This series covers our study through the book of Romans. These sermons with careful and slow exegetical expository coverage move through each chapter and verse following the theme and thesis of the book that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes. These sermons were primarily preached by Pastor Duane Smets from April 2005 to November 2008 at The Resolved Church, San Diego, CA in its first three years of existence. Audio from the first year is unavailable.

   Audio & Manuscripts Below

The Gospel Thesis
 Listen     Read    1:1-7 |  An Introduction To Romans
 Listen     Read    1:2-6 |  The Validity, Content & Effect of The Gospel
 Listen     Read    1:7-15 |  Romans Is For God
 Listen     Read    1:14-15 |  Romans Is For Us
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  The Gospel Is The Power Of God Unto Salvation
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  Thank God For Jews
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  Justification By Faith
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  Justification & Habbakuk
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  We Are Beggars. This Is True

The Problem Of Sin
 Listen     Read    1:18 |  The Wrath of God
 Listen     Read    1:18-21 |  What Is Plain About God
 Listen     Read    1:18-32 |  The Suppression of Truth and Consequences
 Listen     Read    2:1-11 |  Seek Glory (Part I)
 Listen     Read    2:5-11 |  Seek Glory (Part II)
 Listen     Read    2:11-16 |  The Impartial God
 Listen     Read    2:17-19 |  Circumcision of the Heart
 Listen     Read    3:1-18 |  Moribund No More
 Listen     Read    3:19-20 |  Put Your Hand Over Your Mouth
 Listen     Read    3:21 |  Righteousness From Without
 Listen     Read    3:21-23 |  No Distinction

The Promised Savior
 Listen     Read    3:24-25 |  Propitiation
 Listen     Read    3:25-26 |  Righteousness Demonstrated
 Listen     Read    3:27-30 |  One God & One Salvation
 Listen     Read    3:31 |  The Law Upheld
 Listen     Read    4:1-12 |  The Imputation of Righteouness
 Listen     Read    4:13-17 |  The Promise Secured
 Listen     Read    4:18-22 |  The Heritage of Hope (Part I)
 Listen     Read    4:18-22 |  The Heritage of Hope (Part II)
 Listen     Read    4:22-24 |  The Resurrection of Jesus Christ
 Listen     Read    4:25 |  Who Killed Jesus?
 Listen     Read    5:1 |  Peace With God
 Listen     Read    5:2 |  In The Throne Room
 Listen     Read    5:2 |  Rejoice In The Hope Of The Glory of God
 Listen     Read    5:3-5 |  Rejoicing and Suffering
 Listen     Read    5:6-8 |  Love and Some Verses
 Listen     Read    5:8-10 |  Salvation In Jesus Christ
 Listen     Read    5:11 |  Joy In God
 Listen     Read    5:12-14 |  We Are From Adam
 Listen     Read    5:15-17 |  Jesus Is Better Than Adam
 Listen     Read    5:18-19 |  The Guilt & The Gift
 Listen     Read    5:20-21 |  It’s All About Grace

New Life In Christ
 Listen     Read    6:1-4 |  Baptism: The Life of the Buried Dead
 Listen     Read    6:5-7 |  Sin & Union With Christ (Part I)
 Listen     Read    6:8-11 |  Sin & Union With Christ (Part II)
 Listen     Read    6:12-14 |  God Reigning In You
 Listen     Read    6:15-18 |  Master Jesus (Part I)
 Listen     Read    6:19-23 |  Master Jesus (Part II)

Bearing Fruit For God
 Listen     Read    7:4-6   |   Part I
 Listen     Read    7:4-6   |   Part II
 Listen     Read    7:4-6   |   Part III

Law & Gospel
 Listen     Read    7:7-12  |  Part 1
 Listen     Read    7:7-12  |  Part 2
 Listen     Read    7:7-12  |  Part 3
 Listen     Read    7:7-12  |  Part 4

Inner Confliction & The Gospel
 Listen     Read    7:13-25  |  Part 1
 Listen     Read    7:13-25  |  Part 2
 Listen     Read    7:13-25  |  Part 3

No Condemnation In Christ
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 1
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 2
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 3
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 4
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 5

Walking According To The Spirit
  Listen    Read    8:5-9  |  Part 1
  Listen    Read    8:5-9  |  Part 2
  Listen    Read    8:5-9  |  Part 3
  Listen    Read    8:9-13  |  Part 4
  Listen    Read    8:9-13  |  Part 5

The Jesus Family
  Listen    Read    8:12-13  |  Jesus Family Does Not Lose the Battles Which Count
  Listen    Read    8:14-15  |  Jesus Family Welcomes Members and Leads Them
  Listen    Read    8:14  |  The Family of Old
  Listen    Read    8:15-16  |  Adopted Forever
  Listen    Read    8:15  |  The Great Father We Call Abba
  Listen    Read    8:17  |  The Future of the Family

Suffering And The Glory Of God
 Listen     Read    8:18-25  |  Natural Evil & Moral Evil
 Listen     Read    8:18-25  |  The Groaning of God’s Spirit
 Listen     Read    8:26-27  |  Prayer & Suffering
 Listen     Read    8:28  |  How God Works it For Good
 Listen     Read    8:29  |  The Image of Christ
 Listen     Read    8:28-30  |  Predestination
 Listen     Read    8:31-39  |  Evil & The Existence of God
 Listen     Read    8:31-39  |  Barriers for the Believer

The God(ness) of God
  Listen    Read    9:1-29  |  The God of Glory (Part I)
  Listen    Read    9:1-29  |  The God of Glory (Part II)
  Listen    Read    9:1-29  |  The God of Glory (Part III)
  Listen    Read    9:1-29  |  The God of Glory (Part IV)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part I)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part II)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part III)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part IV)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part V)
  Listen    Read    11:1-36  |  The God of Future (Part I)
  Listen    Read    11:1-36  |  The God of Future (Part II)
  Listen    Read    11:1-36  |  The God of Future (Part III)
  Listen    Read    11:1-36  |  The God of Future (Part IV)

Viva La Vida Christus: Living The Life Of Christ
  Listen    Read    12:1-2  |  All of Life is Worship
  Listen    Read    12:3-8  |  Humility, our Gifts, and Real Life
  Listen    Read    12:9-21  |  The Life of Genuine Love
  Listen    Read    13:1-7  |  Life Under Temporal Law
  Listen    Read    13:8-10  |  Life Under Eternal Law
  Listen    Read    13:11-14  |  Living in Light of the Day
  Listen    Read    14:1-2  |  The Principle of Preference (Part I)
  Listen    Read    14:13-15:3  |  The Principle of Preference (Part II)
  Listen    Read    15:4-13  |  The Principle of Preference (Part III)
  Listen    Read    15:14-33  |  Fulfilling the Mission
  Listen    Read    16:1-27  |  Entrusted to God

Listen to this sermon…       

The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

June 22nd, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets

Series: The God(ness) of God | Romans 9-11
I. The God of Glory 9:1-29
II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
III. The God of Future 11:1-36

II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
Week 5 – Romans 10:16-21

Introduction

Good morning everyone. It is ridiculous hot. The city has announced there are official “cool zones” with air conditioning…so you can go to the libraries or schools if you need a place to cool off.

I’d like to start today out with a question, “What has been to date the most disappointing thing you have ever experienced?” Just stop for a second and think about your life and all bad stuff that has happened to you. If you’re like me I know that’s a lot to sift through. You got it in your head? Ok.

Now the reason is not to get you all depressed today…but I had you do that because that feeling you feel when you think of that disappointment is the feeling of the last six verses Romans 10 from the human author, the Apostle Paul. At the beginning of chapter 9, he said get gets great sorrow and unceasing anguish in his heart when he shares about the greatness and goodness of Jesus Christ and people immediately fall in love with him and become Christians (Rom 9:2).

I split my sermon in half from last week, because the previous two verses were all about the Bible’s call unto us as Christian to become missionaries. Because of where we are at as a church and what we are trying to accomplish here in San Diego, I thought it was important to give a whole sermon to those verses and do my best job at trying to stir all of us up with a passion to try and reach non-Christians with the gospel here in our city as a church plant.

This week is the harder week. The idea is that as you get closer to God and understand what he is like and what he is passionate about, you start catching or adopting his passion. Have you ever met a guy who gets super hyped about something? I have a couple friends who always has some new thing he’s excited about. First it was surfing, then riding motorcycles, fishing, then paragliding…each time would get into this new thing he wanted to bring me a long and was all psyched. I couldn’t help but get psyched being around him. I started looking at all the magazines and checking craigslist wanting equipment and thinking about going and doing that stuff all the time. That’s the way it works.

So when you become friends with God you start finding that he has a lot of passion for lost people and you catch that and you start gaining a heart and a passion for people too. That’s good. That’s why I’m here in San Diego. Because I love this city and not just it’s amazing surf, but I love the people who live here too and I long for them to see and know and love the wonder of Jesus.

So, last week was exciting, inspiring and invigorating. This week is somewhat heartbreaking and frustrating. But that’s the way the Bible is and that’s the way life is, the Bible deals with real life and part of maturing and growing as a Christian is learning how to deal with the different seasons and challenges of life. So let’s read the verses for today and pray over them.

Lord God, being Christians and being Christians with your heart and love and passion is not always very easy. I pray today that you would work in us so that our response and willingness to be your missionaries in this city would not wane even when it gets hard. Open our eyes and understandings today so that we might learn from your book and know better what kind of great and compassionate God you are. In the name of Jesus our Lord, Amen.

So we are going to work through each of the words of our text today and what is here can really be pared down to two main points, “The Gospel Challenge” and the “The Gospel Persuasion.”

Last week we learned God has committed himself to certain means or steps which take place before anyone ever “calls upon the name” of Jesus. For many Jesus is a just a name. For some he’s the name of a friend or a relative who is from the country just south of us. There’s a man who does all the printing for The Resolved Church who has a little shop over in Pacific Beach and I’ve developed a friendship with him over the last couple years. I love going in to see him. Whenever I go see him I’m excited and I walk in the door and say “Hey, what’s up Jesus?!” And he laughs and smiles at me everytime because he knows I am a Pastor and he loves talking to me about the Bible.

But for some “Jesus” is not just a name…he is so much more than that…he is the one person in the universe that they look to and bank and build their lives upon and they do so by calling out to him for salvation. They are constantly dependent upon him, for everything…so that everything in life comes down to the need for Jesus. Last week we dealt with verses 14-15 and how a person comes to that point where they see Jesus that way and learned that there is a process involved before that happens.

Here’s the process: First God sends Christians to go tell people who are not Christians about Jesus, that’s the catching of God’s heart and passion thing. Second those Christians then go to those people and figure out how to best share the gospel so that they get it and understand, we call that contextualization. Third, a person has to hear, not just listen but gain true perception of Jesus, who he is and what he has done. Fourth, a person must be given the gift of faith from God and believe who Jesus is and what he has done is sufficient and relative to their own personal life and situation…it’s where you come to really think that Jesus can in fact actually meet your need. And then fifth, once that happens, it produces a call, the call where one ends up crying out, “Lord, Save me!”

“The Gospel Challenge”

This week we deal with these last verses of Romans 10 which deal with the questions, What’s going on when that doesn’t work? And how do we deal with that? That’s “The Gospel Challenge.” And the second, what if anything does God do about it? Does he have any purpose or design in it when the gospel means seemingly do not work? That’s “The Gospel Persuasion.”

So let’s begin and first look at verse 16 as we talk about The Gospel Challenge. “But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?’”

The first thing that strikes me about this verse is how he changes up the words he uses. Notice it doesn’t say, “not all have believed the gospel.” That is what we would expect. But if you have the ESV it says, “obeyed.” Other translations will say “accepted” or “heed.” Heed is probably the best because it gets at the idea here of hearing, it’s a form of the word hearing. The idea is like when you hear someone knock at the door but you don’t just hear the sound of their knock but you hear the knock, walk to the door and open it.

Now Paul switches back to the word believe in the next line, “Lord, who has believed?” But this word “obeyed” points at the human response in which the gospel calls for. He used the same word all the way back in the beginning, when he started out the book of Romans. In Romans 1:5 he says whole reason he wrote the book was for the sake of Jesus name among all the nations brought about by an “obedience of faith.”

I just want to pause for a second and see how that hits you. That there is an obedience to the gospel. That God calls us here to obey the gospel. What does that do in you? If you are rebellious and a sinner like me you don’t like that. I don’t like being told, “you need to obey.” Even if I know I should. Why is that? I think it is because in that there is massive humbling which takes place, where I am admitting and saying I know I was wrong and am in the wrong and I will do what you say because you God have said it, and deep down I know you’re right.

I mean Paul’s concern here is for non-Christians. Jesus has become so good and so beautiful to him that it becomes difficult and frustrating when you give you whole heart and life to trying to tell and show someone how great Jesus is and they just don’t see it and believe it…and then you’re like what the heck is going on with that person. Here’s some of what’s going on according to this verse…disobedience, unwillingness, defiance, a refusal to be humble, lay down pride and submit and follow. It is rebelliousness and it is in all of us. And more than that it is a lack of belief, not just in Jesus doing what he did and being who he was but a disbelief in our need of him…we think we’re fine.

Do you guys see that and feel that? It’s true. Look that the verse. “But not all have obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?”

So then comes the next set up. People sometimes don’t respond to the gospel very well when you share it with them. Sometimes that may be because you did a really bad job at sharing it or you just didn’t build a good platform to share it from or your life just totally sucks to and so Jesus doesn’t look like he’s much of help to those you’re sharing with…it might be any of those things…but none of that is what gets brought up here.

Here is what does get brought up. He reaffirms the process. Verse 17 “So faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.” That’s the hearing hearing. Where you hear with your ears and then you transition and start to really listen and respond and that happens when the word of Christ pricks you and it becomes real and alive to you. The hearing hearing. You must hear about Jesus and then you must hear Jesus. Faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

But not all people become Christians when you do things the right way in love and share Jesus with someone right? Some don’t become Chrsitians even then. So verse 18 he begins to postulate why, “I ask, have they not heard?” It’s a natural question. Well, maybe they didn’t hear because if they did they would surely become Christians right? Because the gospel is so good and so true, right?

What’s Paul’s answer? Look, he says no, “Indeed they have (heard), for’ ‘Their voice has gone out to all the earth and their words to the ends of the world.’” Here he does something unique. Now obviously he didn’t mean that every person in the world had heard the message of the gospel at that time, because he himself says at the end of this letter that he has plans to go to Spain and share the gospel with the people there.

What he does that is unique is quote Psalm 19. That little sentence, “Their voice has gone out to all the earth and their words to the ends of the world” comes from Psalm 19, which is this beautiful Psalm talking about how everything in all the world reflects a great and beautiful God who exists and designed and made it all.

Let me read for you what comes right before this phrase Paul picks up from Psalm 19. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard (Ps 19:1-3).”

So maybe you get it now? This is the point, creation itself testifies to the gospel of Jesus Christ! This beautiful world we live in…the sky, the ocean, the sun, the trees, the flowers, the animals…all of it is speaking, it is all saying something, it is all telling or declaring the glory of God! That God is and that he is wonderful and beautiful.

Now, here’s how it relates to Jesus and the gospel. Just as plain and evident as creation itself is, so is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Nothing makes more sense. There is something wrong with us all, us humans, we know it, we don’t like to admit it…but we all know we are broken and detached from our creator and we need a mediator, someone to do something about it for us. When you hear the gospel story that God became a man and entered into this world in order to die for us in our place so that we might be changed and redeemed and brought into fellowship with him…when we hear that it is like seeing the stars or the ocean and you know there is a God.

The Gospel Persuasion

But even then, some people still don’t become Christians. Some people still don’t believe there is a God even though it is so evident all around us. Some people still don’t believe Jesus is really that good and can really save, even though he has made it so plain. So Paul moves on and what he does in this next step is back up a little bit and try to see a bigger picture.

Up to this point he has been zeroing in on the human experience. In chapter 9, he was looking at everything from way back, up high, looking down, from God’s perspective at the big scheme of things. But in chapter 10 he zeroed in his focus and shifted gears and began looking at how the gospel works in the human experience. Now in these last three verses of chapter 10 he backs up again to look through the big lens again to try and find an answer to what God is doing and how that is or could be persuasive for the gospel. So this my second and final main point for today looking at gospel persuasion.

So let’s read verse 19 and see how is presented as God’s design for when some people still don’t believe after hearing the gospel message. Verse 19, “I ask, did Israel not understand?” Hold on a second, “Israel?” He hasn’t mentioned Israel by name since the end of chapter 9 and the whole focus of this chapter has been everyone everywhere…everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. So Israel, what’s up with that?

Now it would be easy to make a bigger deal about this and come up with a lot of various theories and many do…but I’m just going to simplify it all. I heard that at Theology on Tap the other week there was some discussion about this section of Scripture but that those who were there just decided to avoid these verse because, as I heard it, “Jews are confusing.”

So let me try and unconfuse Jews and Israel a little bit for you. We’ll dive into the confusion in a couple weeks with chapter 11…but for now let me just simplify it. It’s about people groups. The Jews, Israel, Gentiles, Mexicans, Asians, Indians, African Americans, Anglo Saxons…there’s all kinds of people groups. My neighbor yesterday was telling me about the Star Trek convention going on in town. Star Trek people are a people group…and we are a people group as Christians, we are the people of God. That becomes our primary identity. We are not so much, US Citizens, not so much San Diegans, we are Christians.

Now, with that said, let me read the rest of verse 19 and verse 20. “But I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says, ‘I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation; with a foolish nation I will make you angry.’ Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, ‘I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.’

Now, I know when you read words like jealousy, and anger…many of us might have some pretty bad associations come to mind. But here they have a positive end or purpose. Let me show you by going through it backward.

“I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.” That speaks of who God is, he loves and goes after those who are not even interested in him at the time. He goes after all kinds of other people groups. What happens then with a people group like Israel, who was interested in God and did know and experience him in many ways throughout the course of their history?

What happens is jealousy and anger. Jealous, for what? For God! That’s a good thing, no matter where it comes from to want God. Anger is a passion and causes you to do some dumb things sometimes, sometimes it puts a fire in you to do something good to. So here is the design. When a people group, like Israel, sees how another people group really comes to know and love God, then a passionate desire to know and love God like that can or ought to occur.

This is the way missions often work. God is our focus here at church. We do church for God. When we invite others into our lives or even to our service, what we are really asking is come and see how much we love worshipping our God. And the hope is that when others seek how much we love God, they will be moved and want to worship him along with us to. That’s what’s going on here with this verse. It is mission. “Missions exists because worship doesn’t” as John Piper likes to say…so the mission of God, the persuasion of the gospel is to move people with a godly jealousy and passion to want him.

You see I think there is something here about an honesty of the gospel from us in our mission that others need to see. Have any of you bought the new Coldplay album? We got it a couple days ago and have been enjoying that. Maybe you’ve heard the song on the radio, “Viva La Vida”? Any of you paid attention to the chorus, “I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing, Roman calvary choirs are singing, be my mirror, my sword, my shield, be my missionaries in a foreign field, for some reason I cannot explain, once you go there was never, never an honest word.”

I think Chris Martin from Coldplay is on to something there, whether known to him or not. Non-christian can see through fakeness, when you are just trying to manipulate force some belief system on them…they see through that, what they really need is some honesty, to hear and see how we really do love and live for Jesus. When that happens then they’ll be desire, because it is real and true and not dishonest.

Okay let’s move on, in the last verse for today, verse 21, we get this amazing picture of God. It is true of the people group Israel and really it is true of everyone of us. “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.” This is the picture of a Father. It is the picture of a dad, hold out his hands toward his little child and the child does not want to and will not come to him.

Now my little daughter Adina is about 8 months old. Just the other day I walked in to her room and she was sitting in her crib and I reached down my hands toward her and said, “”Come to DaDa sweetie.” And she lifted up her little arms and I picked her up and gave her a big hug.

Now she is too small right now. But can you imagine a Dad, filled with so much love for his kid and want to love them and pick them up…and the kid just folds their arms, turns their head, and is disinterested and defiant…and the Dad just keeps standing there, saying I love you, come here, I love you.

That is God with everyone of us. This is the gospel message. This is the gospel call which goes out. This is the gospel persuasion. God created you and loves you and reaches out his arms to you and says come here, I know all about your disobedience and sins and faults, so I sent my son to die for all of that so that you can come here and be with me. Come home.

For many of us we have come. And God, through Jesus, has become our dad and we love him. That’s why we live the way we do, why we worship the way we do, why we come here each week together to worship, why we get together in the week to talk about him, and why we are on a mission here in San Diego for him. It is all because God has reached out his hand to us and changed our disobedient and contrary hearts and given us faith in his son Jesus.

And that is God’s design, that we would always be a mix of people. People who have come and those who have not yet…so that a godly jealousy would grow, and the word of Christ would reach a point when it is no longer just words we hear but words we love.

Conclusion

Well, let me conclude this sermon. I’ll conclude this way today. Last week I said we must see ourselves as missionaries here in San Diego. We are people who are chosen and sent by God through his word, into this city to show and share the gospel message of Jesus with people who are not yet Christians.

Listen to this sermon…       

The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

June 14th, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets

Series: The God(ness) of God | Romans 9-11
I. The God of Glory 9:1-29
II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
III. The God of Future 11:1-36

II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
Week 4 – Romans 10:14-15

Introduction

Good morning Church family. Every week we gather together to worship God together in a varieties of ways. We worship in our love and care for each other, which happens in conversations and in working together to put on this service…we worship in joining our voices together in song…we worship in the receiving of communion together…and we worship each week in studying God’s Word.

Usually, maybe not every time, I begin my sermon, the time when we study God’s Word, with some introduction as to why the particular text we are studying for the day is important for you to listen to and learn from. Sometimes it is because it contains some deep and hard thing we need to think about. Sometimes it is because it addresses something so relevant to our normal everyday lives and the issues we deal with. And sometimes it is because it is truly worldview forming and attempts to really shape the way we see ourselves as individuals and also as a group and what we are doing together.

I think that third one, the identity forming and impelling one, is why today’s text is important. Words like the ones of our text today are the type of words that can really catch and grab hold of you and cause us to do amazing things with our lives.

Adoniram Judson, was a man who in 1813 made the decision to leave his home in New England and travel to Burma in order to share with them the gospel of Jesus Christ. Burma at that time was hard, hostile, war torn, disease stricken, difficult place. He went there when he was 25 years old and spent nearly the whole of next 38 years there until his death.

Burma was a difficult place for him to go. All other previous missionaries had either left or got sick and died. While Adoniram was there he was beaten and imprisoned. His wife Ann, partnered with him in loving the Burmese people…she learned the language of the people and befriended them. But after only a few years, she contracted a sickness and died. Eight years after he lost Ann, Adoniram married again to a woman named Sarah, but not long afterwards she too got sick and passed away. Burma was a hard place. It took two whole years of reaching out before one person embraced the love of Jesus in the gospel he shared.

Burma was hard. When I read something like that and a life like that, it makes me wonder what would compel someone to do something like that? No just to go initially, but to also stay and be so determined to reach them?

Here is what did it for him…this is an excerpt from a letter Adoniram Judson wrote three years before he left for Burma while he was still in college. In it he describes what changed things for him.

“…During a solitary walk in the woods, behind the college, while meditating and praying…and feeling half inclined to give it up, that the command of Christ, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature,’ was presented to my mind with such clearness and power, that I came to a full decision, and though great difficulties appeared in my way, [I] resolved to obey the command at all events.”

Our text for today is similar in it’s power, clarity and calling as the passage of Scripture which so impacted Adoniram Judson. We’re in the second half of chapter 10 in Romans and in the second main movement in our current sermon series, “The God(ness) of God.” In this movement the theme has been the gospel. That the gospel, or the good news is God’s and he cares about it a lot. So let’s read the text and pray over it.

Lord God I pray today that you would impact us today with these words. Would they grant us confidence and passion for the mission of the good news of the gospel to reach people here in San Diego. Would they provide a framework for understanding what it is that you call us to and the challenges involved in it. And God through our study of these words would you use them to expand our love for various peoples as we come to understand that you are a God who is determined to reach out your hand in love to unworthy and undeserving people. Work in us today through your Word. Amen.

The Means of the Gospel

So we are going to look at just verses 14 and 15. I had planned to finish the chapter today and go all the way to verse 21…but I just couldn’t do it. There is too much in these two verses that we need to talk about. Verses 14 and 15 outline the gospel mission, which is huge for us as a church plant. They outline the means and process that lead to someone calling on Jesus for salvation is outlined. Verse 13 left off saying, “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Two weeks ago when we dealt with that phrase we talked about what kind of call that is, that it is cry out to Jesus for help. Jesus is the name of the Lord and as Acts 4:12 says, “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Jesus is our only hope.

If that is true then the natural question is how does a person come to the point of calling upon Jesus name for their salvation. Verse 14-15 give us four steps. One, we must believe. Two, we must hear. Three, we must be preached to. And four, a preacher must be sent. Believing, hearing, preaching, sending. It might sound just mechanical or even pedantic at a first glance. Like, duh, of course. But I believe there is more to it then that.

As a whole, Scripture reveals here that God has committed himself to saving people in a certain way. Not just in that he only saves through his Son Jesus but also the way in which we come to see and know and love Jesus. Some make the dangerous and false conclusion after reading in the previous chapter, Romans 9, that since God has determined and chosen within himself to make sure and save particular people that because of that we, as individuals don’t need to do anything…like, “Well I guess since God is just going to save whoever he wants then we’re just robots and it doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do.”

That’s a misunderstand of means. God has not only determined the end of salvation but also the means and here in Romans 10:14-15 he tells us what his means are, the way he has determined that the people he is going to save will come to faith in Jesus. I pray you understand means today. What do I mean when I say means?

I means this, how did you get here to church this morning? I think I would be on pretty safe ground to say you all drove in a car or a truck or an SUV (my wife says an SUV is not a truck) to get here. Your vehicle was the means of getting to church service today. Now there were probably a few more steps involved in that process…like actually getting in your car, turning on the ignition, navigating the steering wheel to direct the car in a certain path, perhaps going to the gas station first and giving them your life savings, and then ultimately making it to your destination here. That’s means, the processes used in reaching the ultimate goal.

With Jesus there is means as well. There is a process: sending, preaching, hearing, believing, and then calling on him. The process begins with God’s determination to save individuals (Rom.9), then God sends his people to go tell other people about who he is and what he has done in Jesus, then those people hear, at some point in their hearing God grants faith and they believe, and when they believe then they call on Jesus. That is how it works, that the process, the means God has committed himself to working through.

But I think we would be missing some huge things if we just left it there. God wants us to know and understand that there’s a process but there are some things we need to think about which are involved in each of these steps. So let’s look at them a little closer.

Must Believe

First belief, belief is faith and it is a gift granted by God, it is not something that you use or conjure up in and of yourself, it is trust and confidence that God gives. In previous sermons we have talked much about how it is a sort of discovery within a person, where they see Jesus and see Jesus as someone we desperately need and that sight of Jesus is one where we see him as truly sufficient to actually meet the greatest need and desire of your soul. So I’m going to leave it at that and not spend any more time on we must believe today.

Must Hear

Verse 14 says is that God has determined not to grant belief except through hearing, that’s the second step, “How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?” Now here is what I mean by a deeper level at work here. Does God just mean audibly then here? I don’t think so, otherwise people with no ears or people who are deaf would have no hope of salvation. Hearing here is more than just hearing.

We’ll talk more about hearing next week in verse 18…but for right now I want to mention a couple potential obstacles to hearing, associated not so much with the one doing the hearing but with the one giving something for people to hear.

In this last week’s journal entry, I wrote about San Diego views of the word “gospel” and the word “Jesus.” If you are signed up on our email list you received this, although I’m not sure anyone actually reads it. But if you did read my Pastoral devotion for all of us this last week you’ll remember part of what I wrote. I provided a YouTube link to a CNN interview with an Acts 29 pastor and the interview was titled, “Do Christians Get on Your Nerves?” It was titled that way because a recent study showed that several people are very interested in Jesus and would like to learn and know more about him but are reluctant because of the way that Christians are toward them.

So wrote this in my entry, I said, “Often people are turned off to Christianity, not because of the message, or even because they are not one day destined to embrace it, but often they are turned off by of the messenger. Sometimes we ourselves are the biggest barriers to the gospel for people because we do not first listen and learn how to contextualize the gospel in hopes that it will get the best possible hearing.”

You see far too often we can slip into being self-righteous and arrogant thinking we are so much smarter or better because we are Christians and everyone else is just stupid because they not and so we conclude they just must not be elect.

If we want people to hear the good news, we must be concerned about who the people we are talking to, what their presuppositions are, and where they are at spiritually so that we can share the great and good and unchanging truths of the gospel in a way that will not give people any false reason to reject it. We want them to truly hear about Jesus and not hear something else. If they want to reject him because they understand what who we are saying he is and what he is done, then fine, we will love them and be okay with that. But I don’t want anyone to hear something different and be turned away.

Do you guys realize that most of the time you do not come across how you think you come across? Whatever our self-perceptions are, it is usually radically different then how we really are. Just ask people, how you sound? Ask them what the gospel is that they hear you sharing? I did that this last week. I sat down with my wife and asked her, what is the gospel that you see me living and hear me preaching?

Must Preach

Well let’s move on to the third step as we follow the text and work backward. We’ve got believing, hearing, and now preaching. It’s in verse 14, “And how will they hear without someone preaching?”

Now before we can even talk about the message in preaching, I know right away most of you probably think of this, what I am doing right now, as preaching. When you read or hear the word preaching, you think of the guy up front, in church, on Sunday, who gets really loud at times, tells you you are a sinner and need to repent. Right? Here’s the deal. Yes that is preaching, it is one form of it. But that is not what preaching primarily means here, in this text.

Preaching here in this text, number one, is not something that only pastors and public speakers do. It is something that everyone who is a Christian is and does. Christians are people who believe in the gospel, the good news. We are bearers of news. Now I know most people don’t actually get a paper anymore, because we can read it for free online and newspapers cost money and make your hands black when you read them. But I have a newspaper here today.

How does a news-paper work? You read news. Then you talk to other people about the news. Here is an article on the right side of the front page, “Keep Your Seats – If You Can – On Airlines.” This is something people talk about. There a problem. Something bad. Airline prices are going up and some people are even losing their previously bought tickets. This is news, it’s bad news. So you read this article and then you’re talking to your friend and you say, “Dude, did you hear about the airlines?” And he’s like “Yeah, that sucks, I’m supposed to go to Colorado in a few weeks I hope my tickets are still good.”

You see how that works? News. Here’s the thing. Christianity is not new anymore. Most people kind of know at least something about it, although their ideas are usually pretty skewed, and often because of screwy Christians. So what we have to do is contextualize the gospel, the good news. We have to create a platform for it’s hearing and not just assume that everyone should listen to us.

Foreign missionaries have understood this for years…that in order to share the gospel with a people group they need to learn and understand the language and the culture so that they can share the gospel in a way that they are going to get it. But for some reason here in America we tend to just assume, maybe because we’re from here, that everyone sees the world we the way we do and has had the same experiences that we have. But they haven’t.

We must look at our context here in San Diego and realize that the person who lives on the right side of us and the person who lives on the left side of us most likely has a completely different worldview and culture that we must understand figure out how to speak into it.

I’ll give you a couple examples. My next door neighbor I’ve learned is a single mom with three kids. She has two teenagers, a boy and girl, and one boy in his early twenties. Several times I’ve seen her out mowing her lawn and I’ve asked her before why she doesn’t have her boys don’t mow the lawn for her, and she says something like, “Oh, I can’t get them to do anything.” Last Sunday I was about to leave for church and I saw her mowing her lawn and I was just provoked in my Spirit…so I walked over to her and I said good morning and such and asked her if I could start mowing her lawn for her. She was like “really?” I said, “Yes, please let me do it for you, I really want to and will be offended if you don’t let me.” So she said okay. And then you know what was the next thing she said? I’ve never said anything to her in a year of living next to her about being a Christian or a pastor. But the next words out of her mouth were, “Duane, what church is it you go to? I see you leaving every Sunday morning with your Bible? What church is it you go to?” And I ended up talking to her about the gospel and she is interested and wanted to know if we had some materials so I took home one of our church pamphlets last week.

This is what I am talking about…earning a right to speak. Creating a platform for the gospel. I am afraid that Christian leaders and pastors have too often taught that sharing gospel or evangelizing is being all bold and going up to strangers and giving them a speech. Very few people are going to actually do that and the truth is that it is pretty ineffective in our day now.

I’ll give you another example. In our Theo 101 – membership class, we begin each session with a group brainstorm on what the ideas of San Diego’s various cultures are about the topic for the week. I structure the class that way to emphasize the importance contextualizing the gospel by recognizing the presupposition and ideas of the land we live in, the city we want to reach.

Only 6% of San Diego actually claims to be Bible believing, Jesus loving, church going, Christians. San Diego has a population of 1.3 million people, it is the 8th largest city in the United States, and San Diego has the second most diverse population in the country, second only to New York.

I am convinced that one of the main reasons that over, 1.29 million people (that’s 6% less) of San Diego is not being reached is because we don’t understand culture. What is culture? Here’s a definition: “The common behaviors, arts, beliefs and institutions of a people group.” It’s things like language, art, architecture, music, dress, worldview, tradition, rituals, lifestyle, and many many other things. Everyone is in a culture and has a cultural background. A cultural element may be moral, amoral, or immoral depending of how it is used (i.e. to worship God or not).

Too many Christians have demonized culture and thought that evangelism means we need to go to war with culture rather than entering into it. So what I am saying, what are we supposed to do. Well, first you got to make some friends who are not Christians and invite them into your life and get mixed up in theirs. If they are not your friend first then you are going to have very little chance of ever getting to hear their story so that you can tell the story of the gospel and how it connects to their story.

So here’s an example. I used to work at record store in Pacific Beach named Second Spin, and I met a guy who worked there named Seth. As I got to know Seth I found out that there are two things that Seth loved. He loved hardcore screamo music and he loved smoking.

Now anybody knows that when you are working sometimes it’s hard to get a chance to really talk about serious things. But me in my mind, I’m always praying Col 4:3 that God would “open a door for the world, to declare the mystery of Christ.” So one evening Seth asks me if I want to go outside and smoke a cigarette with him.

Now I didn’t smoke at the time, I hadn’t yet found out about J. Gresham Machen who started the Presbyterian denomination and said that “tobacco was God’s greatest gift given unto men for the contemplation of divine things.” But knowing that Seth loved smoking and that people usually talk while we’re smoking I went outside and smoked with him.

Now next door to Second Spin at the time was a bar/club called the Tavern, some of you might go there. While we were standing there, a line was beginning to form of people waiting to get in. I’m standing there smoking, trying not to inhale because Bill Clinton says, then you are okay, and I’m a good Christian right? And we see this guy going to each person in line and giving them a little flyer.

I just figured it was for porn or something…but then the guy comes up to me and my friend and hands us a flyer and it turns out to be a flyer for one of the churches in town to come to their Easter service. Right there it was such a vivid picture of the problem with evangelism within much of Christianity today. They don’t understand mission. Evangelism is something you do, but not something you live.

Let me explain what I mean. There I was doing my best to be like Jesus who came into the world to love sinners and make friends with them so that I could share the gospel with him…and this guy shoves a flyer in my face and just wanting me to come to church. I asked him if he was planning to go inside the club with some friends. Here was his answer, “No. That place is so full of sin and I can’t go in there because I am a Christian.”

I about punched him I was so angry. You see the thing is the world is a place full of sin and Jesus came into it and he calls us to follow him into it and get our hands dirty a little bit. Yeah, sometimes it’s messy and you might need to smoke a cigarette! But that’s Jesus. He drank and he never sinned by getting drunk but Luke 7:34 says, he drank enough to be accused of being “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” You see the flyer guy thought he was fulfilling the Romans 10 call to share his faith and he was missing the whole heart and mission of Jesus.

We must see ourselves as missionaries because missionaries understand this. Adoniram Judson. He spent four years learning the language and culture of the Burmese before he even held his first public meeting. When he first started, he wore Buddhist monk-like robe because that is what respected teachers in that culture wore. And then when he held his first service he constructed a zayat, a customary Burmese bamboo and thatch reception shelter, where he first had 15 men over to come and eat and talk.

You and I are missionaries in this city. As your pastor I am not interested in trying to figure out how to get some of the 6% of Christians in San Diego who already go to another church to start coming to ours because we are better. I want to reach the 94%. And it must begin with things like meals, and hospitality, and getting to know and understand the language and the lives of those people who are not yet Christians but are destined to become Christians one day.

Once that happens then you earn a hearing, a right to speak, you create a platform for the gospel. Once that happens then we share. That’s the second part, that’s the actual preaching. Everything up until that point is preparation for the preaching. Then you share and what do you share? You share verse 17, “the word of Christ.” “Faith comes through hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.”

The word of Jesus Christ is the gospel. What is that word, it is the story of God who made us in his image but because of sin, that image has been effaced and marred and ruined, so God came into the world in Jesus, who lived the life we know we ought to but fail at and then died a death in our place to satisfy justice for sin and evil, and then rose again to make all things new beginning with our hearts.

The word of Christ is the message of the gospel. When I asked my wife the other day what gospel I preach, this was her response. She quoted Jesus words in Mark 2:17 “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” I’ve just been meditating on that verse the last 4 days ever since she said that. The word of Christ is that we are all sick and Jesus is the great physician. On one hand I feel as though I’m always trying to convince you all that we’re all sick because we don’t want to think that. And on the other hand I am always trying to convince us all that Jesus is real and what he did is real and it can really save us and heal us.

Some of you I’m afraid you are real good at making friends with non-Christians, building a platform for the gospel…but you never get to sharing the word of Christ. So on one hand I say, we need to contextualize, yes. But on the other hand I say, contextualizing is meaningless if you never get to the gospel. Saint Francis of Assisi is famous and often quoted for saying, “Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary use words.” I don’t like that. I understand what he is getting at, that our lives and deeds, contextualization, needs to precede the gospel. But here is the plain truth, you have not preached the gospel until you use words. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.

How you preach the gospel is getting to know people and finding out where and how their lives are broken because everyone’s is and then you apply the medicine of the good news message of Jesus. We are all those who must preach the gospel so that people can hear the gospel, because if we do not, no one would ever come to Christ, you preaching is the means God has chosen.

Well, we’ve spent a lot of time on that today, but I felt that it is important. We finally have a small but strong real core here at The Resolved Church and I want us to understand that we are missionaries in this city and I want us to be good missionaries.

Must Sent

Okay let’s move on and talk about the last point for today, being sent. Verse 15, “And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!’”

Being sent. First this builds on the idea of a herald. A gospeler or good newsist in Bible times was someone commissioned, sometimes hired by the government to go out into the street and declare either a victory of war, or a new edict/law, to announce a birth. That’s what they did. Paul picks up that cultural thing and applies it here because he recognizes the theological significance of us as Christians being sent by God and how important that is for us in sharing the gospel.

Let me explain. Jesus says in John 20:21 “As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” Jesus was sent into this world to seek and save the lost. And now he has commissioned us to go out and he has sent and entrusted us with his message, Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

Here is the layer beneath the layer, the layer I hope makes its way into your heart today…the feeling, the holy weight and privilege that God has entrusted to us, the most precious thing in all of history and existence, his one and only Son Jesus. There is nothing more important than Jesus and God has entrusted the message of Jesus to us! That ought to put a burden in you, a conviction.

Paul, the human author of Romans, said this in another one of his letters, “Our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction (1 Thess 1:5).” Do you have conviction today that you are a sent one into San Diego, even if you were born here, but sent here by God? Oh I hope you catch that today.

I feel that. If you know me I am leery of hearing voices in my head and calling them God. I don’t recommend that as the normal way a Christian hears God’s voice, he speaks in His Word. But though I’ve never heard a voice I can say with all honesty in my heart, I believe God called me to San Diego, to love the people here for their sake of knowing Jesus.

You see being sent, provides this confidence and authenticity behind your life and your words. Sometimes one of the ailments of our age is there is so much out there with the worldwide web, information highway, so many ideas…that we get afraid and don’t have any confidence or assurance because we fear what we put our stake might turn out to be wrong. Not with the gospel. The gospel reads us and is more true than anything.

Look for a second at the phrase here, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the news.” This is a really interesting verse. It’s a quote from Isaiah in the Old Testament. It has the idea of being sent in it because, the feet reference is the idea of traveling. They didn’t have telephones, or email, or text messaging…so if news or a message was to be delivered it had to be in person. People didn’t wear shoes like we do, but dirty open toed sandals, and they walked around in dirt. And these feet are beautiful.

The word beautiful in the Greek here is an interesting word, there’s really no good English word to translate it to. Oraios, it is the idea of the ripe, flourishing time or season, when a piece of fruit turns, it’s colors come out and it’s taste and flavor is sweet and good. Such a picture…you put that together with the bearer of the good news, shared at the right time, when a platform has been built and a door for the gospel opens up…and to the person it is the most beautiful and sweet and right thing they have ever heard.

This is a different way of mission and evangelism than I was taught. I was taught that it means you have a speech you share and that it is it. Some taught me that it’s the Romans road, the four spiritual laws you share and if you don’t do that you didn’t share the gospel. I just don’t think so. I think some of the most powerful and awesome times I have shared about Jesus is when I didn’t have some preplanned speech but spoke out of the honesty of my soul about what I really believed. And you tell someone that you believe that is the reason you believe God put you in your life, because he sent and entrusted this thing with you, the story of Jesus which means everyone’s story. That’s powerful.

For most, the world and their lives are spinning out of control. If this text can grip you so that you’re individual identity and our identity as a church as a whole is to say, God has destined us to be here and has sent us here for this reason, that will turn this city upside-down.

Conclusion

Well, let’s conclude. You may have noticed that throughout this sermon I have really only been addressing these points as though all of us are on the inside and this is our commission from Jesus for those on the outside. That is true. But let me turn it around on us and make us the recipients as though each of us is on the outside.
Has someone ever told you God sent them to you? Let me tell you today, God sent me to you because the God I know sent his son Jesus out of the heavens into this world to seek out and save me and now Jesus has sent me to you because God cares about you and your life.

Have you ever had someone really preach the gospel to you? Let me preach the gospel to you today and say, “I know your life is messed up, and what you need is Jesus.” God sent me to you to tell you that you are a sinner and I know deep inside you are not the way you want to be and not the way God intends for you to be as his image bearer that he created. God sent me to tell you about Jesus. Because he is the exact image of God, and his life never got messed up in sin like your life and mine and he died for you and for me in our place for the justice against sin and evil and he rose again in new life so that our lives might be changed and renewed into the love and goodness of God.

Have you ever really heard the gospel? I know you may have heard someone say similar things, maybe even from me before, but have you ever really heard the gospel? Let me implore you today to open your heart and hear and listen to the voice of Jesus saying, “Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest for your soul.” The weight of sin on your own is too heavy, give it up to Jesus and let him carry it for you.

Do you believe? Maybe you’ve accepted some things intellectually, or grown up Christian, or had some experience long in the past now…are you believing now? Plead with God in this moment to open up your eyes to see the wonder and beauty and glory of Jesus. Plead with him to help you see your deficiencies and how dependant you upon him as your savior.

Have you called? The bitter joyous call of the thief on the cross, “Lord save me…only you can.” Call out to him today from your gut. Ask him to change you and renew you and make you more like him. Give your life away today and seek out the savior while he may be found.

Let’s pray.

Listen to this sermon…       

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June 1st, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets

Series: The God(ness) of God | Romans 9-11
I. The God of Glory 9:1-29
II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
III. The God of Future 11:1-36

II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
Week 3 – Romans 10:9-13

Introduction

Good morning. We’re in the third week of The God of the Gospel part of our “God(ness) of God” sermon series from Romans 9-11. Last week we focused mainly on verse 5-8 of Romans 8 and talked mostly about how religion is different than the gospel. Today’s verses were part of last week’s text but there is enough important content for us to deal with that they deserved their own week.

This week there is a dual primary theme. When I read this text I end up asking the question, “Is it mainly talking about how a person gets saved and becomes a Christian?” Or, “Is it mainly talking about the message of the gospel that Christians are to share?” Now I think it is both because on one hand it is talking about how the gospel works inside us, how it’s something entirely different than religion having something to do with our hearts and with Jesus, and not rules or performances, or abilities.

That’s one hand, on the other hand there is this inherent offer that is put forth in the words, asking us, compelling us, inviting us, to put faith in Jesus and that inherent offer in turn teaches us what Christians are saying is offered to everyone in Jesus. So let’s read the text and hopefully you’ll see that and then we’ll get into looking at four issues this text address both for us individually in our personal Christian beliefs and for us as missionaries in our personal message we share with the people of San Diego.

Read text and pray.

Lord God thank you for this morning. Thank you for giving us a special day of the week to worship you together. Thank you for giving us a book to probe our thinking, to move our hearts, and to shine light on the glory and wonder of Jesus. Would you help us today as we ingest its words. I pray you would give us insight into the faith you bestow so that we might more fully understand the salvation in Jesus many of have us have had pledged to us. I also pray that the gospel offer of Jesus and the greatness of that offer would be especially clear today for any who has yet to have a heart and mouth moved to trust in Jesus. And I pray that you would unlock a passion and comprehension of the importance of mission for us as a community known as The Resolved Church. Holy Spirit of God, work in these moments as we worship you through the Bible.

Confession and Conversion

So here’s the four main points we’ll talk about today, “Confession and Conversion,” “Belief and Beliefs,” “No One and Everyone,” and then we’ll end talking about “Shame and Riches.” So first, our first point, “Confession and Conversion.”

Now first you probably noticed that the part of our text today just kind of happened to start in the middle of a sentence, it starts out “…because, if you confess with your mouth…” So first let me tell you how this week connects with last week, how confession is a theme of this text, and then how theologically it relates to conversion, becoming a Christian.

Okay. So last week I ended by telling this story from the 5th book of the Chronicles of Narnia as a illustration of how the point that the law or religion cannot save, only person and work of Jesus in the human heart. Verse 8 had quoted a passage of Scripture from the Old Testament in Deuteronomy. So last week we looked at the whole context of what was going on in the story of God’s people leading up to the words Paul quoted here in Romans 10.

Now, I’m not going to repeat all of that today, so I’ll just remind us that the point of the passage was that when God does a work in the human heart, Moses in Deuteronomy called it circumcising it, kind of a graphic picture, but it sure paints a picture of the seriousness of our condition…but when God does that work, then God’s word will be doable because then it will be as verse 8 says, “near you, in your mouth and in your heart.”

Paul, the human author of Romans, picks that up and says, “Ah, hah! “That is the word of faith that we proclaim!” That’s the gospel. Then he spends the next five verses going into that to explain what the word of faith is, what the gospel message is. So that’s what we’re doing today. Were explaining both the content of the gospel we believe in and the message of the gospel we are putting out there.

Alright, so let’s talk about confession. Confession is woven in throughout each of these verses. First it’s explicit, “If you confess with your mouth…with the mouth one confesses…(there are) riches for all who call on (Jesus)…(and) everyone who calls on (Jesus) will be saved.”

So first, we’ve said it many times, but the culture you live in, the people groups you live among and the traditions that you come from is very important. In Romans the two people groups were Jews and Gentiles and in both confession was a big deal.

For the Jews confession was a regular part of their religion. Many Jews, still today, recite the Great Shema, twice daily. “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God! The LORD is One!” In Gentile culture the reciting of words took common place in courtroom oaths, magical incantations, and prayers to the gods.

Confession today is still a big deal. In the larger Christian circles, the goal of many churches and many Christians is to get people to pray this certain prayer, there’s even a name for it, they call it “the sinners prayer.” Many times they will even point to this passage as support for doing such a thing. Maybe you’ve prayed the “sinners prayer” yourself at some point?

When I first became a Christian I was told that you need to evangelize if you are a Christian. I was told that the way you do that is by telling people that they are sinners and if they listen and repent you pray a prayer with them. Well I really liked being a Christian, so I figured, we’ll okay…so one time I was at “The Block” which is this outdoor mall up in Orange County. I saw this group of gangsters. You could tell they were gangsters because they wore FUBU and had big chain necklaces you know. J Shows how dumb I was. So I walked up to them and told them all that I believed Jesus was coming back in the sky one day and asked if they wanted to hear me talk about it for a minute. One of them said okay, so I started preaching at them…after about five minutes they were all ready to pray the sinners prayer. Now I know some real gangsters, or at least some kids who think they are real gangsters and they’ll do anything for heaven or Jesus, because they’re scared. J

I’m not so sure that is what this passage is telling us as Christians to do. We’ve been learning like last week, that the essence of the gospel is that we cannot save ourselves only Jesus can. The act of saying a prayer will not save us. Only the person and work of Jesus can save us, that’s the gospel. In fact I think if we look at this text a little closer, it may in fact be trying to correct an idea that could form in our heads thinking that we are safe or saved just because we pray a prayer.

Belief and Beliefs

So lets look at it a little closer and talk about belief and beliefs…”if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”

First, what is the confession here, the word of faith, the gospel being proclaimed? It is simple, three words, “Jesus is Lord.” That tells us two things: One, this confession isn’t like a confession a criminal would make if he had done some crime, got caught and admitted to it and wrote out his confession to the police. Two, it tells us that this confession is a positive affirmation, a creed of sorts that one comes to accept, namely that Jesus is Lord.

Now, saying Jesus is Lord in first century Palestine was big deal. Written on the coins, proclaimed throughout the land as a recognition of the Roman Government was the often quoted phrase, “Kaiser estin Kurios” – Ceasar is Lord. It would be somewhat like if someone went around saying “George Bush is Lord.” I know, kind of weird. But back then it was just part of the fabric of life. It was a statement acknowledging the complete political authority and during that time considered even divine authority of Ceasar.

That’s was tough for the Jewish crowd because for them, the great Shema, ” Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God! The LORD is One.” Only God is the Lord. Then on top of it all Jesus comes on the scene, lives for 33 years, the last three years of his life teaching, preaching, and perfoming miracles and he ends up getting crucified essentially for claiming that he is the Lord and saying that eveyone needs to believe in him.

So the phrase “Jesus is Lord” is a big deal. It cuts to the central claims of both the Jewish and Gentile group and what their hope was in. The phrase “Jesus is Lord” became the first Christian creed becauses it summed up the whole of Jesus life and ministry…his claim to be God himself, his claim to be the hope and leader of the human race, his life, his death, and his resurrection accomplished something extremely significant for us spiritually and for the future of the world.

But here is my question I think this text probes us in, does just saying those words and their phonetic sound mean anything? Well, for the political government of the time it did. They didn’t care if you really didn’t like Cesaer as long as you gave him lip service and said “Kaiser estin Kurios.” But does saying Jesus is Lord really mean anything when it comes to us and God?
Let’s look at the text again…”you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

So Paul here seems to be saying, “wait a minute, hold on…it’s more than just a confession, this is a heart issue.” Verse 10, “For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” So Jesus is Lord is a belief that must come from the heart for it to be real, the confession of the mouth is just the outward manifestation or demonstration of that inward work in the heart.

That is extremely significant. If you’re familiar with “altar calls” in churches, this verse is why I quit doing them. That’s why the little slide we have which comes up after each sermon right before communion is worded very carefully. It says, “If you desire to express a turn toward new faith in Jesus Christ we invite you to partake with us as well.” It is worded that way so that will not get the idea that any sort of confession we ever make is something that we do or conjur up in ourselves, it purely the gracious work of God in our heart.

I want to press in a little deeper on this here . I know you all secretly watch American Idol. This last season was it was one of the most watched Television shows of all time, something like an average of 32 million viewers. I’m ashamed to admit it and my only excuse is that my wife made me watch it, but we watched it this season for the first time. J

Here was my favorite part of the whole show. Everytime a person got kicked off, they would be all crying and talking about how great it was and how special it was to be a part of such a thing, and then they would make this switch into preaching mode and almost everytime they would say something like this…”I just want to say dreams do come true, just follow your heart and your passion, you just need to believe in yourself, thank you thank you thank you.”

That was my favorite part of show. I would just start laughing every time. Because I’m sitting there thinking, what about all hundreds of people who had that dream too but didn’t even make it on the show because their voices sucked?! What happened to their dreams and passion…didn’t they follow their heart?!J

Now, what I’m gettting at is just because you may be passionate about something in your heart doesn’t make it true or right. When it comes to spirituality…that is the mainstay idea, at least here in San Diego. Believe whatever you want if it helps you, just follow your heart and your passion.

But the thing is Jesus in Matthew 15:19 that more often than not, your heart can lead you astray (Mt. 15:19). That folllowing our heart is the thing that messes us up most the time. So here is my question, what is real Christian belief? What really makes you a Christian? If it is not some deed (that’s last week), and it’s not some specific confession, and if it’s not just being passionate in your heart…then what is it? What does it really mean to confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord?

No one and Everyone

I think maybe the next couple verses will help us. So let’s look at them and talk about what it means to call on the Lord, how no one who calls will be rejected and how everyone who calls will be accepted…no one and everyone.

Verse 11-13, he’s still explaining the heart and mouth thing for us…”For the Scripture says, ‘Everyone who belives in him (Jesus) will not be put to shame.’ For there is no distincition between Jew and Greek; for the Lord (Jesus) is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord (Jesus) will be saved.’”

Now notice something with me. We’ve been talking about belief. That there is this connection between true belief in the heart and the confessions and thereby actions we make with our mouth and our lives. And by the way Jesus also said that too, that out of the mouth the heart speaks (Lk 6:45). But notice this. Paul carries the word believe first in verse 11…”everyone who believes.” Then Pauls switches words, he switches to the word call…there are riches for “all who call on Jesus…(and) everyone who calls on the name (of Jesus) will be saved.”

What’s going on there? First something about the word believe. The word believe is the same Greek word as the word faith from “the word of faith we proclaim” in verse 8, the only difference is one’s just the noun and one the verb. You don’t see that in English because faiths as a verb is not a word. If it said, “Everyone who faiths in Jesus will not be put to shame…” that would be weird.

But I’m not sure that really helps us out much, maybe a little, but it still has this air of ambiguity about it. Having faith and believing are these huge vague ideas for most people if they are honest. The word “call” helps us a lot here I think in clearing up some ambiguity. Verse 11 says everyone who believes…okay, how do you believe? Verse 12 and 13, you call out to Jesus!

That’s getting closer because a call expresses something greater than just a wishful chance, a calling out is genuine from the heart and it is a at the same time a confession or an acknowledgment. Have you ever heard someone scream the word “help” when they were in dire need?

I never have. I heard little kids in swimming a pool get scared and say that. But I’ve never heard someone trying to get my attention because they were in danger and scream out “help!” I can imagine it though.

Now I don’t think the Bible is telling us here that you are supposed to scream out Jesus name, but I think that is the idea that is expressed here, it is a hearfelt deep conviction of your own personal situation and a recognition that Jesus is the only one present to help. And so we call out to him.

How does that work? I think it works like this, I think this is how you become a Christian… Everyone, all of us have our own personal situations and contexts, and everyone one of us has challenges with life, things going on beneath the surface, some we are aware of, some we are not. It may be in a sermon, it may be from a conversation with someone, it may be because of something you’re reading or because of some life jarring experience…but you begin to see your need…that you need something and you need it bad because you are mess deep down.

Then you hear about Jesus. Who he is and what he has done and what he offers and then something happens in your heart…this feeling, this thought arises…Jesus can save me! He is exactly what I need. He died on the cross for my sin and rose again. I need forgiveness and his cross can cover that. I need a God to worship, someone greater than myself, he’s risen and alive and worthy. Jesus is it.

When that happens and however that looks with each person I think that is when faith or belief happens. Ephesians 2:8 says that is a gift of God. So I think faith is truly more of a discovery of God’s work in your heart. It is that moment of realization of who you are and who Jesus is. Then out of that you begin to take action…you take communion, you talk about Jesus confessing him, you start to live your life differently…and it all flows out of this work done in your heart and your life becomes this ever ongoing calling out to Jesus.

Here is the deal, because I know some of you smart super intelligent people out there, your minds are spinning. So I’ll pitch this to you. From a systematic theology perspective of what is going on here considering all the last 10 chapters of Romans, there are four different calls. 1. God’s elective call within himself to have a people for himself. 2. The call of a preacher or a Christian to a non-Christian saying put faith in Jesus, he is Lord. 3. The effective call of the Holy Spirit to enable you to respond by working in your heart and giving you faith. 4. The call of the person who out of that heart work calls out with their mouth, Jesus you are Lord, save me.

Now, if for some of you, if the significance of each of those points didn’t make sense that’s okay. Here’s the main thing I want us all to get from that before we go on to our concluding last point. The call of the gospel which says, “Believe in Jesus!” is for everyone, period. That offer goes out to all. It doesn’t matter who the person is, what they have done, what they look like…the gospel is relevant and powerful enough to save anyone from any background and any lifestyle!

Jews, Gentiles, it does not matter…all cultural groups…”the same Lord is Lord of all” as verse 12 says. The next sermon in our series will deal entirely with this issue of the necessity of contextualizing the gospel for all different people groups. There are all kinds of different people groups. Here’s a couple I came across this week in a few different conversations.

There are dirt bike motorcycle groups who go out to places like Lake Elsinore and they have their own unique language clothing and viewpoint on the world. If you don’t know what Fox is and what a 2-stroke and 250cc’s are then you are stupid. I met another dude this week in the park named Pete. Pete’s life is all about Pectrums, Harmonicas, and music from the late 1800′s. And apparently there’s a whole bunch of other people he hangs out with who are into the same thing.

The point is we should never look at a particular person or a particular people groups and look down on them and think the gospel is not for them. It doesn’t matter if they are stuffy business men making gas cost a ton, it doesn’t matter if they are they taking advantage of the new lift from the ban on gay marriage, it doesn’t matter if they are people who think medical marijuana can save the world, it doesn’t matter if they think the Live Wire is the only cool spot in San Diego, it doesn’t matter if they are insult laden wannabe gangster kids at a group home! It doesn’t matter.

No one who calls upon the name of the Lord Jesus will be rejected. No one will ever call upon the Jesus, truly from their heart, whom he will not receive and change. That is how the gospel works, how God does his saving work in those he is going to save, he does it through the call.

Shame and Riches

Our last point for today is an extension of this theme. Some of you maybe are on the other end of things, you don’t look down on others but you think you’ve just done some things that are too bad and shameful…too horrible and you are stricken with guilt and remorse and think you are damaged goods and cannot be loved or forgiven.

Look at the end of verse 11 and the end of 12: “…you will not be put to shame…(and he bestows) riches on all who call on him.” This is the gospel, this is word of faith being proclaimed, it says no, it’s not true that there are some people and some sins too great to be forgiven from. There will not be shame for you and instead the exact opposite, the riches of Christ who owns the universe.

Think about Paul, the human author of this book called Romans, he himself was a murderer before Jesus. He was forgiven and changed. What was shame was turned into boasting about the greatness of what Jesus did for him.

There is nothing God cannot forgive you of and change you and cleanse you from. Whether it is sexual sin, or some deep seated hatred, or something else…everyone who calls will be saved. If you’re thinking that you just need to forgive yourself, stop trying to do that, it doesn’t work, you can’t forgive youself, a price must be paid and it was paid for you on Jesus’ cross so that you wouldn’t have to try and make yourself pay and unsuccessfully try to forgive yourself. If you’re thinking that maybe it will just go away with time, it won’t. Our wrongs and our failures will eat at us deep down until we give up and call upon the name of Jesus.

That’s the internal affection of shame…but there is even more. If you notice the thrust of this passage is future. Salvation is future, the word “saved” here is a future passive verb. It has in mind a future day when the spiritual reality who God is and that all this physical world is truly about him, will be shown. The Bible says Jesus will come back in the sky one day, like I told those boys at the mall and when he does, everyone will see it and know it, he will set up his kingdom here on earth and rule with perfect justice and perfect peace.

When that happens, Philippians 2:10 says every knee will bow toward the name of Jesus, every knee will acknowledge that Jesus truly is the Lord. Here the thing. It matters a lot when you bow. If you bow now in worship and in love and thanks and adoration, you will bow with great joy in that day! You will finally be shown not to be stupid for trusting in Jesus, for banking your whole life on him, because he will be there and you will be accepted into the riches of his kingdom.

For others, they will bow, but they will bow in shame and humiliation and regret. They will bow their knees but in fright and fear for the judgment Christ will hand down for resistance to him and for hardness of heart.

You don’t want that, you want the riches of Christ. Yes, there is a metaphor here, I think, building off the idea that most people think money makes happy, that riches are good, so Paul here says you will receive riches in Jesus. So yes, there is the emotive aspect present but there is also a physical aspect in regards to Jesus future kingdom. When Jesus came to earth the first time he came as a poor meek peasant carpenter, he shielded his glory as the king of the universe, he hid it.

When he comes in the second time, his divine glory will not be hidden. He will come in his full kingly divine garb. There are a number of pictures of it in the Bible. Lightening and thunder but at the same time bright brilliant sunlight shining out of Jesus’ face. He’ll be show himself as the mighty warrior coming with his angels, he’ll be riding on a white horse, wearing a robe dipped in blood, a golden sash around his waist and a tattoo on his thigh saying, “King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Rev. 19).”

And then he’ll set up his kingdom here on earth and change the very order of his creation which is stuck in this cycle of cosmic breakdown. There’s going to be great riches in his kingdom, riches we never dreamed of, not just brilliant things like gold, and diamonds, and a sea of glass and an amazing throne he’ll sit on in front of it…but crazy stuff like water coming out of his throne in the middle of the city with a trees beside it bearing twelve different kinds of fruit (Rev. 22). That’s crazy.

Conclusion

Here’s the conclusion, let me try and bring it all together for us, the conclusion is, “Jesus is Lord.” Everyone who calls upon Jesus will not be put to shame but be saved and welcomed into his riches. How do you call, you respond from your heart to his offer to believe in him and confess him as Lord. Jesus is the Lord, the call from you says, “he’s not just the Lord he’s my Lord.”

Friends, is Jesus your Lord today? He can be. There is not a person in this room whom that offer may not apply to. There is not a person in this city whom that offer may not apply to. Maybe you’re here and you say, but I want it to be genuine from my heart, I don’t want it to just be some words, some useless confession, and I don’t just want to respond because of something I may be feeling right now…what am I to do?

My answer is for you to let these words hit you, let them sink in. Only those who call, and the call must come from a realization that Jesus is your only hope. If that’s not where you are don’t call, it’s not like some magic trick that you just try and see if it works. The call is a deep seated conviction. Let the reality of what the Bible says about who Jesus is and the reality of your condition rise to the surface and let it propel you to see the answer that is in Jesus.

Maybe you’re here and you’re like well I’m already a Christian so what does any of this have to do with me? Here’s my answer for you. This text says there is a intimate connection between your confession and your heart, they are linked. So I ask you this, what areas are there in your life where your confession doesn’t line up with your heart. Think about those things and allow the gospel to work in you.

My other answer is, perhaps you’ve been a Christian for awhile, but you haven’t quite understood it. One of the great things which happens when you study the Bible like we do is it fills out your faith, it gives you better categories and words to understand what it is that God has done in you. So maybe allow this text to mature you in your understand of the gospel and how it works and then take it and start sharing that gospel with other peoples.

And for all of us I end with this one last quote, from a sermon by the apostle Peter right after Jesus’ church first got started. He said this, “Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:10-12).”

Let’s pray.

Listen to this sermon…       

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May 25th, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets

Series: The God(ness) of God | Romans 9-11
I. The God of Glory 9:1-29
II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
III. The God of Future 11:1-36

II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
Week 2 – Romans 10:5-13

Introduction

Good morning everyone. So we are right in the middle of our “The God(ness) of God” sermon series. There are three main sections within this series, each focusing on a certain aspect of the character of God. The first main section about God’s glory, that he is trustworthy, merciful, compassionate, and just. The second main section, the one we are in, is about God’s gospel, that in Jesus God has done and offered something phenomenal to us.

A couple weeks ago I was talking to one of you who happened to get in a conversation with one of their friends about God and at some point in the conversation our church came up and the friend said he’d like to come to check it out. When I heard that I was kind of happily surprised until I heard the response…which was something like, “Okay man, you can come but I’m warning you, it’s hard core man.” J

I wasn’t sure how to feel about that until last night. Some of you know that I’m into UFC. Most of you probably don’t realize how much. I check the website daily and read all the fighter’s stats and everything. It’s probably a sin or something. But anyway, there was this big fight last night and we couldn’t afford to get it or anything, so I got on my 10-speed and rode my bike down to this bar that had the fight playing where I could watch it for free.

So I’m sitting in this bar filled with drunk college students, hoping none of them pick a fight with me because they’re all wasted and hyped up on UFC, and I’m sitting there watching the fights by myself and mostly I’m thinking about my sermon the whole time. And then this thought occurred to me. UFC is hard core. And people like it. That made me happy. So now I don’t feel bad at all about us being hard core. That’s awesome. Welcome to The Resolved Church, we’re hard core, we’re like really into God and we’re cool.

Well, that’s my introduction attention gettter. Hopefully now you’re all psyched now and ready to dig into God’s Word. So let’s read the text and pray over it.

Lord God, thank you for the Bible. Thank you for sending Jesus. May greatness of the gospel which can truly save us shine brightly today as we look at this text. May the word of faith be proclaimed today. May our hearts be changed and may our mouths confess that Jesus is Lord. May many hear call upon his name and say, “Jesus save me.” Holy Spirit would you overcome areas of resistance inside of us today so that we can hear what you have to speak to us through these words. Make us humble and teachable that we might grasp the wonderful mystery of Jesus Christ given for us. Amen.

The Law from Moses

Well, there are four main movements or points within this text that we are looking at this morning for the next 30-35 minutes. We’ll talk about the Law from Moses, the Context of Deuteronomy 30, the Gospel from Moses, and how Religion is not the Gospel.

First there is the law of Moses. Verse five says, “For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.” That part which says “the person who does the commandments shall live by them” is a quote of Moses from Leviticus 18:5, where Moses is laying down the law.

When Romans talks about law, there are always two different senses of it. For one people group, the Jews, it is the Jewish law, the 637 commandments that God gave through Moses, saying “the person who does all of them (perfectly), shall live.” That’s the first sense. The second sense is latent within the first sense but is the one which is present within every human heart and it is the law as a principle. It is the principle which says you do this and you’ll get this.

Right now, my wife and her sister are trying to get me and my brother in-law to go and sit through this 3-hour time-share presentation because they tell you if you sit through all that and just keep saying, no, no, no…that even if you don’t sign up, they’ll give you a free stay at one of their resorts as a reward for sitting through their presentation. Sitting through that does not sound fun to me, but that law principle is persuasive. Do this and you’ll get this.

When it comes to God, this is what every religion teaches. Do this and you’ll get this. It’s what makes a religion a religion. Do this and you’ll get this. You’ll be saved, or enlightened, or happy. You just need to empty your mind and meditate and become one with the universe and then you’ll have peace. You just need to do good deeds or these deeds according to our religion. Or you just need to be a good person and then you’ll have a good life and maybe a good afterlife. You just need this, or this, or this… It is all the principle of law.

Martin Luther, not Martin Luther King Jr., Martin Luther of the early 16th century Reformation, is famous for putting this on the table. He said the gospel is something different entirely from religion. Religion is law and what is offered in Jesus Christ is gospel. He said that central to understanding the Bible is understanding the difference between Law and Gospel and once you get that then you are a Doctor of Scripture and equipped to lead Jesus’ church.

The problem is it’s not easy for the human heart to get that. I’ll show you what I mean about our heart problem, but first I want you to see from the text where Martin Luther gets this distinction between Law and Gospel, so let’s go back to the text.

Now if you look at verse 5 just alone, it sounds like it might be saying Moses said you can in fact be saved through law or religion…the person who does them will live. But that is not the whole story. We ended last week by looking at verse 4, which says “Christ is the end of the law” because he fulfilled it and did it perfectly.

You see until him the problem was that nobody could fulfill the law perfectly. Just a few verses earlier, Paul wrote “Israel pursued a law that would lead to righteousness, (but) did not succeed.” Whether it is the 637 Jewish commandments law, or the principle of law in the human heart…no one succeeds. No one does it perfectly all the time. If you could be saved by law that is what you would have to do.

So in order to teach us that Moses understood this, Paul goes on and quotes more of Moses here in Romans 10. In verse 6, he quotes a bunch of what Moses wrote in Deuteronomy 30, to show us that Moses preached the gospel of righteousness based on faith. He wants us to understand that the law Moses gave was to lead us to the gospel.

The Context of Deuteronomy 30

I want to take you to Deuteronomy 30 but before I do I want to kind of set it up and tell you what is going on leading up to Deuteronomy 30. So here’s what’s going on…story time.

Israel, God’s people were slaves to Egypt for like 400 years, they pray and ask God to deliver them…so God raises up a man named Moses to be their leader and lead them out of Egypt. In order to get them out, God does all these crazy miracles…like turning the sea into blood, sending hail and insect storms, and parting a whole sea with some crazy wind, so that the people could have an escape route. You can read about the whole deal in the book of Exodus, it’s a whole book of the Bible devoted to that story.

After they get out of Egypt they’re in the desert. And they end up wandering around in the desert for 40 years. And during that time a lot of crazy stuff goes done. You got another whole book of the Bible devoted to those stories, it’s called the book of Numbers. Here’s some of the things that have happened…

Exodus ended with God giving the people the law through Moses. So one of the things the people do is build a big tent called a tabernacle. Amazingly when they set it up and gather together to worship, this cloud comes and rests on it. Pretty impressive. You’re like wow, God really is with these people.

But then the people get hungry. There isn’t any food. They’re in the desert. You can’t eat sand. So the people get mad at God for taking them out of Egypt, at least there they had food. God responds and sends manna. What’s manna? I don’t know. Even the word manna, means “what is it?” But God rains manna, this food down out of heaven.

Then the people are traveling through the desert on this journey to go to a land God promised to give them and they run into this group of people called the Canaanites and they’re big and strong and have an organized military. So the people of Israel start freaking out. Again they want to go back to Egypt…they get mad at God for taking them out of Egypt, at least there we were safe. God gets mad. I mean what else does he have to do to show the people they can trust him. He about wipes them out in judgment, but Moses prays and asks God to be merciful.

Not too long goes by, the people are trying to obey the law God gave them and worship him…and the people get thirsty. They’re in the desert and it’s hot. What do you expect happens. They get mad at God again. They say, why did we have to leave Egypt. There we not only had water but wine and juice. So Moses ends up getting mad at the people and he hits this rock with his staff and it splits and out comes flowing water to drink.

A little more time goes by, and now the people are sick of eating manna. They’ve been eating the same thing day in and day out and they just want a hamburger. They’re over the diet. In Egypt they had In-N-Out. God finally judges them for their disbelief and lack of trust in his provision and sends snakes to kill a bunch of the people and only those who repent are a saved.

More stuff happens…but all this is within a time span of about 40 years. The end of that time comes, the people are about to go into the land God promised, where things will be good, flowing with milk and honey. Moses is about to die but before he does he gives three sermons. Deuteronomy 30, is in his 3rd sermon. Now open your Bibles to Deuteronomy 30 with me. It’s the fifth book of the Bible from the front.

Deuteronomy 30 starts out by saying look, you’re going to go into the land, but even then, you’re still going to disobey and not fulfill the law and so I’m going to drive you out of it at some point (which we know from history actually happens). But a time will come, verse 6 of Deuteronomy 30 says, when I will circumcise your heart so that you will truly love the Lord your God. When that happens then, pick up in verse 11 with me, then. “…this commandment (the law) that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it (Deut 30:11-14).”

The Gospel According to Moses

Okay. Here is the deal. I told all those stories from Numbers for two reasons. One because of the power of story. Have you ever wondered why there is all this stuff in the Bible about the Jews or Israel? The reason is because their story as a people is as John Piper says, “the historical theatre where the drama of every human soul is played out for all to see.” When we read or hear about their story, we hear our individual story.

Think about it. How many times have you tried and tried and tried and got frustrated with life and you call out to God and ask him for help and he does but then that wears off and then things get hard again and then you get pissed and frustrated and think the whole God thing is worthless? That’s the story of the book of Numbers and it’s every one of our stories. Law cannot save.

The second reason I told all those stories from numbers was to put Deuteronomy in context, so that you would see that Moses knew the law could not save and that the only hope was that like the manna, like the water, God would provide and do something about our human inability to save ourselves. If humans could, then yes, it would save them. But they can’t because they have a heart problem. So Moses preaches the gospel and Paul picks up on that and quotes it in Romans 10. Let’s go there and see how Paul takes this passage from Deuteronomy and sees how what Moses was pointing to was God’s provision in Jesus.

Watch this. He’ll quote part of Deuteronomy and then interpret it for us. Jesus said all the law was fulfilled in him, Romans 10:4, Jesus is the end of law, Jesus himself opened all the Scriptures and showed how it was all pointing to him. Now Paul does that for us here.

Verse 6, look at it. “But the righteousness based on faith (the gospel) says, Deuteronomy 30, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?” Interpretation, “(that is to bring Christ down)” or (Do not say) “Who will descend into the abyss?” Interpretation, “(that is to bring Christ up from the dead).” “But what does it (Deuteronomy) say?” The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.” Interpretation (that is, the word of faith [the gospel] that we proclaim).” What word? “That 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.”

Now that’s cool, just from a Christotelic hermeneutics standpoint, which means learning how the Old Testament pointed to Jesus. But, conceptually is this weird to any of you? I mean I have to admit, the first thing I do when I prepare for a sermon is to sit down and ask a bunch of questions. And when I read this at the beginning of the week I was like, “what the heck is this talking about, ascending into heaven, going into the abyss?”

So let me break it down for you. First, on the plain, most basic level, this is just proverbial wisdom being used. What do I mean? I mean I can’t go to heaven right now and come back. Nor can I go to the abyss, death, and come back right now. I don’t have the human ability to do that.

One I don’t even know where heaven is and I suspect it is outside of the universe. Sometimes the pompousness of man is comedy. There is one story in the Bible about a people who thought heaven was up in the sky and so they had a great idea. Let’s build a huge tower with bricks and mortar up into the sky. That didn’t work. But the principle is still true. Now we have a NASA space program and we have big strong powerful building size telescopes and we know a lot more about the universe and we think now that we know it all and that there can be no God because we’ve found out all this stuff. But we already knew heaven wasn’t in the sky. You can’t ascend into heaven.

Likewise we can overcome death. Sure people have been resuscitated…but no one can go to wherever you go when you die, and then come back here and tell us what it was like for real. You can’t go to the abyss and come back.

So that’s the basic plain level. But there something deeper going on here isn’t there? The deeper thing is this. That’s what we want and that’s what we need. If there is a heaven, and I believe there is, who wouldn’t want to go there? Everyone wants to go to heaven. And what about death? Isn’t death what everybody wants to avoid. Nobody wants to die, unless they are so miserable that they think death would be better. But even then they are still motivated by a desire for a better happiness.

But there is even a deeper level. We in a sense know we need some provision to get to heaven and we need some provision to conquer death. We have a heart problem and this inability to fulfill the law. Heaven is not for lawbreakers. That’s who hell is for. And death is hell, and I need something in order to escape it.

Now the gospel. “Who will ascend into heaven?” No one. We can’t save ourselves and we can’t get to heaven much less make God just give us heaven. But what has God done? He has become a man in Jesus and come down into the world for us to save us and fulfill the law for us so that we might be pure enough for heaven by getting Jesus purity, his perfect fulfillment of the law.

There used to be a Jewish tradition that said if one single Jew would keep the whole law perfectly, just for one day, then God would send down the Messiah. In John Milton’s book, “Paradise Lost” there is a scene where Satan, who does not want to accept that he is a creature and God is the creator, Satan decides he is going to storm heaven and declare war on it and try and force heaven’s gates open and enjoy it’s pleasures. But he and all the demons quickly run away scampering once they see the holiness of the Lord.

The gospel again. “Who will descend into the abyss?” No one. Everyone dies, no matter whether it is from cancer, an accident, or old age. My grandpa died one week ago today, last Sunday afternoon. He lived to be 100 years old. And he’s not coming back. He can’t conquer death and neither has anyone else. Except one person. In Jesus God became a man and he lived the life we couldn’t and then he died not just a physical human death but a divine eternal death to cover the eternality of hell and then he came back to life to tell us about it.

You see in Jesus what we need and what we want gets fulfilled. And when that grabs a hold of you, you give up on counting on your own attempts to fulfill the law and you cling to Christ and his fulfillment of it. That’s how Deuteronomy 30 gets fulfilled, then “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.” Then it’s near. It’s possible. It’s doable because our hearts get cut, or circumcised, because we realize our failure and inability and give up. Here’s a statement on law from Jean Calvin. “In order to teach what means of life is acceptable to God…to instill love of righteousness by implanting a hatred of wiickedness and a punishment for it…it (is) duty of the people to consider in how many ways they drew curses on themselves, and how far they were from deserving anything at God’s hand by their works…” Then we “hear the word of faith” being proclaimed, that Jesus did what we can’t and we get hope that in him we can receive the righteousness the law requires.

You see there is still confession, that’s a sort of work, but it is no longer a work attempting to earn or fulfill law. All works now become an outward display of an inward trusting in Jesus and his work. Let’s read verse 8-10 all together, “But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (that is the word of faith we proclaim); because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart God raised him from the dead you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”

Religion is not the Gospel

Now, well spend some more time on this next week and finish with the rest of the words in this passage. But for my last point today, I want to return to where we started out, with Luther and law and gospel and return to us attempting to grasp how the gospel is something completely different than religion.

I went to see Prince Caspian at the movies this last week. I unashamedly admit it, I am a huge Narnia fan. Now maybe it was seeing that movie, maybe it was some stuff going on in my heart this week, maybe it was this sermon text…but I kept thinking about something that happens in the 5th Narnia book, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.”

In it, there is a boy named Eustace Scrubb. Eustace is pretty self-absorbed and self-centered. He is lazy, doesn’t like to work and rather than repairing a sailing ship like he was supposed to he wanders off. When he’s wandering off he’s stumbles upon a dragon’s lair and all the treasure the dragon is keeping.

He is elated and climbs on top of the pile of gold and jewels and diamonds starts thinking about how great it is and what fun and how his friends will be enthralled with him and his great find. Eustace lays down on top of a pile of coins and falls asleep thinking these thoughts. When he wakes up, he immediately sees a claw of a dragon and hears his breathing. Frightened he runs out of the cave. He runs toward a pool of water hoping to jump in to hide and be safe.

But before he jumps in he looks at his reflection and in shock sees that he himself is the dragon, while he slept he transformed into a dragon. His inner character became exposed for what it really was.

One night Eustace is lying awake, “wondering what on earth would become of me.” He sees a huge lion coming towards him. The lion looks straight into his eyes and tells Eustace to follow him. The lion leads him to a well with clear clean water bubbling up from the bottom. Eustace thinks that maybe if he can bathe in the water he’ll be cured. But the lion tells him he must undress first. So Eustice starts scratching himself and all the scales fall off. Then he scratches deeper and his skin comes off. When he is going to put his foot in the water he looks down and sees that it is hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as it had been before. He thinks there’s another smaller suit underneath and scratches it and tears it off, well exactly the same thing happens again. He’s still an ugly dragon.

Then, the lion says, “You will have to let me undress you.” Eustace later describes the event to his cousin and says, “The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt…he caught hold of me and – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on – and threw me into the water.” He says the pain then went away and he turned into a boy again and when he got out of the water the lion dressed him in new clothes.

When Eustace is talking to his cousin, he speculates of whether or not the whole thing was a dream. His cousin says, no because he has new clothes on, he’s different. So Eustace then asks his cousin, “What do you think it was, then?” What happened to me. And his cousin answers, Well, “I think you’ve seen Aslan.”

In this story, Eustace discovers his inner nature, that his heart was solely inclined to his own desires and pleasures, he was self absorbed, and evil deep inside and it transformed him into a dragon. Once he realizes he’s dragon and he is horrified, he tries to save himself. He in a sense gets religion and starts trying to claw off his skin, trying to do what’s right, but he can’t do it.

These two scenes depict two ways of salvation. One is being very bad, just seeking out whatever you want, regardless of rules or laws, regardless of who you hurt or effect. Just constantly pursuing the pleasures of the dragon’s lair. The other way is to be very good, act like you are following God, by keeping all the rules and become self-righteous. Trying to take off your dragon scales by yourself.

I want to quote Tim Keller here in his new book “The Reason for God.” He says this, “It is possible to avoid Jesus as savior as much by keeping all the Biblical rules as by breaking them. Both religion (in which you build your identity on your moral achievements) and irreligion (in which you build your identity on some other secular pursuit or relationship) are, ultimately, spiritually identical courses to take. Both are “sin.” Self-salvation through good works may produce a great deal of moral behavior in your life, but inside you are filled with self-righteousness, cruelty, and bigotry, and you are miserable. You are always comparing yourself to other people and you are never sure you are being good enough. You cannot therefore deal with your hideousness and self-absorption through the moral law, by trying to be a good person through an act of the will. You need a complete transformation of the very motives of your heart.”

Wow. You see churches are some of the hardest places to be at times because they are filled with self-righteous, insecure, angry, moralistic, highly judgmental, bitter people. Tons and tons of people have rejected Christianity because of these type of people from churches. So anytime they hear Christians talk to them, all they hear is a call to religion.

What do I mean? I mean this. Religion is law. It is the principle which says, “I obey and therefore I am accepted by God.” The Gospel is different. It says, “I am accepted by God through what Jesus has done, therefore I obey.” Two different people can do the same exact things, whether it be read their Bible, come to church, participate in service, give money, love their families…and they can do those exact things but be motivated by something completely different. One person is motivated by a desire to gain acceptance, the other is motivated out of gratitude for God’s acceptance.

So much spiritual competition can creep into Christianity. The looking down upon each other or sometimes even the putting down each other. But the Christian does not become a Christian by excluding anyone, but because Jesus was excluded for us and we confess out of our heart that he is Lord.

Here’s the deal, we’re all insecure! I’m not saved by how good I am, keeping the law, or how smart I am, how much of the law I know. I am saved because of Jesus. So it doesn’t matter if someone is morally or intellectually superior, because that is not what my identity is based on. I don’t need to be perceived as anything because the truth is if you peel back my layers, you’re not going to be impressed with what you find. I have a heart problem.

So here’s my point. The heart of Christianity is the heart and that differs than religion entirely. Every religion has some teacher that shows the way of salvation by telling you what you must do. Jesus is different. Only Jesus actually claimed to be salvation himself, by doing what we could not do for us. So Christianity is not religion, it is something else entirely…it is good news, it is the gospel.

Conclusion

Here’s my conclusion. The righteousness that is based on faith says Jesus came down for us and he didn’t just stop at earth in living the life we’ve failed at he went down further, into the abyss in order to conquer deathly things in us and the sentence of eternal death for sin.

Let that hit your heart. Stop trying to ascend into heaven and prevent your death. Lay down all your guilt stricken failed attempts at keeping the law and give up your self-security in thinking that you are mature or have it all together. Let the greatness of Jesus as Lord permeate your heart and out of that let your humility and dependence on him shine.

It is painful to admit you are a failure. To allow God to touch you and convict you and peel off the layers of sin. We try so hard to hide it from each other and from God but ultimately it always comes out and God has seen it all along. The beauty of the gospel is that the approval of Christ who knows that and sees that despite that means more than anyone else’s acceptance. I am a poor sinful helpless needy pastor, and Jesus loves me and died for me and rose again and lives today. That’s why Jesus is my Lord. Is he truly yours? Embrace him today.

Let’s pray.

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May 18th, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets

Series: The God(ness) of God | Romans 9-11
I. The God of Glory 9:1-29
II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
III. The God of Future 11:1-36

II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
Week 1 – Romans 9:30-10:4

Introduction

Well good morning to everyone. I know it’s warm in here today. It seems like we’re escaping the normal May grey here in San Diego and we’re getting summer already. Maybe we’ll also escape the normal June gloom too, that would be great. At the end of the day yesterday, I took my family down to OB to watch the sunset and it was quickly apparent to me that summer is in full force. I love summers, I love the beaches, I love San Diego and I love Jesus. So let’s read his book and get started talking about it today. (READ TEXT AND PRAY)

Today we begin the second main movement or phase of our current sermon series “The God(ness) of God.” This is the longest series we have ever done, three chapters, but that is because these three chapters all really uniquely go together and then within them there are three main movements or sort of sub-series.

The first movement, or the first subseries was main about how God is a God that does everything for his glory, that the only reason God ever works in anyone’s life and why the gospel can be trusted is because God acts for his own glory. He is a God of Glory. That first section, which is mostly all of chapter 9, is sort of a big picture snapshot. It’s stepping back away from the immediate and looking at the grand purposes of God and his will as a whole.

In this second movement, or second subseries that we start today, zeros in more on the immediate, on the decisions of humans, and what God has offered us in Jesus. Some have said the first section focuses on God’s sovereign or free or elective will and this next section focuses on human responsibility and faith. Some have said the first section looks at God’s past workings human beings and this next section focuses on God’s present offer to human beings.

It’s a much happier section. One of the reasons I intentionally stuck with our scheduled text last week, even though it landed on Mother’s Day, was so we’d have some Mother’s Day happiness to counterbalance the heartbreaking realization of last week’s text that hell is real and some people will go there. So if that was a little weird for you, maybe that makes sense and maybe it doesn’t, it is what it is. But either way I’m relieved. I’m still sort of recovering from the emotional effect of the text from last week and I’m really glad to get into the stuff the text does in this next section. Hopefully maybe you at least learned what it is like to believe something the Bible says even when it is hard.

Alright, so here’s the four main things we’ll talk about today from the text. The gospel’s universal or trans-cultural or multi-relgious relevance, how Jesus is a roadblock, getting or having heartzeal for the gospel, and how Jesus is the end of everything.

The Gospel is Trans-Cultural (v.30-31)

First, The Gospel is Trans-Cultural. You’ve been hearing me say that Romans 9, 10, 11 was written because in the first eight chapters of the book Paul, the human author said God sent Jesus and says now that anyone who puts faith in Jesus will be saved and forgiven and come to know the soul piercing reality of God’s all-surpasing love. But that created a problem because in the Bible God had made promises to a certain group of people in the past, the Jews, so are those promises or Scriptures no longer good anymore and if they’re not, how can this new word from God, the gospel of Jesus really be trusted?

His answer in the first mini, sub-series, was it was never race that counted but grace. God has always saved whoever he wants not based on who they were or what they do, he determines before people are born whether he is going to extend his grace and mercy and compassion to them or not. And lest we think that there is something wrong with that, Paul arcs that whole section to say whoever and whatever God does, we can rest assure he does it for his glory, which is always good and right and true.

Now in this second sub-section, the main subject isn’t so much going to be God’s glorious purposes that he determines within himself before the foundation of the world outside of space and time, but rather God’s offer to all kinds of people in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

He starts out like he did at the beginning of chapter nine, talking about two kinds of people, two different cultural groups, Gentiles and Jews. Notice verse 30, “What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it…” and then verse 31, “but Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righeousness did not succeed…” So see, you have Gentiles and Israel, the Jews, they are two different cultural groups of people.

Let me talk about the importance of a cultural group and then we’ll talk about the gospel of faith versus the gospel of law, which was a primary cultural element of the Jewish group. I want to explain how the gospel, that the justification by faith, how that is trans-cultural…but to do that we have to understand cultural groups.

So I’ll give you an example here in a second. But first some definintions. Culture is things language, art, architecture, music, dress, worldview, tradition, rituals, lifestyle, and many many other things. A cultural group is a people who form themselves into some sort of community based on common behaviors, arts, beliefs and institutions. This can be super structured in some cases and other cases it can be more loose. And here in San Diego paticularly, the parabolic melting pot, we enjoy the ability to belong to several different cultural groups.

So here’s my example. I take Monday’s off because the Bible says that God rested a whole day of the week when he created everything, not because he was tired, but so that we would have an example to follow beause humans need a day of rest in their week. Most of you have Saturdays off, but that’s a work day for a Pastor as well as Sunday…so I take Monday’s off. Some of you work real hard and that’s good, but you need to think seriously about prioritizing your busyness and following the Bible’s principle of a day of rest. I mean we all know we need it because we start to go crazy after awhile if we don’t get a break…I don’t want to go crazy and don’t want any of you all to go crazy either.

So anyway, Monday’s my day off in the week. This last Monday, I was spending some time by myself and I rode my 10-speed bike, I know it’s not as cool as a fixed gear, but I like it…I road my 10-speed bike over to North Park to go to Off the Record, one of the last San Diego record stores, and to go to Evangelical Bible Bookstore. Anyone who knows me know there’s only about 5 things I love. Jesus, my family, surfing, books and music…maybe the iphone too, I just don’t know if it gets in the top five. The surf was no good so I wanted to spend my me time looking at music and books.

I was walking down University street and there is a bookstore I had never gone into but had always been curious about, it’s called “Controversial Books.” So I went in. There was some mellow harp music playing and I think maybe I smelled incense burning. I started looking at the books…there were books on astrology, chakras, channeling, crystals, god-consciousness, eastern religion, enlightened masters, feng shui, oracles, phenomenology, psychic meditation, readings, spirits, trance, tarrot, voodoo, and several other things.

I came up to the counter and I was looking in the glass display case and a lady behind the desk asked if I needed any help. I told her I was just looking around, that I knew about some of these thigns but others I didn’t and I was just curious. She said she’d be glad to answer any questions I might have and told me her name was Reverend Barbara.

So I just started asking her questions. What’s an angel stone? What this red string for? What would I do with a crystal? She started telling me how to use them and how you tie stones or crystals to each ends of a string and you can say a chant or a prayer to try and ward off bad spirits or bad energy or try and figure something out.

Behind the desk they had all these different kinds of Tarot cards…so I started asking her about them…they had Tibeten Tarot, Buddhist Tarot, Gothic Tarot, Gypsy Tarot…so I asked her how a person decides what kind of Tarot they are going to do? She started telling me that it was whatever one you are drawn to. She started laying out all these different decks on the counter and asking me if I felt drawn to any of them? I said no. I didn’t tell her I felt a little drawn to start casting demons out and calling on the name of Jesus and all the legions of heaven. J But I was ready to if she started trying to put a curse or hex on me or something.

So anyway, I’m standing there and while we’re talking two or three customers came in and they all seemed to know each other. In fact this other dude about my age came up to me and started trying to help me pick out the right tarot deck for me. Then this other lady came up and asked Reverend Barbara if she had heard about the earthquakes in China. She said yes, and she’d said you know what I think? And the lady started nodding her head…”Planet X is getting closer.”

I almost did a double take. But I just waited and listened quietly. After the lady walked away I asked her what Planet X was. She said is was the planet of catastrophe and whenver it gets close to earth in its orbit bad things happen…and she went on to say how she saw this enlightened master the other day who was talking about it and when he talked the crystal around his neck started floating.

Pretty crazy stuff. I asked her what made something controversial…she just said that they were open to anything and everything and didn’t want to judge anyone. But I started noticing something. All the people in the store seemed to either know each other or at least all kind of know and accept this certain mindset or way of thinking…there is a cultural community there of people who know things about crystals and planet X and they all use tarot and accept this certain exclusive philosophy that you really ought to accept all these things.

I tried to ask her personal questions, like what if someone didn’t accept these things or thought they were crazy. She said she had no problem with said proudly that and in fact her boyfriend was an athiest and they were fine together. But then she quickly started telling me how she has been able to open his eyes to some things lately and that it was exciting.

It was very interesting. She was asking me to rejoice with her in her missional attempt to win over her boyfriend to her cultural group’s belief system. But that’s another subject.

The reason I told that long story today is to try and shed some light on this text today so that you might kind of feel a little better the weight and the power of it. Jews are like the Christians here in this text. They think they are right because they have the Bible. Gentiles don’t have or believe in the Bible and they are crazy godless pagans. The Jews maybe feel a little like some of you might have when I was just talking about Reverend Barabra…she’s a “pagan new age crazy witch lady!”

Now here is the shock part…let’s read the text: “What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not puruse righteousness have attained it. that is the righteousness that is by faith, but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching the law.”

Do you feel the weight of that? Here are the Jews. The Bible, the law, is their treasure…in their eyes it’s what makes them special and different and they have formed their whole culture, a sacrifice system and everything around trying to fulfill it’s commands exactly. And you’re going to tell me that the person who doesn’t even care about the real God, whose all into crystals and planet X and tarot that they can have the love and favor of God just for believing in Jesus! How can that be?! That’s what the first word of verse 32 asks, “why?”

Jesus is a Roadblock (v32-33)

That brings us to our second point for today. Jesus is a Roadblock. I get that word roadblock the next couple verses. Verse 32 says, “They (that’s the Jews, who the promises and law of the Old Testament Bible was given to), stumbled over the stumbling stone.” And verse 33 continues, “…as it is written, Behold I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believe in him (that’s Jesus), will not be put to shame.”

Now a stumbling stone, could mean a rock that you trip over accidently and it makes you fall. But that’s not quite the idea here. Because this stone is a placed stone that is intended to cause people to stop and either take offense or turn and believe in Jesus. You see they “stumble” over the “stumbling stone.” It’s meant to be a stone that people stumble over. So when I think of this the idea of a roadblock seems to make much more sense.

Just yesterday to us, this morning their time…in Hebron, the West Bank of Israel, huge concrete roadblocks were removed, so that Palestinians motorists could go from Hebron to the south towns. Roadblocks are a big deal. If you drive up to a roadblock you are stuck. You either submit to the roadblock and trust that it is put there for good reason. Or you try to figure out some way to go around it.

Jesus is a roadblock. Saying everyone everywhere needs to put their faith in Jesus if they don’t want to be put to shame. That’s hard. That’s decisive. You either accept that roadblock and turn and put your trust in him, or you ignore it and try uselessly to find someway around it and you will ultimately end up looking pretty stupid for trying to ram your car up against this huge concrete block.

Being put to shame, is what happens when you die, or what happens if Jesus returns before that and everyone, as far is from the east is to the west Jesus says, will see and know that he is God and that he is indeed the savior. Then all that didn’t put faith in him, will feel remorse and regret and shame and receive judgement.

But what about the question, why? Why do you have to believe in Jesus? I get asked that pretty frequently. Can’t just being a good person and doing good things be good enough? The text here says no, and that is the reason the Jews missed it. Verse 32, “Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works.” The answer here is what Paul addressed back in chapter 7…that the law was never meant to save. That wasn’t it’s purpose.

Just as in chapter 9, he said, race was never what counted in the first place so why do you think it counts now? Now he adds, law was never what counted in the first place so why would you think it counts now? It’s not race but it’s grace and it’s now law but it’s faith. Faith in who or what…that’s what the word believe means, it’s the same word, but in english faiths isn’t a word so we translate it believe…but whoever faiths, action verb, in Jesus, “will not be put to shame.”

Why? Nobody could ever do enough good works to get us God’s perfect righteousness, which is required for us to be with him, because he is perfectly good and holy and can’t be in the presence of any unrighteousness. We needed a substitute, someone like us but unlike us. Someone perfect and then someone to pay the penalty for our lack of righteousness.

Last week, after the sermon, one of you asked me a good question. You asked, “Why couldn’t God just accept everyone and forgive them, why couldn’t he just have mercy on all?”

Here’s some answers. Last July, Amy and I were rear-ended in Mission Valley. Our car and the car who hit us was pretty messed up. There were some costly damages…but they had to be paid by someone. Ultimately it was the insurance companies. But when you talk about human beings…what about the cost of being robbed of your happiness, reputation, or some opportunity?

If someone takes that away from you, the debt can’t just be dismissed. You can only do one of two things. One, you can try and make the perpetrators suffer. You can withhold relationship, or seek revenege, wish and pray that bad things happen to them, go cuss them out, or talk bad about them to certain people…then you might feel a little better, you’re making them pay off their debt to you. The problem is that it makes you colder, harder, self-pitying, and self-righteous.

The other option is to just forgive them by refusing to retaliate in any way, you don’t lash out, you don’t harbor bad feelings, you just take it all in. But the debt is still being paid. Now it is in the form of your personal suffering and agony. You not only have the original loss of happiness or whatever it was but now you give up the satisfaction of inflicting the same loss on that person by absorbing the debt yourself. And that hurts. It kills you. And without Jesus, it becomes a living death.

But how does that work? When someone wrongs you, shoud they be held accountable and corrected? Shouldn’t we try to repair broken relationships or at least try to constrain people so that they won’t hurt others in the same way they hurt us? Yes. Those are motivations of love, a hope that they will repent and change and make things right.

Revenge doesn’t work that way. You might say that is what you want but in your heart you just want to see them hurt and pay. The result usually is that our revenge is far greater than the original offense and we start a cycle of retaliation.

Why did Jesus have to die and why do we need to put our faith in him? Because no one “just forgives” a price is always paid for wrong. Forgiveness is bearing the cost inside and dying, instead of making the wrongdoer pay, and the hope is the wrongdoer will be changed by such love. Forgiveness always involves pain and personal suffering. On the cross we see not just Jesus as a martyr, or a symbol of sacrifice, or a great teacher but a mysterious exchange.

On the cross, Jesus, God himself in his very nature, absorbs into himself the pain, violence, and evil of the world. Jesus is a God who became a human being so that he could offer his own life to absorb all the moral evils we have each committed so that evil might be punished and many of us would not. Jesus wouldn’t had to die unless it was absolutely necessary. Unless there really was a penalty to be paid. Unless he was really God and paid it himself for those who put faith in him and that work. Otherwise Jesus is a bad example and teacher if he threw his life away and it was not necessary.

In Jesus a roadblock is placed. Jesus causes us to really deal with ourselves and the things which control us and to recognize that we don’t have what it takes to change or to pay off our debt, we need something, someone greater, him. And in Jesus, neither justice nor mercy loses out, because justice is satisfied and the mercy of the gospel is extended to people of all cultural groups.

We either love and receive and accept this provision or we turn away from it and stumble and get offended, thinking Jesus isn’t necessary.

Heartzeal for the Gospel

This gospel is a gospel of love, which leads us to talk about a heartzeal for the Gospel. How can God be a God of love if he doesn’t experience and enter into our human suffering? You’re right, he can’t. That’s why the gospel means good news, because in Jesus, Christianity is the only world religion which claims that God actually does. And once that love grips our hearts we become gripped for people.

And that’s what happened to Paul, the author of Romans. In his life Jesus literally came down out of heaven and stood in his way as a roadblock. You can read the story in Acts 9. Paul’s a smart, zealous dude, out to please God and gain his righteousness by stomping out heresy. So he’s on a trip to go to Damascus and kill some Christians and Jesus shows up in bright light and stands in his way in the middle of the road. Jesus confronts him and calls him to repent.

Something happens in Paul’s heart, the regenerating work of the Spirit and he puts his faith in Jesus and Paul is no longer hard but soft. Verse 1 of chapter 10, “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.” It’s just like what he said at the beginning of chapter 9. “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers.”

You see, when we realize what Jesus has done for us, we learn that there is nothing greater and there is no other solution. Some of you might think you’re a Christian but you don’t think other people need Jesus too. I wonder if you’ve ever really then grasped the greatness of what Jesus has done for you. Others of you, you seem to have grasped the gospel by your affirmation of sound doctrine. But there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of love for non-Chrisitans. God’s love is not like that. Even his anger is always tempered with love.

Here’s a way to tell. When I told you the story of Reverend Barbara, were you angry at her and think how stupid? Or did you you feel compassion for her as a lost person that needs Jesus? You see some of you worry me. Verse 2 There a “zeal for God, but no according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.”

Could it be that we could be that we being to think that we deserve or gain God’s righteousness just by believing the right things, when really in disguise it’s just us trying to establish our own righteousness? The only way out of that is humility. A humble admission and acceptance that there are no buts, I’m usually and most often self-centered and wrong and I need Jesus a whole lot. It’s usually the things we don’t want to hear or don’t like that are actually true.

This is such a great rebuke after the clearest chapter in the Bible on election and predestination…because that teaching tends to have this effect, especially on young men, it makes them proud. I know this because I used to be one of them, a young proud man. I know I’m still young, I’m only turning 30 here in a couple months, and I know I’m still proud and arrogant a lot of the time. I also know from my experience about 7 years ago when I learned Romans 9 that I got proud for my new found knowledge and looked down upon anyone else who didn’t accept it. Zeal, but not according to knowledge. I got it but I didn’t get it. I got proud.

You know what I think? I want to press in on you here. I think there are a lot of 5 point, zealous Calvinists in hell, because experientially they never really believed they, personally, were depraved and in need of Jesus. They thought their sound doctrine saved them and they had no real love for Jesus or for non-Christians. And if you don’t know what a Calvinist is, that’s okay, you fill in the blank, anything you label yourself as that other than a poor dumb needy sinner. Zeal isn’t bad, only when it’s misplaced. It needs to be placed in a love for the gospel, heartzeal.

I say heartzeal because Paul’s heart, which here is clearly not mind, but his feelings, heart is contrasted to zeal in a false gospel, one which thinks we could do without the righteousness that comes from God.

Everything Ends in Jesus

Jesus is it. His righteousness on the cross is our only hope. Jesus is all that matters and everything is about him. That’s my last point for today, Everything Ends in Jesus. Our last verse for today, verse 4, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”

I’m tempted to stop right here and just save this for a whole sermon because it is so huge. But it really belongs to this section. So I say some things about how it directly relates and we’ll see maybe next week I’ll do part 2 and do Jesus as the key to the whole Bible.

Christ is the end of the law. What’s that mean? Does it mean that the law was good for a time, some dispensation or period of history but now no longer is because Jesus is here? No. How do I know? Because in chapter seven we learned that the whole purpose of the law, was that we might be shown as sinful and that we need Jesus. The law shows us that we are not good as humans, we fall far short of the perfect and holy righteousness of God.

For people before Jesus it was meant to recognize that and realize that only God giving his righteousness would do and then cry out to God for it. That’s what chapter 4 of Romans says Abraham and David did, they believed God looking forward in time to the provision of God’s righteousness when he would become a man in Jesus.

That Jesus is the end of the law means what Jesus said in Matthew 5, when he said “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them (Mt. 5:17).” That Jesus is the end of the law means what Jesus did when after he rose from the dead he took a trip with two men to a city called Emaus and he did a Bible study with them and he pointed out to them about how all the law and all the Old Testament was all pointing to him (Lk.24:13-27).

Law here in Romans is specicially referring to the Jewish Law, but the principle of law is the same, what he says here applies to any law, any rule we attempt to live by. All of it fails. How many times have you made intentions to go on a diet, or to make some new resolution to better your life, and after awhile you fail? New years resolutions don’t work. No self-help imporovement program will ever work.

No law will save you, only Jesus. He is the appointed end of every law and rule. Only Jesus lived the life we know we need and only through his death and resurrection for us can we die to our personal laws and be risen to new life.

Everything is about Jesus plain and simple. Everything finds and has it’s appointed end in him. Everything in life is a gospel issue. Eating, drinking, playing, money, family, friends, birthdays, dogs, hamburgers and tofu…all of it in some way or another has to do with Jesus. Everything is a gospel issue. And the moment you start making anything in your life more important than Jesus, you’ve gone back to seeking to establish your own righteousness.

Conlcusion

Well let’s conclude. Four points today, The Gospel is Trans-cultural, Jesus is a Roadblock, Heartzeal for the Gospel, and Everything Ends in Jesus. This is the first week of The God of the Gospel in our God(ness) of God series. What makes God God? We’ve learned he is a God of glory, now today we learn he is the God of the Gospel.

What is the gospel and who is it for? The gospel is for all different types of people from all sorts of cultures, no matter how crazy or sinful they are, it doesn’t matter. The gospel is Jesus. He has come into this world and put himself in our way as a roadblock. We will either embrace him or turn away from him but those are the only two options.

But Jesus is worth it. He truly changes our hearts because in a great reversal he as taken our place as a substitute so we might be forgiven. Out of that forgiveness we gain a love for people and our zeal to destroy them or affirm our own goodness dwindles and is exchanged for a radical Jesus-centeredness where we start to see him in everything.

We’re going to take communion now, the grace of Jesus offered in his body and blood. Today, let me press you this way. What things are keeping you from Jesus? Really? Are you really a Christian or are you the one running your life? I implore and beg of you, my heart’s desire, is that if there is anything more important to you in your heart than Jesus and his church that you would lay it down. Almost symbolicallly just leave it on this table, receive Jesus’ forgiveness, and walk in newness of resurrected life.

Whatever it is, pride, arrogance, ill will, lack of trust, worry, desire for power or control, fear of life or man, bondage to sex or substances, the love of money and things…all of it. Behold Jesus, who had everything anyone could ever want and he left it all, he left his glory above to come and bear the pain and suffering we deserve so that we could be forgiven.

I’m going to close with some words that have been running through my head all morning, “Ever since by faith I saw the steram, thy flowing wounds supply, redeeming love has been my theme and shall be till die.”

Let’s pray.