Oct. 1, 2017 A Near-by Word by Pastor Josh Sheldon

We'll turn your Bibles, please, to Romans chapter 10.

Excuse me.

Romans 10.

We'll attend ourselves in the preaching to verses 5 through 13 in Romans 10.

For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall

live by them.

But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven.

That is to bring Christ down.

Or who will descend into the abyss.

That is to bring Christ up from the dead.

But what does it say?

The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart.

That is the word of faith which we proclaim.

Because 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.

For the scripture says, everyone who believes on him will not be put to shame.

For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek.

The same Lord is Lord over all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him.

For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

This is God's word to us this morning.

In the middle of these verses, in the ninth verse, is the ultimate point, really, of everything the

apostle's been arguing for in this book.

Since the opening chapter, he has been pushing us to understand this righteousness of God

revealed in the gospel.

And now in Romans 10, verse nine, there is the goal, there is the sum,

there is the purpose and the point of it all.

To be saved.

Simply to be saved 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.

To believe the gospel and by that faith have credited to you the righteousness of God that the gospel

reveals is the point of it all.

And as we've seen going through this book of Romans, that the righteousness of God, as opposed to

the righteousness of man or the righteousness that comes from the law or the righteousness based on work, the righteousness of God

is equated with salvation.

Because if you have that, by faith in Jesus Christ, who is the righteousness of God,

then you're able to stand before God on that basis.

The guidepost was given to us from the very start of this book, really.

Romans one, verses 16 and 17, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation

to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith for as it is written,

the righteous shall live by faith.

That's what this has been about.

The power of God to save sinful men in the revelation of his righteousness in the gospel of Jesus

Christ.

And what does this verse in chapter nine or chapter 10 press upon you but this very thing?

To believe and be saved.

Believe this gospel and know salvation.

Confess with your mouth what you believe in your heart.

He is Lord, Jesus is Lord, and that God raised him up from the dead.

Now, doesn't that sound simple?

Doesn't that sound too simple for us today?

Sophisticates all.

To say that if we are hell -bent sinners, rebels against God,

his enemies in all that we do, and you're saying that all that gets

turned around by saying Jesus is Lord and God raised him from the dead.

Isn't that too simple?

Can such a thing as that save me from damnation?

The answer is yes.

The answer is yes.

The promise of God is that by grace you are saved through faith.

Do you really mean that all I have to do is say those words and hell's fires are quenched?

Yes.

But here's the caveat.

Now, don't leave because I'm not gonna become tricky.

I'm not gonna get clever with you.

I'm not gonna skip outside the text and then demand more of you than the scripture does.

This is not a bait and switch.

I'm only gonna say that the confession with the mouth must follow the conviction of the heart.

The words themselves have no power.

Anybody could say those words.

There's only this one caveat.

There's only this one thing.

Believe.

The same word is faith.

Believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord.

Believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.

Romans 4 .25, God raised him for our justification.

That you may know that you are indeed saved and made right before God

by faith in what Jesus Christ has accomplished in this righteousness revealing gospel.

Yes.

Dear ones, yes, it is that simple.

God doesn't overcomplicate it for us.

He doesn't give us a crooked path with many detours.

It's not like a complicated Boy Scout or interior school.

It's not like a hearing exercise.

We have the compass and the map and it's hard to get to the prize.

Though those are fun, it's a straight path.

Believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead.

The verses I read summarize what Paul's been arguing since late in chapter nine, that this righteousness of God

revealed in the gospel actually does save by faith, not by works, by God's sovereign choice, not by

human effort, attained by those who are not looking for it.

The Gentiles not looking for it.

They weren't pursuing it, but they apprehended it.

While those who did pursue it did it the wrong way and so missed it completely.

I'm gonna divide our passage this morning up into three parts.

First is verse five, which stands by itself.

Just verse five, a summary statement of law -based righteousness.

Then verses six through eight, the sweet relief of faith.

And finally, third, the promise of God to all who believe, verses nine through 13.

So look at verse five again, if you would, please.

You see that it begins with for.

And that signals that here is the proof for something that came before,

which is, of course, verse 10, for.

So we need to know what for is there for.

So there's a lot of fors here in those sentences I just spoke.

Verse four is the reason that the for is in verse five, and we need to know why that for is there.

Well, verse four is for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes, ending that introductory

portion of chapter 10.

Christ is the end of the law for everyone who believes.

And it's as though we're expected to ask, well, how is it that Christ is the end of the law for everyone who believes?

What has faith to do with that?

Well, faith believes God's declaration that his son Jesus is the termination of all

that the law demanded, which is righteousness, but because of human weakness never achieved.

He, Christ Jesus, is and was and always has been the goal of it

all.

And so now we can ask how so.

And that's verse five.

That's why verse five begins with a for.

It connects it to verse four.

We're explaining something.

For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments

shall live by them.

Here's the demand of the Lord by his law.

Paul quotes there when he says the person who does the commandments shall live by them.

He's quoting way back from Leviticus chapter 18 and verse five.

And what follows chapter 18, verse five in Leviticus is a list of precepts concerning

proper sexual conduct and the purpose of giving those

precepts.

And that purpose is simply that the people of Israel not behave the way they

saw and learned in Egypt and will see and be tempted to learn in Canaan.

It's very simple.

Do this and live.

Do this and live.

And as often as not, the do this is given in terms of don't.

Here's the law.

Do this law, but the law is saying what you don't do.

The proof, of course, is in the doing.

The proof is in the doing of the law or the avoiding of the things that are negated by the law.

It comes in a promise.

Do this and live, which is a warning.

Do it not and die.

So here then, this is exactly how Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who

believes.

Faith admits that we cannot satisfy God's righteousness by the workings of our own efforts.

Faith looks to Christ who did satisfy the law.

Faith says, I believe that Christ did it on my behalf.

And by that faith, chapter four of Romans says that God then imputes, reckons

to you what Christ has accomplished.

The righteousness of the law.

The futility of trying to do it on our own is so well and famously documented in

chapter seven, which we did several weeks ago.

That's the man who's chased around by the demands of the law and he's harried into the depths of

despair by his inability to do it.

The futility of it all drives him out of his mind, as it were.

Try as he might, his failure against the law is always there before him.

If the law says do it and he wants to do it, he can't do it.

If the law says don't do it and he doesn't want to do it, he doesn't.

He can't get out of this trap.

As much affinity and agreement as he might have to the law, he keeps not doing it and he knows

that this will lead to death.

So he finally cries out, who will save me from this body of death?

And the whole program ends with verse five of chapter 10.

The person who does the commandments shall live by them.

And we can add, the person who does not shall die.

And as James tells us, he who would live by the law, he who would attain to righteousness by the

doing of the law, he who would look there and by his own ability and

effort and strength, accomplish the righteousness demanded by the law, that one

fails at a single point, he's failed at it all.

Period.

That's the end of the story.

That's why, praise God, Christ is the end of the

law for righteousness.

Why?

Because you or I and no human who's ever lived could do

it.

None of us.

Christ is the end of the law.

He is the one who accomplished it all.

That's the righteousness based on faith.

That's another kind of righteousness than the one that is based on the law.

It's not a different kind of righteousness that we're talking about.

God wouldn't confuse us like that.

It's the way to the same righteousness, the one that the man in Romans 7 despaired of, the one

Gentiles attained without pursuing, which Israel did pursue but missed, is the righteousness of faith.

The righteousness of the law is desperate futility.

The righteousness of faith is a sweet relief, and that's verses six through eight.

The righteousness based on faith says something different than do this and live.

It says, verse six, do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down, or

who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ up from the dead.

Paul again is quoting Moses, except of course for those parentheticals

which wrap around our Lord Jesus, bring Christ down, bring Christ up.

That's about Jesus.

Now Moses didn't say that, but the rest of it's a direct quote of Moses.

And what are we saying here?

Faith trusts what has been revealed.

Again, it's fairly simple.

Faith trusts what's been given.

Moses is telling the people where he quoted it that the word of God with all its demands, with

all its promises, has been given.

They don't need to try to go to heaven for it like the builders of Babel.

God sent it down to them through Moses.

Nor must they travel into the underworld the way the Egyptian mystery religions that they were surrounded by for 400

years might have taught them.

It's there.

The righteousness based on faith says that God has sent down his righteousness.

Men try to dig into the mysteries of God with all sorts of things.

We have Kabbalah, the study of special messages embedded in the alphabet.

We have the Latter -day Saints where they copy the mystery religions with their degrees, sort of like the

masons where you move up the ladder in different ways by delving deeper into the mystery.

The righteousness of faith, though, it doesn't ask where to go to find God.

It doesn't ask, can I have a revelation?

I need to bring something down or dig something up.

It doesn't do that because it is apprehended that God has sent his word.

He sent his son.

He did come down.

John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that he gave, can we say he sent?

Throughout the book of John, that gospel, Jesus makes the point over and over again that God sent him.

He so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

Philippians 2, verse seven, Christ made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born

in the likeness of men.

That speaks of his advent, of his coming.

1 Timothy 1, 15, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Faith -based righteousness doesn't try to drag him up from the grave.

We believe that God has already raised him for our justification.

Like the women at the tomb, we believe the angel who said, why do you look for the living among the dead?

He is not here, but is risen.

Like Peter said at Pentecost, the men who were listening to him, he said, go look in David's tomb, and you know what you will find there?

Well, you'll find David.

Well, you'll find what's left of him.

His bones, his remains are there.

He's right there.

He was not resurrected.

Go to Jesus' tomb.

What will you find?

A hole in the cliff, a tomb.

It's empty.

Faith, rather than doing the law, says that Christ has done it for me, and I am assured of this.

Why?

Because God raised him from the dead.

That's what Paul's saying in chapter 10 of Romans.

We don't say, bring him down.

God sent him down.

We don't try to drag him up.

God raised him from the dead.

Faith believes that, and everything that implies,

most specifically in the context of what Romans is, what Paul is pushing us for in Romans,

that Christ satisfied God's requirement for your righteousness,

and he proved it by raising him from the dead, so we don't go up and get him down.

We don't go down and drag him up.

We, by faith, believe that Christ has come.

But if we don't speak of going up to bring him down or going down to bring him up, what do we say?

See, the first thing faith says is what we don't say.

We don't say who will go to heaven and who will go down and bring him up.

What do we say?

That's verse eight.

The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.

Again, parenthetically, that is the word of faith that we proclaim.

Again, this is quoting Moses.

He is telling Israel that the word has gone from God to Moses, then from Moses to the people.

They had it.

It was right there in front of them.

Moses said this just before he died, and among his last acts was to write an entire

copy of the law.

So here's the point.

They had it.

The word is near you, in your mouth, it's in your heart, it's there.

We today, do we not have God's word?

We have God's word before us, in our Bibles, that God, in his

providence, in his power, has preserved for us.

So we can have it in our hands, open it up and say, the word of God is there and near.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and the word became

flesh.

And going fast forward all the way to John chapter 17, what does Jesus, the word, then say?

I and my Father will make our home with him.

How much nearer can the word of God be, than to be in plain English in front of us,

and in dwelling with Jesus Christ by his spirit in us?

This is what faith says.

The word is near you, in your mouth, and in your heart.

We're so hard to satisfy though, aren't we?

I want more.

I want the secret knowledge.

I want the real deal.

There are mysteries to explore.

There are fine points to parse out.

There has to be.

And we say something like this, oh Lord, show me, I pray, your ways.

And forget that the word is near.

That the word is close.

That if you know Jesus Christ, the word is in your heart.

And that what your mouth says comes from the heart.

As Jesus says in Matthew 19, from the heart proceeds what comes out the mouth.

And then James tells us that that could be good or that could be bad, if the heart is right.

Even if it's just right for that moment.

Then what comes out is good.

Here's a word that is close to you.

We don't have to drag it down from heaven.

We don't have to bring it up from the abyss.

We have to believe what it says.

What's the close and near word for you?

The greatest command.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind.

You say, well I need more, Lord.

That might have come down, but I need something deeper.

I need something that allows me to explore the mysteries, to go into the depths of

things.

What did Jesus say?

And the second is like it.

You shall love your enemies as yourself.

Micah chapter six, verse eight.

Easily accessible, nearby.

What does the Lord require of you?

But to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with the Lord.

Your God.

It is a nearby word.

And brethren, we have to live on that basis.

We have to, by faith, say that this word has come down and it's been given to us and all that it reveals has been

accomplished in Christ Jesus.

This is what faith says.

There are deep things of the word to explore.

Men who are beyond any of us in their abilities to do that have spent their whole lives

pulling out the truth of God for us.

Commentaries can fill bookshelves and libraries.

And that's good.

It's a gift to the church.

Remember this, though, that the word is near you,

believer.

You, saint.

You whose faith is in Jesus Christ who can't do textual criticism,

doesn't know anything about the ancient languages or cultures or histories.

That same word that all the world's scholars are gonna spend their whole life

ferreting out for us in a good way, that same word dwells in you.

That word is near you and in your heart and then proceeds out of your mouth.

And this is a glorious thing.

This is an encouraging thing.

This is a glory to God at every moment and a great sort of thing to realize.

Remember when Paul says, faith says the word is near, that that word isn't

just a thing.

It's not simply the text that we have before us in physical Bibles.

It's Jesus.

He is that word.

Why Paul over and over again is able to say that there's neither Jew nor Greek nor male nor female nor slave

nor free, why?

Because in Christ Jesus with all our different abilities, with all our different personalities, with all our different talents,

in Christ Jesus we're all the same.

Because Christ Jesus had to die for the smartest and the least smart of us the same way, the

same suffering, the same blood and the same resurrection that proves the same

justification for us all.

That word is near.

That word is in your heart.

There's promises attached to this.

There's great promises attached to this.

Verses nine through 13, the promise of God.

Because 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.

Here is our faith.

Jesus is Lord.

God raised him from the dead.

How different from do this and live.

What blessed relief from fail or die.

Believe.

Have faith.

To say Jesus is Lord can only be meant as a confession that he, that Jesus fully

shares and participates in the name and the nature and the holiness and the power and the majesty and the

eternity of the one true and living God.

That's all wrapped up in that simple confession.

Jesus is Lord.

He is everything God is.

This is public proclamation of his sovereignty.

Not just an idea that God is that, that God is sovereign, but a personal affirmation of

his, of Christ's lordship over me.

Me, who has his word near in my heart.

It is my belief that he, that Jesus is the resurrected and

exalted Lord.

So much here beyond this, these simple words.

But you don't need to ascend to heaven to get it.

You don't need to dive down to the depths to find it.

Here it is close and nearby you.

Jesus is Lord.

First Corinthians 8 .6.

Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist and one

Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

Notice the prepositions, the same phraseology, but with God it is for and with Jesus

it is through.

We exist through God or for God and through Christ.

He is God.

Titus 2 .13, we're waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and savior,

Jesus Christ.

Who is our savior?

Jesus Christ.

Who is our great God?

Jesus Christ.

What do you mean when you say Jesus is Lord?

It must be this, that he is our great God and savior.

Jesus is Lord.

What do we mean?

He's born of the virgin.

Matthew 1 .22 -24, all this took place to fulfill what the Lord

had spoken by the prophet.

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel.

That is, God with us.

Jesus is Lord.

That confesses that he lived a sinless life.

Hebrews 4 .15, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but

one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin.

And finally this, he died for your sins.

He was buried and he rose again.

1 Corinthians 15 .3, for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that

Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.

That God raised him from the dead.

It's all here in God's word, a word that is nearby.

When Moses said this to Israel, that word was drawing near from Sinai with thunder and with lightning and with smoke

and with warnings.

They were told that anything or anyone who touched the mountain while the word was drawing near must be put to death.

Hebrews chapter 12, verses 18 to 21 describes it this way.

For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a

trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further message be spoken to them.

For they could not endure the order that was given.

If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.

Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I tremble with fear.

The lesson Jesus read from the New Testament in John's gospel, what does it say?

And the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory.

Glory is of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth.

This is what Moses was prophesying.

Jesus is the hope of the five books that Moses authored.

The word of God's not a mere collection of writings and tribal records.

It is the living and active and powerful revelation of the living and active and powerful God.

Hebrews goes on, but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and

to innumerable angels in festal gatherings and to the assembly of the firstborn who are

enrolled in heaven and to God, the judge of all and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect and to

Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant and to the sprinkled blood that speaks of a

better word than the blood of Abel.

You know, God's relationship to his people has always been mediated by the word.

The Old Testament, especially the law of Moses, was the arbiter between the Lord and them and the people.

Now God never just said, you know, you did wrong and I'm displeased, rather it was like this.

I told you, oh man, what is good.

And I told you in a word that I sent near to you.

But we, we believers today in the new covenant,

in the new covenant ratified in Jesus' blood, we have a word that is near to us in a person, not the

tablets of stone.

In Jesus, in him we have the Holy Spirit residing in the new heart that he, the Spirit, gave

us so that the confession of our mouth is the splendor of a reborn spirit.

Jesus, who is the word, is near in a way that Moses prophesied and the people then could only yearn for.

Confession with the mouth is nothing but the outward expression of what God has done in the heart over and over again in the

law.

They're told to obey with their bodies, that is to do the law.

But it was always to be by faith, was it not?

Over and over again, almost every time there is a do, it was conditioned with what we have in, for example,

Deuteronomy 30, 14.

It is in your heart.

Verse 16 of that chapter, obey by loving the Lord.

A reference to the heart.

Verse 20, choose life by loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to

him for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land of the Lord that the Lord swore

to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.

You see, it never was a do, it was always a believe.

Believe that in the doing, God will bless.

Have faith in the promise of his word that it is by his grace that he makes such promises and by his loving kindness that he

delivers his people, for it's impossible that God should lie.

It is not now, never was, by works.

The doing of the law, absent faith in the God who gave it, avails nothing.

God would have the heart to be the leader of the doing.

And we can ask, how is it that believing and confessing can actually save you?

You look down at verse 10 in Romans chapter 10.

So Paul answers here.

For with the heart, one believes and is justified, and the mouth, one confesses and is

saved.

One man wrote here, just as belief with the heart and confession with the mouth are so closely related

that they cannot be separated, so too are justification and salvation.

Do you believe that Jesus died for your sins?

Do you sitting here today believe that, that Jesus died for your sins?

I don't mean that he died for sin.

That would make him only an example of how displeasing sin is to God.

Do you believe in your heart that he died for your sins?

That's a confession of the mouth flowing from a converted heart.

That's a confession by which you are justified, declared righteous.

Verse 11, for the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.

For there's no distinction between Jew and Greek.

The same Lord is Lord over all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him, for

everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

What is it to call on the name of the Lord?

It's to believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that he is Lord and that God raised him from the dead.

It's Jesus' name.

That name that is above all names, the one to which every knee will one day bow and every tongue will confess.

A couple of weeks ago, we stopped, we pointed out how in Isaiah, the stone of offense is Yahweh

and how Paul in chapter nine, verse 33 of Romans says, that stone of offense is Jesus.

The implication that Jesus and Yahweh are one and the same in all ways that I just listed earlier

is so obvious to the apostle that he doesn't even stop and write something like, so you see, when I call Jesus

Lord, you need to understand that I'm saying he's Yahweh, that he is God.

It's just there.

And he does it again with the passage from Joel that was read to you a little while ago.

Joel meant for them to call on Yahweh, that's the Lord, call on the name of the Lord and be saved.

Yahweh.

What we sometimes think of as the God of the Old Testament, not the God of the Old Testament, it's

Jesus, the God of the new, the God of the entire Bible, the God of the entire world.

Paul unapologetically and with the utmost simplicity says exactly the same thing.

He calls Joel's Yahweh Jesus.

Remember the stone of stumbling.

The stone of stumbling was a person, Christ.

Believe on him, believe on that stone and you will never be put to shame.

All the promise of God is invested in him and all those promises are true and they will all come

to fruition.

Your faith will be vindicated.

You will not be put to shame.

Second Corinthians 1 .20 says, for all the promises of God find their yes in Jesus.

That is why it is through him that we utter our amen to God for his glory.

Call upon him and be saved.

And verse 12 ties us all together in much the same way as Ephesians 4 .4.

Verse 12 of Romans 10, there's no distinction between Jew and Greek.

The same Lord is Lord of all.

And Ephesians chapter four, beginning of verse four says the same thing.

There is one body and one spirit, just as you are called to the one hope that belongs to your call.

One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all, who is over all

and through all and in all.

So we can end with verse 13 now.

The direct quote from Joel.

And here's the reason I asked Jesus to explain the chapter a bit to you before he read just the verses

for the reading.

Calling on the name of the Lord involves his entire revelation.

For them then it meant believing in the coming judgment.

God will do it.

That's verses two, one through 11, as Jesus pointed out.

Then believe that the call to repentance is real, that God's ear does have that special regard for

confession from the heart when sin is admitted to God

and forgiveness is asked in Jesus' name.

Believe, verse 25 of Joel 2.

Believe that in his mercy, he restores the years that we whiled away.

And finally, Joel 2 .32.

The one that Paul quotes at the end of Romans 10, the passage that we have

this morning.

And shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Believe this gospel from your heart.

Let your heart move your mouth to confess Jesus as the resurrected Lord and be saved.

This word is near to you.

This word, if you believe in Jesus Christ, is in your heart.

It comes out your mouth.

This is a word that has saved you.

And if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, if you haven't bent the knee to him, I can

declare to you that if you will believe that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead, the

promise of God from Joel chapter two, from Romans chapter 10, from Genesis through

Revelation, is if you will believe in your heart these things, you

will be saved, amen?

Heavenly Father, again, we thank you for this day and for your word.

And we pray, Father, for salvation to ring forth and to ring true in many hearts this day.

If you, Lord, by your grace and through your spirit would bring this word to bear in that way,

for only you can do it.

So we thank you for these things, Father.

We pray for your strength and the following of this word that you've given that is so near to us.

We thank you, Father, that you've given not just the word in words, but the word in a person,

in Jesus Christ, in whose name we gather and pray, amen.