Sept. 24, 2017 An Accomplished Goal by Pastor Josh Sheldon

I'll turn your Bibles, please, to Romans, chapter 10, and we'll look at the first four verses of that chapter this morning.

Romans chapter 10, verses 1 through 4. Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.

I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not 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.

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

It's God's word. May we attend well to it this morning. Do you remember the movie

Forrest Gump? He was, to say, not the brightest of people.

And the movie, if you remember, it places him at the center of a whole slew of very famous events, and they sort of interposed the actor

Tom Hanks' picture upon the actual films of these events, and one of them was a game played by the

University of Alabama against someone else. I don't even know who it was. But in that game, Forrest Gump is the running back.

And I don't know who they were playing, and I don't want you checking your smartphones, because it really doesn't matter who Alabama was playing in this game.

But Gump, the running back, received the ball, and it's sort of like, just run,

Gump. And he runs as he's told. He runs past everyone. He leaps over would -be tacklers.

He pirouettes around people who would push him out of bounds. He just does what he's told. He's running.

And eventually, of course, he crosses the goal line, and he just keeps running.

And the crowd goes wild, because they needed, they were down by six points, and they're now going to win the game by one point, and he plows through the band that was getting ready for the victory song.

They're in the track there, and he plows through them, and he keeps running. And the crowd is just a deafening roar of victory, and he keeps running out the tunnel into the street, and probably out of the state of Alabama.

He just kept going. You see, the goal had been accomplished.

The touchdown had come. He had gotten that, and the game was completely over.

And here's the crowd just going crazy, because Alabama won. They got what they wanted. They got the victory.

And Forrest Gump just ran, and ran, and ran. You see, he could only do exactly what he was told.

Run this direction, behind that blocker, get the ball past that line.

You see, he followed directions on how to play football, but he didn't understand or comprehend the game of football.

He couldn't understand that he had accomplished the goal of the game, and that that game had come to an end.

And he just kept following what he knew, and he ran, and ran, and ran. Well, to put this in terms of the passage before us this morning, we'd say that Forrest Gump had a zeal for the doing of football, but he had no knowledge of football.

If you told him, we will think well of you if you do this thing, which is to run the ball, and get it there, you've done well.

But he had no idea what the game was about. In the verses that I read to you from Romans 10, we're confronted with Israel's failure to apprehend something crucial, which is, of course, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

At the end of the previous chapter, at the end of chapter 9, Paul shows two peoples.

He shows Jews and Gentiles who, by diametrically opposite efforts, one not pursuing something and one actively and constantly pursuing that thing, they achieved equally and incredibly different results.

Astounding, because those who did not pursue the thing, which of course is the Gentiles, attained it.

And those who did pursue it, with all their might and mane, missed it.

Well, that was, of course, the Gentiles who attained, as they were going along in their life nonchalantly living, ignorant of God's righteousness, paying it no mind, and the

Jews working desperately for it, paying constant attention to it, and missing it altogether.

I would say a bit like Forrest Gump, knowing how to do the thing of the running, but not understanding what it was all about.

There's one way that Israel missed gaining what they were thought to be trying to attain.

The sole way of gaining what they were after is faith. Faith and faith alone.

That's chapter 9, verse 32. The very one thing they were unwilling to exert. All the things they were willing to do.

All the tacklers they were willing to dodge. All the effort. All the training to run that ball.

Which, of course, is obeying God and seeking after the righteousness of God.

All that effort because of a misunderstanding, because of not understanding where this righteousness comes from.

From God and by faith. They stumbled over God's stumbling stone in the previous chapter at the end of it.

Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is that stumbling stone. And that's where they stopped.

You see the referee is blowing his whistle as hard as he can. The game's over.

The coach is screaming after his wayward running back. He's saying, you've done your job. You've reached the goal. Now shower up and get something to eat.

The crowd is watching in astonishment. And they run and run and run and run.

Look first at verse 1. Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them as they might be saved.

You know, one might think that the Apostle Paul would be pretty frustrated with them by now.

I mean, they'd abused him with words. They had stoned him. They started riots against him.

They falsely accused him of all sorts of things. There's hardly an abuse we can think of that they didn't impose upon him.

We might expect him to say, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them as they might pay for their offenses against me.

Something imprecatory like that. But no. He exposes his heart to us, to the

Romans in this scripture. What do we see there? We see this deep commitment and burden for their salvation.

In Romans 12 .14, we're going to read sometime when we get there, Bless those who persecute you.

Bless and do not curse them. This is something we see Paul here living out.

Because he was persecuted by these people for whom he prays. He's trying to bless and not curse them.

Quite the opposite of the Pharisees who, as Jesus said, they tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.

And here the Apostle Paul, who is going to tell us to bless and not curse those who persecute us.

Here in chapter 10 verse 1, we see him living out what he requires of us.

We see him praying for that nation that so generally had persecuted him in such terrible ways.

One time leaving him for dead. Let us be sure that we, like the

Apostle, when we preach what one person must do, when we see their fault, that it's something that we can say as does

Paul. We've lived it out. We know what this scripture means. He speaks of his heart's desire.

Heart here is combined with his prayer to God. Now this word for prayer that he uses is not the common one usually used.

He chooses instead a word that is used only of prayers to God, and then only for urgent and specific needs.

It's often translated as supplication. It denotes more than a request.

It's something more desperate than a request. It's something that I must have. And fulfillment of this thing can only come from God.

When he says, my heart's desire and my prayer, my supplication to God for them, he's saying only

God can do this, and I can't live without. Think of John Knox in Scotland saying to God in his prayers, give me

Scotland or I die over and over again. Not, Lord, show me how

I might win Scotland. You, God, must do it. Scotland or I die.

This is the kind of prayer Paul is giving here, this constant heartfelt, this rendering prayer to God and to God alone because only

God can save. I mean, where else can we go for such a thing as salvation, which is what the righteousness of God is about.

It's about salvation. It's about our eternal destinies. I can preach about it, as I am today.

You can testify about it, as many of you missed no opportunity to do, yet only God in his good and perfect will, only he can grant it.

Only he can say this one is intended by me to benefit from the cross borne by my son.

That's a prayer to God. That's a supplication because we're going to the only one who can do this.

And Paul does what the Old Testament priests did, you know, where the prophets represented

God to the people. The priests are the ones who brought the people to God. The original rendering could be something like this.

Brothers, indeed, the desire of my heart, my supplication to God on their behalf in that priestly way, my prayer over them, if you will, is for this one cause that you,

God, might save them. His heart is laid bare as he pleads over Israel that God would do what?

Open their eyes to Jesus Christ, the stumbling stone over which they had stumbled as we spoke of last week.

Our ESV Bible. In verse 2, it leaves out a word from the original. I can't fathom why they left this out.

That verse, verse 2, if you look at that again, it should start with the word for.

For I bear them witness that they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. You see, that word for connects the verse with what had just come before it.

He's still explaining Israel's animosity to the gospel and how that works in the framework of a sovereign

God. And now he explains what's at the core of their problem. For I bear them witness.

Why am I praying for them? I bear them witness they have a zeal for God. They have zeal for God.

Zeal for God is a good quality to have, is it not? I mean, Jesus was zealous for the honor and sanctity of God's house in John chapter 2, verse 17, when he cleansed it of the merchants that were in there.

John tells us that the disciples remembered after the Lord's ascension, after the

Holy Spirit was given. Then they remember the psalm which said, Zeal for your house has eaten me up.

And they tie that to Jesus cleansing the temple. That zeal for God is a good thing. Paul rejoiced in the

Corinthians' zeal for him and his work. In 2 Corinthians 7, 7. And then in chapter 11, verse 2 of that same letter,

Paul reciprocates this. He says, for I feel a divine jealousy or a zealacy, if you will, from the same word.

I have a design jealousy for you. Zeal in the Jewish mind was a passionate concern for God's honor and his law.

In fact, as the Pharisees of the gospels show, they wed these two together. Their God's honor upheld by following the precepts of his law.

Zeal is such an important quality. Zeal for God, a deep, abiding concern for his honor, for the sanctity of his house, for him to be exalted among the nations.

Simeon and Levi showed zeal for their sister's honor when they slaughtered the offending Shechemites in Genesis 34.

Phineas is one of Israel's heroes for his zeal when he killed the Israelite with the Midianite woman who were flaunting themselves while the people were mourning for their sin that they had committed with those very

Midianite women. Remember, he ran a spear through both of them. And he became

Israel's hero, and he's exalted even in the Psalms. Because Phineas showed zeal for God and showed honor to God when he could not abide that happening while the people were mourning their sin.

Elijah zealously, if you will, killed the prophets of Baal. Yehu zealously wiped out

Ahab's apostate line. There's a lot of truth in the idea that God's honor is respected when his law is obeyed.

Much of the law was given for the stated purpose that God be glorified and be feared as the

Canaanite people saw his people's obedience. As they saw their zeal for God, and they would look upon that and say, what a wise and awesome

God this is who would make a people like this and give them such laws as this to follow.

And we have to admit that obedience like zeal is a good quality. Even Jesus, before he was taken up, in Matthew chapter 28 -20, he tells the disciples to teach people all that he what?

Commanded. Which implies teaching them to obey everything I told you. The Lord said in John 14 -15,

If you love me, you will keep, and keep is just another word for obey, but keeping involves guarding and protecting.

If you love me, said Jesus, you will keep my commandments. So what we have here is

Israel's zeal for the righteousness of God. And we might ask, what's wrong with that?

What's wrong with that? Well, the rest of the verse tells us, but not according to knowledge.

Their zeal overcame what the scriptures were actually saying. Their zeal for God was misdirected because ultimately they had no knowledge of what

God wants. They studied the scriptures with reverence. They obeyed them with diligence.

Jesus said in John chapter 5, verses 39 -40, Do you see how closely that ties to what

Paul is saying in Romans chapter 10? Zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.

Willing to expend all energy towards accomplishing something, but having no knowledge of what the ultimate goal is.

We might think of Matthew chapter 15, verses 8 and 9, where Jesus quotes from Isaiah chapter 29 -13, and quotes it verbatim,

In other words, they say the right things. They do the right stuff.

Last week we spoke about how Jesus spoke of the Pharisees counting out the cumin seeds, to make sure they got the law, the tithe, that one seed out of ten that goes to the

Lord just right. They honor me with their lips. They say and do the right things, but their heart is far from me.

In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. A man named

Vincent Smiles wrote this, Do you see what he's saying there?

They obeyed the law for its own sake. They obeyed the law for the doing of it. Really, we could say they obeyed the law for themselves.

To make themselves look right. To make a great show of their prayers and their phylacteries, as Jesus speaks of in the

Sermon on the Mount. They do it for their sake, not God's. Doing the things of the law, understanding, okay,

I have to run the ball from here to there, and then if I cross that line, I've done my job.

And not understanding what it's really pointing towards, what the game is about if it's football, but the righteousness of God is so much more important than just a game.

The righteousness of God, what Jesus Christ accomplished, and is ours by imputation of God, by His grace, through faith.

Zeal without knowledge is so dangerous. It's what gave birth to the

Pharisees, the Pharisee in Jesus' parable, the one who just couldn't get over himself, the one standing in the temple and speaking of his wondrous deeds of piety.

I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of all I owe, I pray all the time, I do all these things,

Lord, aren't you impressed with me obeying the law?

Zealously, we could add. And he left the temple in the same condition he had entered.

He fell and was broken on that stumbling stone. From last week, from Romans 9 .32,

faith, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, not just a general faith, not just I believe stuff, faith in Jesus Christ and His cross and what

He accomplished there. And all the while, you remember from that parable, the tax collector in the same temple at the same time, reciting no scripture, making no appeal of his deeds before God, claiming nothing before God, his vision of God driving his eyes to the ground, his fists to his chest, and this one gives just this singular cry from his unclean lips,

God, be merciful to me, a sinner. And which one leaves with the righteousness of God?

Which one leaves justified? We all know that answer. The one who was so impressed with himself, the one who was zealously following the rules and doing it for the rule's sake, which really means for his own sake, or the one who realized that all

I can do is fall down before God and beg for mercy. The psalmist wrote, your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies for it is ever with me.

I have more understanding than all my teachers for your testimonies are my meditation. If we'll only hear what they say and not let our zeal reduce them to a bunch of pithy statements and rules, easy to memorize, quick to employ against every stronghold, and utterly missing the point.

It's a process that is without knowledge. In fact, this misguided zeal actively avoids the knowledge the scriptures should impart to us.

How is it that they have no knowledge to direct their zeal? How does this happen to us?

How do we go from wanting to please God to ultimately just pleasing ourselves and trying to impress others?

How does our zeal get us to this wrong place? We join Forrest Gump, not knowing anything about the game, and just running right out of the state because I was told to run and I'm not gonna stop running.

And that's what is going to impress people. It's in the next verse.

If you look at verse three there in Romans 10. For being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.

You might notice that righteousness appears to be fairly important in that verse. It comes up three times. Ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God and then substituting their own version of righteousness in the place of God's righteousness, which means the third use of righteousness, they're not submitting to God's righteousness.

So, unknowledgeable. Do you know what God's righteousness is? Righteousness is? And if it's not

God's righteousness, brethren, that we are seeking after, if it's not

His righteousness that we have attained, that we are striving for, there's only one other choice.

It's very binary. It's either God's or it's yours.

You could take all the different worldly definitions of righteousness and ways to think about it and ways to understand it and ways to achieve it, lump them all together.

That's your righteousness. And then there's God's. There's only the two.

You're ignorant of God's righteousness. I'm not understanding that it comes from God. This is a passive kind of statement.

You don't reach up and get it. We'll speak about that, God willing, next week.

Don't say, who will ascend to heaven and bring it down to me? Establishing their own, which means and implies not submitting to God's righteousness.

Now, the first of these doesn't mean they're completely ignorant about God's righteousness.

Rather, they were ignorant of a crucial point. They just couldn't get the fact that the righteousness of God revealed in the

Scriptures comes from God, that you are a recipient of it and not an achiever of it.

It's the stumbling stone again. And what blocks them? It's the need for faith.

What comes before faith? Brokenness. Humility. Those sorts of things.

Pride. Obscuring the fact that what they zealously sought was impossible to attain. After centuries of failure, they got up, they dusted themselves off, and they said,

I got this. They wanted to earn what the Gentiles had gained. The Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it.

That is a righteousness that is by faith. Romans 4, 13.

That whole chapter being about this idea of an imputed righteousness. For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

They just couldn't get it that this righteousness is not earned.

It can't be earned. Not by us. It was achieved by the

Lord Jesus Christ, but by none of us. It is yours by faith, which involves repentance for your sins and a heartfelt desire like Paul in chapter 10, verse 1 that we just read to be reconciled with God and knowing that only by Jesus Christ can you be.

It's something conferred by God, by His grace, because of His mercy.

He will confer this righteousness on those who have faith, those who will repent. The Roman Catholic Church and others like it, like the

Latter Day Saints, they teach that you earn righteousness as you do good deeds, that God sort of adds it to you as you impress

Him with how righteous and how pious you are. But everywhere the

Scripture says that this has nothing to do with the doing. Romans chapter 3, verses 21 -22

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

The third part of that verse says that they did not submit to God's righteousness. Now the word submit has this military flavor, soldiers submitting to the authority of their commanders and the commanders to the colonels and the colonels to the generals and the generals to the legionnaire leader or whatever the case is, whatever those titles are supposed to really be.

It's the idea of lining up an order and submitting yourself to the chain of command as it moves up over you.

Submit really is more of a command. Now God commands all men everywhere to repent. It's something that we must have.

It's available only on God's terms. We've said that what this is, faith in the

Lord Jesus Christ, by faith His righteousness is yours, by faith His obedience to God and the righteousness that proved is attributed to you as if it was you who obeyed.

So what happens when we're ignorant of God's righteousness on the one hand and in any case unwilling to submit to it on the other?

Well that's the middle of verse three. Seeking to establish their own, seeking to do it on their own terms, find righteousness their own way.

They put together their own system. Do you remember the comic

Calvin and Hobbes and they had this game, Calvin Ball? I won't even try to describe it to you except for this, in Calvin Ball the rules were ever changeable.

As the game was played Calvin and Hobbes would change the rules to satisfy their need for the moment.

So they would change what was first base and how you actually got out and where the boundaries were. It was Calvin Ball. Which just means it was anarchy really.

Well that wasn't actually in any of them but the game was like that. And Paul faults

Israel because they established their own way of gaining God's righteousness and it may as well have been

Calvin Ball just changing the rules to suit their need of the moment. Their system wasn't really as malleable as Calvin Ball.

But it may as well have been. Why? Because it wasn't God's righteousness that they were pursuing.

And that's really all that matters. So it's God's way. It's something given by God.

It's righteousness that comes from God. It's by faith and it's imputed to you by faith in the

Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone. The last verse sort of sums it all up.

There's a piece of knowledge that was missing. There's something they didn't get.

Their zeal made them like a speeding driver blowing past a stop sign. They sped past a sign that said

Jesus, stop here. And here is what this journey has been all about.

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Christ is the end of all these things you were striving after.

You were going after the law for the law's sake. You were going after the law for obedience' sake. For your own sake.

But Christ is the end of that. For the righteousness you thought you were trying to attain.

He's the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. And there's a great question that swirls about this.

It's that one word, end. What does it mean that He is the end of the law?

The word in Greek is telos. Our English word, end, is more ambiguous than that original word.

It's sort of the same question that we wrestle with in Matthew 5, 17, where Jesus says that He came not to destroy but to fulfill the law.

When it is fulfilled, is it removed from us? Does that mean we are no longer bound to follow it?

Is that what Paul's saying here? Christ is the end of the law, so now it's not there anymore.

It's gone. Don't worry about it. But telos, end, it can also mean a fulfilled purpose, as in an accomplished goal, the end of a thing.

Plutarch wrote that justice is a goal, is the telos of law, and that once there is justice, the law has been fulfilled.

It has completed its task. That's the way the Greeks used this word. We can think of a race, which is what

Paul has alluded to in the last few verses of the previous chapter. The Gentiles, who were not racing after the goal got there, while hard -charging

Israel, aimed all their effort towards the wrong goal at themselves instead of at Christ. So what we have in Romans 10 -4 is something like this.

For Christ is the finish line at the end of the race, and once it has been crossed, the race is over.

The goal has been accomplished. The race, the contest, is at an end.

See, the issue here is not whether the law has any abiding force in the believer's life today. And I'm a bit grateful

I don't have to deal with that here this morning, because that's such a huge and controversial question.

But that's not what Paul is dealing with in Romans 10. In Christ, God has brought an end to the era of the law.

That harkens us all the way back to the whole of chapter 4, where Paul makes this magisterial point that Abraham was counted righteous what?

400 years before the law. 400 years before the righteousness of God in the law was revealed.

400 years, 4 centuries prior to that. What happened?

Abraham believed God. Abraham's faith was in the promises of God.

And that, the faith, the believing, that was counted to him as righteous.

And we have to understand that 400 years later when the law did come, it's not like, oh, look at this.

Here's a new standard. I guess Abraham didn't make it, so he's, no, nothing like that. By faith.

It's always been by faith. The point in these verses is all that the law pointed towards.

Everything it stood for, everything it stands for, all its requirements have been accomplished.

They've been finalized. And because the goal has been reached, it's been removed as a barrier between God and man, between you and God.

If you will but repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that barrier between you and him, your sin is gone.

The law's purpose in exposing your sin, this is what Conley read to you from Galatians chapter 3. It's why the law stood as your tutor, stood over you as a taskmaster, just to show you this one thing, that you can't accomplish the law, that the righteousness that it demands is impossible except for the man, our

Lord Jesus Christ. He did it. He obeyed it. He fulfilled his every demand.

He did so willingly, out of love, out of zeal, could we say, for his Father, for his

Father's honor. See, the law was a strong gate blocking entrance to the throne of grace.

It said to you, you have failed. And it says to another, you're not good enough. And to most of us, if we read it and read it honestly, it says, you always mess up.

You never get it right. You read what it says. You read what

I tell you. And you say, well, I'm wrong and the law's right. I won't do it again. And then tomorrow you do it again and the law just thunders against us.

And every time we sin, that strong gate that maybe started cracking open a little bit so we could get a toe in there and maybe approach unto

God, slams it closed. You see, in Jesus, this gate is opened.

I mean, can you hear him saying in John chapter 10, in verses 7 through 9, truly, truly I say to you,

I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers. But the sheep did not listen to them.

I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture by faith in Him.

The end, the goal, the completion of the law, by His having obeyed it in your stead, if you will believe

He did, you can look back as a done deal, as an accomplished feat.

And He did it not for Himself because He never was unrighteous. He never had to earn

God's favor. He didn't come as a man like you and I are and say, well,

I better get myself righteous before God so that I can die for their sins. No. He was what we call impeccable.

Jesus Christ could not sin. He never did sin. He accomplished as a man the righteousness of the law that God might impute it to us by faith.

The hardest part of this is really what we read from the psalm, the end of Psalm 46, verse 10.

Be still and know that I am God. Stop striving against a law that you'll never fulfill.

Stop trying to make yourself right before God because you can't do it. What is the gospel?

The gospel is Jesus. What is the gospel? He accomplished God's righteousness for you.

What is the gospel? He died for your sins, for everything the law demands of you and you couldn't do, none of us could do, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

For all our stumblings, and what does James say? If you keep the law, you must keep the whole law.

But if you stumble at one point, you have violated the whole. Except in Jesus Christ, He being the goal, the telos, the end, the finalization, the completion, the reason for everything that the law was accomplished in Him.

And if you will but have faith, if you repent of your sins and come to the Lord Jesus Christ, that success, that righteousness, yours, by faith, and the hardest part here is to be still.

Stop striving. Believe. Because anything else is a zeal for God but not according to knowledge.

It's all your energy focused towards a goal that you have made yourself, ignoring what the scripture actually says.

Which is simply this, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for everyone who believes in Him shall be saved.

Paul tells us here, the goal has been reached, all that the law was put in place to accomplish has been accomplished.

And that by another, by the Lord Jesus Christ in whom alone is found salvation, in whom,

I pray, even this afternoon, you will believe in. Put your faith in Him and be saved.

Amen? Heavenly Father, again, we thank you for bringing us together and for the day that you have given.

We pray, Lord, that you continue with us as we continue with you. And that many would hear this message this day, that the saints who know the

Lord Jesus Christ, who have fallen down before His cross, will be strengthened. And Lord, if there are any in this place who know not the

Lord Jesus Christ, that you would prick their hearts and bring them, Lord, by your grace, by your mercy, because of your goodness, to full faith and salvation in Him.