Faith Comes By Hearing, And Hearing By The Word

The Need to Hear the Gospel 2:15

and he recognized that apart from some magnificent, miraculous, saving work of God, that the vast majority of his peers and his contemporaries and loved ones and friends and neighbors growing up, that they were all consigned to the same faith that the rich man was. They were all trusting in themselves and in their own works and their own intrinsic value, and they were all neglecting the golden cord that Lazarus had swung out into eternity upon.

Paul's concern was that the majority of his Jewish contemporaries were consigned to the pit. And because Paul understood the stakes, because Paul had some grasp on what that meant, it just broke his heart as he watches all the people he's grown up with and loved and even worked alongside with for many years. He knows the outcome that they're going to face, and it just breaks him. And that breaking that Paul's going to undergo, which we're going to see in Romans 10, it wasn't just Paul. If you remember Jesus himself, when Jesus came across in the past and he came to Jerusalem, what was his reaction when he came to the city? What was his reaction when he first laid eyes on that city? What did he do? He wept. Specifically, the text says this, it says, Jesus cried out and he said, oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Jesus looked out at people who were consigned through their own volition, through their own intransigence, their own rebellion, and consigned themselves to the pit. He desired to call them to himself, but they were not willing. It was not in their nature or in their desire. And what's ironic about that, what's cruelly ironic about that, is that they had all the advantages that the pagans didn't. When Paul laments over the Jewish people, rejecting, turning their backs against their Messiah. The cruel irony is that they had all the advantages that the Philistines and the Ammonites and the Canaanites and Hittites and Jebusites and every otherite out there didn't have. Israel was God's covenant people. They had received God's word and testimony and law from Abraham and Moses. Jesus, the Messiah, had grown up in their very midst. They had every advantage under the sun, and yet they had turned their back on this one. They ignored the prophets, the priests, the paraclete. They ignored the sign that said danger ahead, and they were headed to the abyss. Now for Paul, the outcome or the stakes, it was too much for him to bear, and that's why he's weeping in today's text. It was too much for Him to bear. Do you understand? Paul had said if he could trade places with these people, he would.

That was the nature of his lament. If you go back to Romans chapter 9, he flat out says, he says, look, if I could trade places with my countrymen that I might be accursed in their place, I would do it in a heartbeat. Such was his love for his people. He said this. He says, I tell you the truth in Christ. I'm not lying. My conscience bearing witness to me in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow in my heart, for I wish that I myself were accursed for Christ for my brethren's sake, my countrymen according to the flesh. So that's in Romans 9, and that leads up to everything we're going to see in Romans 10. Today's passage, Paul's lamenting over the danger his countrymen are in, and yet he's going to remind himself and his audience in Rome that the singular way that His fellow Jews might come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ is if people would go to them and preach them the Gospel. All right, let's look at verses 1 through 5 and then just work our way through the bounds. Verses 1 through 5. Brethren, and remember this is written in tears, so to speak, brethren my heart's desire and my prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved for I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God but not according to knowledge for they being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness have not submitted to the righteousness of God they're doing everything wrong verse 4 for Christ is the end of

Romans 10 and the Word Preached 6:12

the law for righteousness for everyone who believes for Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law, the man who does these things shall live by them. All right, let's stop there. As we said a few moments ago, the context for everything we're reading, the context for these very famous verses about preaching the word and how are they going to hear unless someone preaches to them, the context deals with Paul's love for his people, his love for his brethren. It falls right in the midst of these chapters that deal with his love and his concern and his passion for His own countrymen. And what's hard on his heart is that his countrymen have not submitted to the righteousness of God. Which is funny because if you talk to a Pharisee, they thought they were the most righteous people on the face of the earth. I mean, after all, they had the tall pony hats and they looked the part and they wore robes and they prayed the loudest and they stood on the corner and they had the best seats at the table. And they were trying to keep all these 613 laws and then they added more laws on top of it in case God forgot a few. He's talking to people who thought that they knew what righteousness was and how it's to be attained. And he says, you don't know a darn thing. You don't know it. You've neglected what Scriptures actually say about how righteousness comes. And you think, you think that what's going to happen is as sinful as you are, as moldy the bones are under your whitewashed tomb of that robe you're wearing, you think that by doing a bunch of good deeds, you're somehow going to offset the spiritual transgressions you've been causing and replicating since birth. They're going to keep the law and that's going to be righteous in God's eyes, you're going to tip the balance in your favor, and God's going to go, come on in? He says, no dice. And it breaks his heart because they're ignorant. He knows they've got some knowledge there somewhere. He hears it. I mean, they quote Scripture out of context, right? They talk about the laws. He knows it's not because they're cognitively deficient. It's not because they're stupid. It's because they're ignorant, willfully ignorant of what the Gospel is of how righteousness is attained. Their zeal, it was misplaced. It was misplaced and was going to doom them, doom them. He could just see them driving off the edge. You know, in Biloxi, one of my favorite places to go, you know the fishing bridge? It's like behind the Palace casino. If you go behind the Palace Casino, just go right past it, there's the fishing bridge out there. And when you start on the fishing bridge, it looks like it goes on to the other side. You could see the other side of the back bay. And the first time I drove on it, I was like, wow, this is awesome. I found a shortcut, you know, a secret way. So I'm driving, just driving along, and I'm like, boy, not much traffic here. You know, there's a lot of people fishing. And I get on, you know, you get on towards the end, and you quickly realize it ends. It doesn't make it all the way across. It doesn't make it all the way across. We actually go out there quite a bit. I really do enjoy it. As a side note, if there's any wannabe fisher people in this room, I'm a wannabe fisher people. I can cast all day long, not catch most. I learned this. You have to have the right bait. We tried for the longest time, my family can attest, we tried for the longest time like using lures, you know, metal shiny things. I thought if it's shiny enough, the fish will bite.

Nah, that's not the way it works. The minute we switched to frozen shrimp, then we're in business. Now we can catch those sail catfish all day long. Anyway, anyway, we can talk fishing another time. With that said, the point of this bridge, the bridge ends. It stops right out over the water. It doesn't lead anywhere. You can go out and fish on it. It will not get you to the other side. If you try to cross to the other side of the back bay to some safe harbor, if you insist on going down that road, you'll end up in the water. You'll drown trying. In the same way, or at least a similar way, the Jews of Paul's day were running out of bridge. They had committed themselves to a path, to a road that they were just sure was going to take them across. And like a giant neon sign, Paul's saying, no, stop. You won't get where you want to go or where you think you're going on the road you're taking. It will not work. It will not work. Salvation doesn't hinge on your righteousness.

It can't because you're not righteous enough. All our righteousness is like filthy rags. Your salvation doesn't hinge on your own righteousness. It hinges, it hinges on His. It hinges on Jesus Christ. It hinges on Christ alone. The Israelites of Paul's day, they had of Moses, they had no Jesus. They had a law, they had no grace. And what they had wasn't going to bridge the gap that they needed to cross. So as Paul considers this, as he considers his Jewish contemporaries, he knows what they're trying to do because he himself had been on that path.

Remember elsewhere in his epistles, he says, I used to be that guy. He says, I was a Hebrew of

No Faith Without a Savior Proclaimed 10:50

the Hebrews, right? I was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. I had this stuff down. But now I look back at all that I prioritized, all that I was, I look at that and I know, I know that that was rubbish. It was garbage. In of itself, it accomplished nothing except to puff up my ego. I've learned that salvation doesn't come through my own righteousness, but it comes through that of Christ. And so Paul looks at his whole generation, a whole generation, and he sees that they've turned their back on the singular means of salvation that God has offered to them in the very generation that he was offered.

And it just breaks his heart. Let's look at verses 6-13. But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way. Do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven? This is a reference to something in Deuteronomy. That is to bring Christ down from above. Or who will descend into the abyss? That is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth, in your heart.

That is the word of faith which we preach. That, if you confess. If you confess, not keep the 613 laws, but if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, then you will be saved. For with the heart one believes in the righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made in the salvation. For Scripture says whoever believes on him will not be put to shame.

For there's no distinction between Jew and Greek. If the Pharisees hated what he just said, they really hate this. There's no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord, the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon him. For whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. You know what cliff notes are, the short version of bigger books? He gives the teaching, and then in verse 13, he says, this is what it boils down to. And this is what the Pharisees and the religious elite and the Zealots and the like have all wrong. They're trusting in something else, but what they should trust in this, whoever calls on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, whoever calls on his name will be saved, not those who somehow find a way to earn their way into God's kingdom. Now, let's stop for a moment. Sometimes in Christendom, we don't fully understand our Jewish modern contemporaries. We don't fully understand maybe what's their outlook. When they think about salvation, how do they think they're saved? Believe it or not, it's actually a hard question to answer because the word salvation doesn't mean the same thing in that context.

The word salvation is used in a lot of different ways in modern Judaism. There's not common agreement among modern Jews as to what the word salvation means or why it's even necessary. And it's hard to unite behind the means of salvation if you deny the need for salvation. With that said, Jewish salvation historically has had three primary paths. The first is to think that through keeping the law, the mitzvot, the 613 laws within the Torah, that that's the means.

That's how you get in. The second view, and this is kind of the easy view, is that, well, we're saved, whatever that looks like on the other side, on the basis that we're Jews. My lineage, my ancestry, goes back to Abraham, and God made a covenant with Abraham, and therefore, I'm in.

The Ordinary Means of Grace 13:56

So some would say, well, do all of the things, and whatever salvation is, you'll be saved. And some say, well, I'm saved just on the basis of my ancestry. The third view, which is the view that Abraham had, was that we're saved through faith. In the Old Testament, Jews were saved the same way we're saved now, faith in the Messiah. The difference is Jews looked forward. They looked ahead. Like Simeon, who waited all his life to see the consolation of Israel, they were saved on the basis of expectation that he was coming.

And that like Isaiah 53 said, that when he came, the sins of mankind would be laid upon his back. Now, did they understand it with the clarity that we now understand it, given that we have buried, died, resurrected Christ? Or perhaps not with that clarity, and yet they had faith in it still. So the third way Jews are saved is on the basis, historically, of faith in the Messiah. However, Paul's contemporaries, that was not the essential component. They put their emphasis on law-keeping or on their national ethnic status. The Pharisees made both of these mistakes all the time. And even if you convinced them, even if you got them to a common understanding of the need for salvation to begin with, which really didn't fundamentally hold to. Even in the present, they don't fundamentally share the same understanding of our need to be saved from sin. They didn't necessarily see it that way. But even if you could convince them that they needed to be saved, they would have pointed to the law or the lineage as the bridge that would get them across the back bay into heaven, the bridge that would get them into God's kingdom.

Well, in these verses, in verses 6 through 13, the Apostle Paul says that this bridge doesn't cross. It doesn't make it across the water. He says, in fact, the exact opposite is true. It's not a function of your ancestry, and he blows that apart. He says, look, even the Greeks will be saved. He tells the Jews, it's not on the basis of ancestry, because God is going to save people from every kingdom. And if you knew what Abraham had said, or the promises made to Abraham, you'd get that. Because God told Abraham that through you, all the nations will be blessed. So it's not a function of your lineage, and it's also not a function of your law keeping, the things that you have done. As we've said in the past, if you get to heaven's doors and someone asks you why you deserve to walk in? You don't. The answer is you don't. It's not your own righteousness that's the ticket you punch. You say, all right, St. Peter, here it is. I'm in. Now, if that were the case, then what would heaven be? Heaven would be a debt that God owes you. If you, through your righteousness, could do all these steps, get your voucher redeemed, and go to heaven and say, I did it. I did it. Then what does heaven become? It becomes a debt he owes you. God says, I guess you did. I guess you made it. Well, come on in. There's no grace in that, and that puts the onus of salvation largely on you. All that, there's more than we have time to go into, but all that's what he's blowing apart here, not just in Romans 10, but throughout the whole book.

Throughout the book, he's blowing apart that idea that you can save yourself. With that said, what's stopping everyone, including the Jews of his age, what's stopping everyone from calling on their Savior right now? What's stopping the whole world right now in our day, in 21st century North america and Gulfport? What's stopping our community from calling on Jesus right this very moment? Well, Paul will address that in our seminal verses, verses 14 and 15. Verse 14, how then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent.

As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the Gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things. Have you ever played with dominoes? And I don't mean played with them. Have you ever actually played dominoes? Like the game, does anyone know how to play the game of dominoes? I don't. I've played with these things for 40 some odd years.

Preaching, Hearing, and Saving Faith 17:47

You can guess which side of the 40. But 40-some odd years, I've played with dominoes, right? And I've seen the numbers on it, but I've never actually, in my whole life, I've never played a game of dominoes. With me, dominoes is you set them up, and you set them up on a roll, and you knock it over. That's the fun of the dominoes. In fact, I'm sure that's what most of us have done with dominoes.

Well, in verses 14 and 15, Paul is creating a theological domino effect. You see this? A theological set of dominoes. You touch the one, it affects and informs everyone thereafter. Specifically, in verses 14 through 15, He creates a domino effect with regards to how people come to faith. How people come to a saving faith in Jesus. Specifically, he says here that they must believe. He had already said that in the previous verses.

They need to confess. They need to believe. They need to have faith. But how does that happen? Well, Paul has the answer. He says, well, they have to hear. Before you ever believed any principle or presupposition in your life, you first heard about it. That's not theology. That's just logic. Before you ever believed in anything, you had to first hear about it. And Paul applies the same thing to the Gospel. So he says we must believe and we must hear, and that hearing must come because someone talked to us, someone preached the Gospel to us.

And then that preacher must have been sent to do the preaching. We said this in our Sunday School class this morning. Every man, woman, and child in this room, if you are saved, you've been saved through this very same mechanism, this daisy chain by which God sent someone to tell you that which you ultimately heard and then believed. Sometimes it happens in buildings and rooms like this. Sometimes it happens bedside. Some of the best evangelism that has ever been done on the face of this planet is parents telling their children about Jesus.

Some of the best preaching that's ever been done has been on the side of a bed where a parent lovingly explains something about Jesus to their child. Sometimes it's done in coffee shops. It's done in the backyard. It's done in places where one person who already trusts, who already believes, shares the Gospel with someone who doesn't yet. Who doesn't yet believe. Saving faith doesn't come through osmosis. It comes through the ordinary means of preaching and teaching of the word, which the Holy Spirit sows into one's heart.

When we're regenerated, we're enabled and persuaded to come to faith. Now let me ask you, does this world need more Christians? I'm going to sit here until I get a better response. Mike Barr, does this world need more Christians? Yes, for the love of Pete, for the love of all that is good and right in the universe, this world needs more Christians. Paul looked at Israel and he said they need more Christians.

The kingdom of God needs more ambassadors, more participants. Now, assuming that we acknowledge that, assuming we believe this propositional statement, if it needs more Christians, then guess what? It also needs more preaching because that's how Christians are formed, through the preaching and teaching of the Word. That's what Paul says here. The world doesn't need less preaching. Those who would silence, those who would restrict, those who would limit preaching are limiting the very means that God has appointed unto this end that people would be saved. How will they come to faith?

How will they believe? They must first hear. How are they going to hear? Someone must preach. How are they going to preach? Well, they must be sent. Just spoiler alert, everything we're doing today is the sending of you into the mission field. The people who are sent are not just the people who occupy this pulpit or who walk up to the front. People who are sent are all of us because Scripture says there's a priesthood of believers and we're all ambassadors of the kingdom.

And then as we're sent and as we do this and as we fulfill this and as we preach at bedsides and coffee houses and backyards and like, as we do this, then we are the inheritors

Pastoral Application 21:34

and the recipients of this cool promise, of this cool statement that we saw in Romans 10. How beautiful. How beautiful. What a beautiful thing it is. How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the Gospel. How the heart of Christ smiles when a parent shares about Jesus to their child. How beautiful is such a thing. Again, the office of preacher here is not limited just to those who have the vocational title or who fill pulpits. Now, as we start to wrap up here, we'll look at verses 16 through 21 in a moment. Let me share one other aside. In your own life, if I was ask you collectively right now to think about someone in your life who needs Jesus. Someone in your life who needs to come to a saving faith. Is there someone in your life, a friend, a relative, a co-worker, a neighbor, a spouse? Is there someone in your life who needs Jesus?

How are they going to come to him? How is that relationship going to be formed? Well, sometimes we think that it'll be formed because the individual will eventually wander in the church or God, you know, we're good Calvinists, so we believe God will do all his good purposes. Eventually he'll just yank them into the right setting and they'll get it, you know, they'll get it all ironed out. Well, when we do that, we're neglecting the opportunity and the privilege we have to be part of this process. See, right now there's someone in your life that no one else in this church can reach. Right now, the person who comes to your mind, in all likelihood, I'm not in a position to reach them. In all likelihood, they're in a place that I'll never be. In all likelihood, they're in a place that a lot of the other people in this room will never be.

But you are in their life. Through God's province, you have uniquely been put in a position that I'm not in, that Pastor Fish and others aren't in. You are the ambassador into that person's life that 99% of the other people in this room are not. See, God is cool that way. He doesn't appoint just one individual one priest as they did in the Old Testament to wander into the holy place He says we're all priests now and we all have access but with that comes responsibility that we would be ambassadors for the kingdom of whom we have been called if you want to know better how to do this because this is hard and I get that I do get that if you want to know some tools and means for how to have those conversations that's the point of the sunday school class we have going on. For the next five weeks, we're going to be talking exclusively about how you have those conversations, how you state the Gospel succinctly in a way that it is understood. So I invite you to join us. All right, let's look as we wrap up. Let's look at our final verses, 16 through 21. But they have not all obeyed the Gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report? So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. See, again, this is the domino effect. He's saying there's a relationship. If you want people to come to faith, they need to hear about the faith. So faith comes from hearing and hearing by the Word. But I say, have they not heard? Now in this case, he's referring maybe back again to his contemporaries. Yes, indeed, there's sounds gone out to all the earth and the words to the end of the world. But I say, did Israel not know? Did they not know this? First Moses said, I'll provoke you to jealousy by those who are not a nation. I'll move you to anger by a foolish nation. But isaiah is very bold and says, I was found by those who did not seek me. I was made manifest to those who did not ask for me. But to Israel, he says, all day long, I've stretched out my hands to a disobedient and a contrary people. All right, in these final verses in this chapter, Paul reiterates His concern for Israel. Remember, we do context. We don't just look at those verses about faith comes from hearing, independent from the context in which Paul wrote them. In these verses, it's clear that those who are most on his heart are his own contemporaries. And again, the cruel irony that we talked about earlier was that Israel's rejection of Jesus came in the face of all the advantages they had that the Philistines and the Moabites and the Hittites and the Jebusites and

Christ, Grace, and the Closing Exhortation 25:35

the Amorites and all the Ites didn't have. They had the prophets, they had Moses, they had Abraham, they had the law, they had Jesus raised up in their very midst, and they turned their back on all of that. And back in Romans 2, Paul asked the rhetorical question. He said, what advantage did the Jews have? And then he answered it. He said, much. Much in every way, because to us were committed the oracles of God. And yet, though to them the covenant was made, to them the oracles came, to them the Messiah appeared, yet they did what? They rejected him to the point that there in verse 21, God says, all day long, all day long, I stretch out my hands to these people. I stretch out my hands to a disobedient and a contrary people. But what's cool is that although you think God would just go, all right, all right, I guess they're done.

That's not the case. Is God done with Israel? The answer is no. And if you read chapter 11, you'll see some of the reasons why. God isn't done with Israel. How do we know that? How do we know he's not done with the Jewish people? Well, we know he's not done with them because the very next verse, if you read the first verse of chapter 11, he says this. He asks another rhetorical question. He says, yet has God cast, has God cast away his people? And he answers it emphatically. He says, certainly not. Certainly not. And then after he says that statement, chapter 11, he goes on explaining why, verse after verse. God was not done with Israel in the first century AD, even though they'd given them every reason to be. Every reason. Not only had they ignored and rejected and rebelled against what God had said, they killed their son. You get this?

They had done everything, everything you could do to demonstrate their disobedience and rebellion. And yet, although they were faithless, God was faithful and he's not done with them. He's not done. So Paul asked the question, has God cast them off? And again, emphatically, he says, no, certainly not. He says, God has engrafted you and I into, into the root, but he has not neglected the root. And I believe that there is still a promise that God has made to his people that will be fulfilled in due time. With that said, the common hope that we see in these last verses is this, whether you're a Jew or a Gentile, the common hope for salvation rests upon Jesus Christ alone. There's nothing we can add to him, nothing we can take away from him. The common hope of salvation, whether it's Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, or you and I, the common hope we have for salvation is faith in Jesus Christ. Every other bridge, every other bridge will fall short.

Every other door will stay locked. So what must we do? What must our loved ones do who are still on the outside looking in? Well, the answer we saw like 10 times in this chapter, believe. They, we must turn to Christ and live. Then we must go and tell others to do the same. Let's pray.