Romans 10:14-17

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We've not quite come to the end of this chapter yet, but we soon will, and we'll move into a much more difficult chapter, or at least an equally difficult chapter of Romans.
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But as we normally do, we're going to start in verse 1. That way we understand the text, not outside of its context.
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Paul started in verse 1, he says, My heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.
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For I bear them witness that they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.
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For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.
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For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
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He's speaking here, again, of his ethnos, his people, the
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Israelites. It says, For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.
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But the righteousness based on faith says, Do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is, to bring
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Christ down, or who will descend into the abyss, that is, to bring Christ up from the dead.
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But what does it say? The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith that we proclaim.
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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.
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For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
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For the scripture says, Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek.
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For the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him.
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For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?
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And how are they to believe in him of whom they have not heard?
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And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?
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As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news, but they have not all obeyed the gospel.
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For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?
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So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
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So as I said before, we're nearing the end of chapter 10, and we established last week, as Paul expanded on his earlier comments in previous chapters, about there being no difference between Jews and Gentiles.
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And by Gentiles, I mean non -Jews. Sometimes it's difficult if you're not really into word study and Greek words and whatnot to get that off.
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Never mind the fact that he constantly says Jew and Greek throughout Romans, because he's speaking to Greeks, or Romans, and Jews.
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All Greeks are Gentiles. Not all Gentiles are Greeks. But before in chapter 9, as he spoke about the doctrine of election, we established that, that this is a biblical truth, and how the elect come from all peoples of the world, in what we talked about last week.
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Now Paul asks a series of four questions to bring to mind and to make us think and work out how the gospel and God's sovereign means work together to bring salvation to those elect.
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So in 14, he says, How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?
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How is anyone, much less those elected from the foundation of the world, to call on anyone who they do not believe in?
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Belief here is assigned as a prerequisite for calling on Christ for salvation.
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We have to believe that he is who he says he is before we're willing to call on him.
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Here in John chapter 9, you don't have to turn to it if you don't want to, but the reference is
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John chapter 9, 35 -38. And just to give a little bit of pretext, in John chapter 9, we read about the healing of the man that was born blind.
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We read about the healing and how Jesus explains to his apostles after they ask,
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Why is he blind? Born blind? They assume that he must have sinned or that his parents must have sinned.
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And Christ tells them that neither him nor his parents sinned, but rather he was born blind so that the power of God might be displayed in him.
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The man is healed and then taken by the Pharisees for questioning. Who is this man that did this thing to you?
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And he basically has no idea. I don't know who did it, but he did it.
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He's sent away and they bring his parents forth and they're asking them what they did to make him born blind and was he really blind because they don't believe that he was.
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And they basically just throw all of it on him. Well, he's old enough, just ask him. So they bring him back.
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They ask him again who healed him and he can't answer. He doesn't know who did it.
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But he does know this, that the man who healed him, seeing as no one ever in the history of Israel who was born blind had ever been healed, it makes sense to this man that that man must have been sent by God.
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And they get very mad that he said this and they cast him out. And then in 35 and 38 it says,
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And Jesus heard that they cast him out, and having found him, he said, Do you believe in the
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Son of Man? That is the Messiah. He answered.
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And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him? And Jesus said to him,
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You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you. And he said,
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Lord, capital L, I believe. And he worshipped him.
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The healing was all well and good and a wonderful, wonderful thing for this man. But he could not believe in Christ because he did not know who he was.
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In a similar sort of fashion, when you have car trouble, and you're on the side of the road, do you call a painter to come and fix it for you?
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No. Who do you call? You call a mechanic. Why? Because you believe the mechanic has the knowledge and the ability to solve your problem.
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Just as we would call, as we did as saints, and as saints do call upon Christ to save them.
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He then says, How are they to believe in him in whom they have not heard?
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And how can anyone believe in one that they have not been told about? If they are ignorant of who
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Christ is, how are they to believe? So we see that hearing is a prerequisite for belief.
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We're given multiple examples of this in the scriptures. Just one is in Acts 8.
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It's verses 34 through 39. In Acts we see where Philip is called to go south by the
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Holy Spirit from Jerusalem to Gaza. And while he's on the road, he meets a court official of Candace, the queen of Ethiopia.
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And this court official is reading aloud from Isaiah 53. And Philip asks the man, he says,
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Do you understand what you're reading? And this is the conversation that they have in Acts 8, verse 34.
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He says, And the eunuch said to Philip, About whom I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?
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And then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with the scriptures, he told him the good news about Jesus.
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And as they were going along the road, they came to some water. And the eunuch said,
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See, here is water. What prevents me from being baptized? And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down to the water, both
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Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the
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Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more and went away rejoicing.
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The wonderful, wonderful salvation and baptism of man became only by the explanation of the
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Word. So we see multiple times in Scripture that the hearing of the
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Word is the primary means by which saints are saved. It is the ordained means that God has given to us.
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Paul says, And how are they to hear without someone preaching? There is no one to preach.
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No one will hear the preaching. The hearing of the
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Word sets the necessary conditions or environment necessary or ordained for the
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Holy Spirit to do His work in the heart of the believer. You have to hear it first.
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God has chosen this. So there then must be a speaker for you to hear.
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The responsibility of these men, they are men, is extremely important.
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I want you to listen to the words in these two passages that I'm about to read. You're welcome to flip to them. The first one's in 1
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Timothy 4. But I want you to pay attention to the words that Paul uses both to Timothy and to Titus as he charges them to fulfill their ministry.
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He says in 1 Timothy 4, verse 1, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is the judge of the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom, preach the
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Word. Be ready in season and out of season.
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Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.
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For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off in demence.
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As for you, always be sober -minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, and fulfill your ministry.
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This is in 2
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Timothy. My apologies to 2 Timothy. To Titus, he says this,
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Paul, a servant of God, this is Titus 1, Paul, a servant of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life, which
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God, who never lies, promised before the ages, began, and at the proper time manifested in his word, through the preaching with which
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I have been entrusted, by the command of God our
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Savior. Paul doesn't make light of his commission.
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It is the most serious job that a man can have to handle the word of God.
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And he commissions both Timothy and Titus to do the same.
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The evangelist, the missionary, that goes out to preach, to establish churches as these men did, understood, as we must understand, that this is not a task to be taken lightly.
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It is not. You incur upon yourself a stricter judgment. This is why it says that few should do this work.
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The other thing about this is, considering our current situation in the church, let me ask you this question.
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Would we see fit, would we be okay with arming children and infants and sending them to war?
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Does that make the smallest bit of sense? I hope not.
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But that is what the vast majority of the modern evangelical church does.
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We wouldn't send a child to war. Why do we send infants or baby
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Christians to war? If any of us have ever had a gospel conversation with someone who even remotely rejected the word of God, we understand the conversation and the argument that can be had, the frustration that it produces.
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Even in ourselves, when we heard it, the fleshly desire to reject the word of God is very strong.
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Why would we send someone unarmed to do that work? And make no mistake, when the man of God, when the trained man of God steps out into the world to go do missions work or go do evangelism, he is stepping into war.
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Period. The difference is that while the rest of the world fights over territory and fights corporeal wars, the minister, the missionary, fights a war of truth.
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That is his weapon. But as I said, if we would only send trained professionals to fight corporeal wars in our stead, then why would we not do the same for something vastly more important?
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Paul continues in verse 15, he says, And how are they to preach unless they are sent?
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We train up men in the church. If we wish to train up men in the church, we desire that.
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We train them to lead. We train them to go out. Then should we not also send them out?
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There's no point in training someone to be an elder and not letting them have, not setting them in the position of elder.
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There's no point in training someone to be an evangelist and not sending them to evangelize.
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And yet, there are lots of good men who are stuck in churches that desire to do this work, that are qualified to do this work, and yet they can't be sent, either by a lack of means or by a fear of where the need may be.
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Another thing is that one of the greatest misconceptions about the Great Commission is that every
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Christian, every Christian should share the gospel out of a sense of duty.
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We talked about this yesterday, that we should not share it simply out of a sense of duty because God said so, though that is a part of it.
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But primarily, we should share it out of love for other image bearers, those people who are now like we were.
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We do not know who the elect are. They are among the pool, and the only way that we find them is through the preaching of the word.
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We should also share the gospel because we are blessed to be able to.
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God could have chosen any other means. He could have chosen any means that He wanted to to share the gospel.
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He could speak it from the clouds, as a commentator said. He could speak it from the mountaintops.
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He could morse code it from the sun itself. However God wanted to share
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His word, He could share it. And yet, He chose the foolishness of preaching to do it.
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He has blessed us with the gift and the ability to do so. And out of gratitude we ought.
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But again, it is not the job of every Christian to be an evangelist.
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I want to make that very clear. But it is the work of every single
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Christian to support that work. Be it by monetary means or some other means of support like traveling with them.
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You may not be an evangelist. But the evangelist from your local church may be going to Peru and he has no idea how to prepare food.
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Be his Samwise. You might not be able to carry the ring, but you can carry him.
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I know it's sort of a silly analogy, but it's the truth. If you do not possess the ability to preach the word, if you're not called to that work, but you feel that he has a need and you can fulfill that need, then fulfill that need.
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Perhaps it is through a place to stay. Perhaps you live in a major city that needs a copious amount of evangelism and you have a place to stay.
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You're a believer. Give him a place to stay. Give him food.
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Perhaps you're good at digital ministry. You're good at digital things.
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Your local missionary doesn't really understand how computers work.
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But you can go in and do scheduling and set up things and do all that kind of stuff. Any way that you can support the work is doing the work.
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Just because you're not the one standing on the box or standing at the street corner or standing in Peru or standing in the
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Himalayas does not mean that you're not involved in that work. But Paul charges
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Timothy and Titus to take up the position of evangelist to fulfill it.
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And he gives in both of those the qualifications of the men who should do that work.
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It's very clear in Scripture who is to be an evangelist, who is to be the minister, to make sure that the men who are doing it will take it seriously and perform that task well.
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We read of Apollos earlier. Apollos did preach the word to the absolute best of his ability up to the baptism of Christ.
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And by no means would I think anyone ever in church history belittle that work. But he did not have all of it.
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So Priscilla and Aquila took him aside and showed him the way of Christ more clearly. And then he went about his work with the fullness of the truth.
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Paul says, It is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. He's quoting from Isaiah 52 here, verse 7.
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The verse says, How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, Your God reigns.
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This text's original context is about the emancipation of the
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Israelites from Babylon. What it's about. Paul uses it here in reference to the emancipation of God's people from a much greater bondage to a much greater foe than Babylon.
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And while these are the words of Isaiah and of Paul, these are also the words of God that he uses to describe those who bring his message.
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How beautiful are the feet of those who bring the gospel of God to those still in bondage.
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We as saints are given a great task of telling those elect that they are now free.
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In our own history, in this country, and other countries, but this country specifically, we remember learning in school about the
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Emancipation Proclamation. This was something that everyone learned about. And after that was done, after the proclamation was made, the
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U .S. federal government sent men of the military out from town to town to bring that news to everyone.
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This is what they did. Some places took a couple of days to get to.
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Other places like Texas, in particular, it took years for the news to reach them that all slaves were free.
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Do you think for one second that the news for those in Texas was any less sweet because of the length of time it took to get to them?
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It wasn't. They celebrated every year. So do you think that bringing the news of salvation to God's elect who are still in bondage is in any way any less sweet after 2 ,000 years?
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No. Every time an evangelist or a missionary or an elder shares the good news, any time anyone shares the good news, they're sharing the news of an emancipation from sin, from death, from self -righteousness, from God's wrath.
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There are no amount of tears I think that can fill the oceans, tears of joy that have been wept by the elect in that matter.
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Paul says, But they have not all obeyed the gospel. Or Isaiah says,
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Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us? Paul here reminds us not only of his people, that they denied the message of Christ that was brought to them by Christ, by the apostles, but they've also denied the prophets who spoke of it.
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When they denied the gospel, they not only denied the good news, but they also denied the scriptures that foretold of it.
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Paul, um, sorry, Matthew Poole says in his commentary, Thus they might reason, this people that Paul is speaking to.
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If the apostles and preachers of the gospel are sent with so great an authority from God and bring such a welcome message, how comes it to pass that so few receive it and yield obedience thereunto?
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To this he answers, that it need not seem strange because it was foretold long ago by the prophet
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Isaiah. Isaiah is saying, they haven't believed, they will not believe.
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Now, listen carefully, and I'm gonna really try hard to make this make sense.
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That's not a joke. He says, It is not to be understood as if this was the cause of their unbelief.
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It was not because the prophet said so that they did not believe, but because they believed not that the prophet foretold.
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Okay? So in Isaiah, in Isaiah 53, Isaiah is not saying that they won't believe, therefore they didn't believe.
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They said, oh, well, Isaiah said we wouldn't believe, so we're not gonna believe. That's not what happened. Isaiah is written in the first person describing a past event that hasn't happened yet.
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So if you get the kind of timiness of how that prophecy works,
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Isaiah foretold of their unbelief because they didn't believe. Had they believed, he would have foretold of that.
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But with this example, we must understand that when we share the word of God, very few will want to hear it, and very few will understand it still.
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Then in those times, in Isaiah's time, in the first century with Paul and with us today, the vast majority of people on this earth are not elect, and that should not set us in opposition to them, but rather show us that we are massively blessed with the mercy that God has given us.
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We must deliver the wonderful news of the gospel with all love and kindness to everyone that we share it with and be full of absolute humbleness when we do it, remembering that as were some of us, but also understanding that the vast majority of people that we do share it with will not respond to it.
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Paul then says in the second clause of this verse, he says, and hearing through the word of Christ.
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Now, in hearing these words, we may very well conclude that he is speaking about the gospel, and he is, but if you pay attention to the wording here, it seems to also have another meaning as well.
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Paul gives this insight in his commentary. I thought it was quite interesting. By the command of God, right?
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So, and a hearing through the word of Christ, by his command.
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The gospel could not be lawfully preached to them for them to hear it, but by God's command, and therefore, the apostles and others in preaching the gospel to the
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Gentiles had good authority for what they did. As in, the apostles,
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Paul specifically, would not have gone to the Gentiles to preach the gospel unless it was ordained by God. God kept the vast majority of his word within the borders of Israel, within ethnic
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Israel, for thousands of years. They were very proud of that fact.
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Now, we know that Gentiles were adopted into that during that time, but it would not have spread beyond the borders of Israel, beyond ethnic
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Jews, had God not ordained it, and please understand, while we are the means by which the gospel goes out through the preaching of the word, we do not decide where it goes or what the conclusion of doing that is.
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If we share the gospel for another thousand years and not another single person is brought to Christ, then that is
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God's will, because it is not us that win souls. It is the
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Holy Spirit that does that work, and I will say this, any church website that you come across that has a counter on it that has a ginormous red flag, click off the website, because there's not a single person at that church either who wins souls to God.
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This is something that is determined only by God, and the sharing of the gospel goes out, it goes out by God's command.
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God sends a missionary to a place where they are in need of it.
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Now, is the whole world in need of the gospel? Absolutely. But when a people, let's say some tribe in the middle of the jungle, in the middle of nowhere, recognizes that, well, there's a creation, there must be a creator, and I feel like doing bad stuff is bad, is there anything more to that?
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Well, God would generally send someone to give them the other half the rest of the truth, and that's how that works out.
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Now, if there's one person in that tribe that comes to Christ, was that missionary's work pointless?
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No, it's worth the one soul. Another thing that I would like to address while we're on the subject is this horrendous saying that has its roots in evangelical
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Christianity. You probably know it better as preach the gospel and if necessary use words.
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Does that at all conflict with what we just read about the primary means of salvation being the hearing of the word of God?
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If you live a Christian life, that is a wonderful, wonderful thing. It is used by God for many different things.
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It is used for the discipleship of young men in the church, young women in the church.
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It is used by the church to show your fruit, right?
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That's how we discern whether someone is truly, truly saved.
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But if you just live your Christian life and you never, ever, ever, ever, ever speak the word of God to a single person, is you being good going to win them to Christ?
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Is it going to set those necessary conditions that we talked about in motion so that the
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Holy Spirit will do His work? No. Holding to that saying, as many do, is an excuse to obfuscate the
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Great Commission. That is all that it is. Paul here has made clear the error of this.
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If the hearing of the word is what brings people to Christ, then as I said before, what is saying nothing is supposed to do.
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Now, there are those who, as we talked about before, who are specifically called to do evangelism, to be an evangelist, to be a missionary, to be an elder, to be a deacon.
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Those are not the same roles, by the way. Qualifications are very similar, but they're not the same roles.
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While we are given these men for these appointed tasks, and we are given their qualifications so that the local church can qualify them for that work, to have them trained up, to have them sent out, to have them lead with the local body, how does this affect those who are not called to those tasks?
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Are evangelists and missionaries the only ones that ought to share the gospel because they are trained up?
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The answer to that is no. There is a difference between the member and the attendee, their work, their families, their friends, them sharing the gospel with them, and sending someone out to street preach, to send someone to Peru or to Chicago or somewhere else.
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There is a difference in those positions. Does this mean that you should not share the gospel because you know very little, because you're a brand new convert?
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No. You need to be very careful about how you share it, both with limited knowledge and with an unchecked zeal, but you should absolutely share the gospel when given the opportunity by God to do so.
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You should do that to the best of your ability, with love and care for your loved ones and co -workers, and an understanding, as we said before, that people may immediately respond to the gospel, or it may take them years to respond to the gospel, so that every
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Christian, as it says in 1 Peter 3 .15, you know this one, always be prepared to make defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.
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Yet do it with gentleness and respect. That part is important. It is incredibly important.
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But as I said before, if you are a member of the church and you are not in a position of missionary or elder or deacon, it is not your job to street preach.
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It is your job to help the church do so. You are not being a bad
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Christian if you are not out on the street corner with a karaoke machine and a microphone and picket signs.
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We will continue next week with the rest of Chapter 10. Perhaps go ahead and move into Chapter 11.
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I will leave you with this. Words I'm certain you have probably heard before but are specifically significant with this section of Scripture.
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Let's see who knows who it is. It's Spurgeon. I'm not going to put you off like that. If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies.
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And if they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay.
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If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions.
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Sorry. And let not one go there unwarned or unprayed for.
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If a person you were standing on the street corner with, not a loved one, not someone you cared about, but I'll use this analogy.
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It's not the greatest one, but I'll use it. If you're standing on a street corner about the cross and you see a man step out into the middle of the road and you see a car coming, would you just stand there?
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Would you just stand there and watch as he was hit, as he was struck by the car? If your answer to that is, no,
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I would try to do something. I would try to shout at him. I would try to grab him. I would try to push him out of the way.
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Then you must understand that it is the similar situation with every single person who is unsaved that you will ever come into contact with in your life.
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You know where they are going. You know where they're going. It's okay if they hate you for warning them of it.
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That's okay. One of the primary things that I see, reasons why people will not share the gospel with either those they love or with those that they don't know or that they just met, is because they're afraid of what someone might think of them.
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Well, I don't want that person to hate me. I just met them. I have to live with that person and that might be a little bit weird if you love them.
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The most loving thing that you can do for them is to tell them where they're going and how they cannot go there.
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It is on them to respond. It is on the
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Holy Spirit to do the work. But by all means, do not let anyone you know die with you not having shared the gospel with them.
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I do not think that it is something that a saint can easily recover from.
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I think that we can recover from it because we have the Holy Spirit and we have Christ as our head, but it is certainly something that you will carry for the rest of your life.
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Make them drag you to the edge. Let's pray.
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Heavenly Father, we thank you for this opportunity to come together again on this
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Lord's Day, for having been able to sing you songs of praise to lift up your name and for having heard your wonderful, wonderful word preserved for us throughout the ages.
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Father, we ask that both your word, your living word, and the
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Holy Spirit would press upon us a great, great conviction to share the good news of Christ, to share the wonderful news of salvation, the wonderful news of your
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Son and His sacrifice. Father, we ask that you would forgive us for our sins against you, for the opportunities to share that news that we have had and that we have passed on for whatever reason it might be.
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But Father, we ask that you would continue to give us those opportunities and that the Holy Spirit would press upon us the great need of people for the gospel.
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Father, we ask that you would keep our minds focused on Christ, our hearts focused on the gospel day in and day out, and as we move into a time of fellowship, that you would keep our minds on the edification of our spirits and on Christ.