to listen to a preacher when I king sit at home and read for myself. Well 1st you should be sitting at home and reading to yourself. But you have to understand that preaching was the design given to us by God.

It is not some man made invention but it is something that God designed for our benefit. Isn't that the out a to that is so prevalent today. That it's such a chore and inconvenience to do some of the church things that we do when in reality it is our benefit.

So we have Paul put in high esteem on preaching. And I probably do not have to comment on this section that much because he is so clear on what he is saying is he not? How will they know to believe in somebody they have never heard of?

This means that preaching is highly Essential to our mission. A common objection that comes up at this point is what about those people who have never heard the gospel? If no one has gone and told them the gospel message are they still accountable for not knowing the gospel?

And often what you hear is that God will save those people because nobody has gone to preach the gospel to them. People find it unfair that someone should endure the wrath for something they were never told about.

I do not wanna spend a lot of time on this subject by here is what I will state. The scriptures proclaim one thing that is true for all people, and that is that we are all guilty. And not only do the scriptures proclaim that we are all guilty but the scriptures Also proclaim That we have been condemned already.

And in addition to that Paul spent a lengthy amount of time explaining that there is no one without excuse because God is made his invisible attributes clearly known in what is visible. The scriptures do not teach that every person is owed the gospel message.

Get that thinking out of your head Because that is a nother example of a statement that has wrong destinations or wrong conclusions. If you believe or hold to that the gospel is owed to every man then you are saying that God is in debt to us.

Doesn't up scriptures proclaimed the gospel go out to every nation, yes nations that individuals. The same is true when it comes to infants. We hold to a doctrine that all babies go to heaven because they are innocent.

While babies are the most innocent among us they are not innocent because sin is something you are born in. So how do we wrap our heads around all of that?

If salvation requires a preacher to go forth and proclaim this message how do those who were in areas where this message will never be proclaimed R has never been proclaimed get to saved? Further how do infants who cannot comprehend the message being told to them get saved as well?

What about the infant of to unbelievers were a preacher did not have time to get to the hospital to preach to that infant before the infant passed away?

I want you all to notice that in this section of scripture Paul does not proclaim that preaching is the only tool. He just asks a basic question how will they know?

If you hold to the view that areas that have never had the gospel will be saved because no messenger has ever gone there and God will do something for them because no messenger has gone there than the best thing for the church to do is to never proclaim the gospel message.

If she never hear this message equals instant salvation then by reason the best thing for us is to keep our mouth shut. So we can not hold to such a view. While I do not believe that every area of life will be saved who has never heard this message I do believe that God will reveal this message to specific individuals of his choice.

That is not up to us to say and we can not build a doctrine saying that God will automatically do these things if this is the situation. And we make this stuff up for our own comfort. And as far as infant goes, I do not build a doctrine saying that all infants go to heaven automatically because then we start walking in the muddy waters of what is the age of accountability.

By the way another concept not in the pages of scripture. So I do not build a doctor and based off of nothing for my own comfort. But I will say this I do not say that infants go to heaven because they are innocent because The Bible does not make that claim.

I say infants go to heaven because I appeal to God's just attribute. That he is just and he reveals this message to the heart of babies. I appeal to the mercy of God and say that God is merciful. But it is all and always will be by his choice.

We see this in the life of the apostle Paul, he was a person nobody preached to let that God intervened in his life in a dynamic way.

So I know God can and does these things. However God instituted a normal function for this to work out. Think of it like farming. God if he so chooses to and has done in the past can make things grow in an instant.

That is what the creation account is, God may things to exist in an instant at the command of his voice. But even though God can do that he still created the laws Of nature and instituted that man work the land to have a harvest.

He created this for the sake of function. Now because God is the creator of the laws of nature he is not bound by the laws of nature and at any point at his choosing he can break the laws of nature because they are not law breaking to him, he can break the laws of nature and act in an amazing way.

We call this miracles. And so if God so chooses to bring in this information that Paul is teaching into the mind and heart of an individual he can do that. And I believe he does do that . But that does not mean it will be for every individual in certain areas and that does not mean it is a guarantee for any person.

We will never know whose hearts will be opened to this gospel message Which is why it is so ascension we preach. Because we do not know. We do not have the slightest clue on who will be saved. But God has instituted a functional role for us christians to play for the salvation of others.

It's not only for the unsaved there we go out and preach but it is for us as well. We are being obedient to God and obedience to God always draws us closer to him. We are being faithful to God and faithfullness is always honored by God.

But if we keep silent and we do not proclaim this message that Paul is now proclaiming then we are guilty of disobeying the commands of our Lord and guilty in the helping and aiding of others on their path to h***.

So while preaching is not the only way one can be saved it is the tool that God has provided us with to see others come to salvation. This is what makes the current to church movement such a tragedy. That they have neglected the message that brings people to salvation.

Talk about people’s personal comfort.