Sunday Sermon: The Righteousness from Faith (Romans 10:5-7)

You are listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an Old Testament book on Thursday and our Q &A on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series. Here is Pastor Gabe.

Romans 10 and the Righteousness by Faith

This is Romans chapter 10. Again, once again, as we continue in our series, we have read last week in verses one through four, though I'll come back to that again this morning to kind of recap what we read there, about a zeal without knowledge.

As we come into this portion of text that we're looking at today, we're reading of the righteousness that is by faith. Once again, we have heard over and over again from the beginning of the letter, even to this point, that we are justified not by our works, but by faith.

And Paul brings this back to our remembrance, even as we hear a presentation of the gospel that is given to us in chapter 10. For the reading of God's word, would you please stand? I'm in Romans chapter 10.

Going to read verses one through 13. Hear the word of the Lord. Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.

For being ignorant of the righteousness of 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.

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 to 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 that 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 in him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him.

For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, as we come to this passage today, we desire to know that righteousness that is by faith. The righteousness that Jesus Christ gave to us who have believed in him.

Where he died on the cross in our place, our sins were imputed to him. And his righteousness given to us who believe. So that now we stand before God, not as the sinners who were deserving of the judgment of God, but in Christ Jesus we have been made righteous.

Not because we have done anything to merit this righteousness, but because Christ has given it to us who have believed on his name. If there be any way in us, Lord, that attempts to merit our favor with God, I pray that we are convicted of it and we attempt no longer to do things thinking that God loves me now because I do this.

You have already shown your love for us. And now in our love for God, we desire to live holy and upright and godly lives in this present day. Not because it earns us the favor of God, but because we already have it.

And may it therefore be demonstrated in our lives that we are the children of God. Be with us in our reading and in our learning today, we ask in Jesus' name, amen. Brother Allen read for us today from the book of Habakkuk chapter 2.

It is from that chapter that we hear the verse of scripture that Paul has been expositing in this letter to the church in Rome. It's in Habakkuk 2 .4 that it is said, the righteous shall live by faith.

From the same word that can also be translated just. So we have it said for us in Romans 1 .17 that the just shall live by faith. And we've been expositing out that verse, exposing the meaning of it, the truth that is behind it as we have been studying this entire book of Romans.

It's in Romans 1 .16 where Paul said, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God to 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 for faith, for as it is written, and here is that reference to Habakkuk 2 .4, the righteous shall live by faith.

Paul stated that at the beginning of the letter, and we see that continuing to be said, even as we come to our passage this morning. We read last week in verses one through four of those who had a zeal for God, but they did not have a knowledge according to God.

They had a knowledge according to their own. It was according to their own knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God, Paul said of those Jews who were zealous for God, but did not believe in Christ, they sought to establish their own righteousness.

They did not submit to God's righteousness. And as we read that last week on Easter Sunday, I had said to you as a church and had warned you to be careful of a zeal without knowledge. It is very easy for us to have zealousness for God, zealousness for Christianity, zealousness for Easter as we were reading these things on Easter Sunday.

But it be according to our own knowledge and not according to the knowledge of God. It be according to worship the way that we want to worship, not according to the way that God has said our worship is to be conducted, as we talked about in Sunday school this morning.

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. And so that reminder comes to us again today as we jump into this next section, we look at verse five. 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 or who will descend into the abyss. 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. This is the passage we're going to be looking at today. Now we read verses one through 13 and verses five through 13 in particular can be broken up in this way.

We break this up into four parts. First of all, we read of the righteousness that is based on the law. That's what's said in verse five. But we are going to meditate on and understand the righteousness that is by faith.

And that's in verses six through 10. Next week, we will consider who receives salvation as expressed in verses 11 to 12. And then the promise of salvation that is given in verse 13. So that's how this particular paragraph can be outlined.

But again, what we meditate on today is the righteousness that is by the law, which we can't attain to, and the righteousness that is by faith as we look at this passage in verses five through 10. So we're breaking this paragraph up into two weeks, half this week and then half next week.

But most of all, what we want to be meditating on is the righteousness that is by faith, not by our doing of the law, not by our meriting the favor of God in any way, but by faith in Jesus Christ, we have received his righteousness.

Now what does that look like in the life of a believer? In verse five, once again, the apostle Paul says, for Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.

That goes all the way back to the first commandment that God gave in the garden of Eden. He said to Adam, you shall eat of every tree that is in the garden, but you shall not eat of this tree that is in the midst of the garden, the tree that we know as being named the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

For in the day that you eat of it, God said to Adam, you will surely die. Here are commands that if you follow them, you will live. And Adam was unable to keep the commandment and he sinned and died. Death came into the world and now all die as we read about in Romans chapter five, because of the sin of our father, Adam, but it is sin that we all partake in.

None of us can point the finger back at him and say, well, he did it. And now we're in this miserable state for every single one of us are willing participants in rebelling against God. Could we keep the commandments of God?

And therefore we would have eternal life. If we could do it, that would certainly be the reward. For remember the lawyer who came to challenge Jesus and said to him, what is the great commandment.

In the law?

And Jesus said, you know, the commandments, love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. The second commandment, like the first and on these two commandments are based all of the law and the prophets.

Jesus went on to say, do this and you will live. I mentioned to you last week, the story of the rich young ruler who came to Jesus and said, what must I do in order to have eternal life? Jesus gave him the commandments.

The rich young ruler said, all of these I have done from my youth. Surely it was in his mind. If I have kept all the commands, I have eternal life. But Jesus revealed to him that he had not kept all the commandments.

Go and sell all that you have and give it to the poor, Jesus said, and then come follow me and you will have treasure in heaven. And the rich young ruler walked away very sad because he had many great possessions.

This man loved his possessions more than he loved God. It exposed the sin in his heart that he could not actually keep the law as well as he thought. He had not kept the law as well as he thought. He thought I had kept all the commandments.

Surely I have attained eternal life. And even the disciples thought when they saw this man and the riches that he was blessed with that this was surely a man who had eternal life. And so when Jesus said, when Jesus said to him, or when Jesus said to the disciples rather, when he said, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

The disciples were astonished at this and said, then who can be saved? And Jesus said, with man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God. Have you considered brothers and sisters that your very salvation is impossible?

And Paul even draws that out here in this text in Romans chapter 10, when he talks about who will ascend into heaven and bring Christ down and who will ascend to the end of the abyss and bring him back up again.

But where he states here that Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. This isn't Paul saying, Hey, listen, if you could just do all the law, you would be saved.

So go ahead and go do that. He brings that out to once again, expose just as Jesus did with the rich young ruler, that you have not kept the law of Moses. So therefore you are unable to live by that way.

We read in the gospel of John, the way that John begins his gospel. He says in John 1 17, the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the father's side, he has made him known.

And keep that in mind. Hold that in your mind as we read this passage here in Romans chapter 10 for Paul is saying the same thing. The law came through Moses. Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law and the person who does the commandments shall live by them.

But have you done the commandments? See if we were sitting in that church in Rome and we were hearing this letter read for the very first time from beginning to end, it's already been in our minds. Romans chapter three, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

And Paul laying out sins in chapters one and two that everybody has committed. Maybe we haven't done the whole list, but there's something on there that you had done that qualified you for the judgment of God.

No one could say that they have kept the law perfectly, that they stand before God as righteous, but all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory. And then Romans 6 23 telling us that the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

So in hearing that Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, this surely should not have sparked in the ears of anybody listening to it. Oh, well, that's the righteousness that I have.

I have the righteousness of doing everything right. And this is a righteousness that even the world itself wants to claim that it has. Now the world, the godless, those who don't believe the scriptures, those who don't even believe there was a Moses who gave the law.

They may not say that I've followed the law of Moses, but the general principles behind all of it, they will say that they've kept all of it. I've never murdered anybody. I've never stolen anything from anyone.

I don't commit adultery, at least, you know, whatever, whatever they would claim adultery.

To be.

They believe they have standards that qualifies them as being basically a good person. It's said in the book of Proverbs twice that every man believes he is right in his own.

Eyes.

And this is the wisdom of man. It is not the knowledge of God. As we had read about last week, they may have a zeal for doing good. You may know a number of people who are unbelievers who have a zealousness for doing good and doing the right thing, but their zeal is not according to knowledge.

They are ignorant of the righteousness of God, as said again in verse three, and they seek to establish their own righteousness. I went to visit somebody in the hospital on Friday, and it was late enough that I couldn't go in the main entrance of the hospital anymore, so I went in through the emergency room entrance.

And if you're familiar with Banner here in Casa Grande, that emergency room entrance is not very long. It's not really a great place to try to squeeze a lot of people into, but everybody had to go through security checkpoint, and so everybody's waiting to get into the hospital on a Friday evening is having to stand in a rather lengthy line.

I'm in the very back of this line. I'm kind of on my phone messing with things, but I'm so close to the automatic doors that every time I just kind of slightly move, the doors would open, and then the three or four people in front of me turn around and look like every time, look right at me, sorry.

Didn't mean to move again and open the doors, but it eventually sparked up a conversation with the fellow who was in front of me. His name was Tyrone, and he said, it's crazy. We got to stand in this line.

The person that I want to be with is just right there, but I have to go through security in order to be with her over there. And I said, yeah, man, everything changed after 2020, didn't it? COVID just changed everything.

And he said, boy, this country's going downhill quickly. And I use that right there to say, yeah, the judgment of God is coming upon America pretty.

Soon.

And his response to that was, man, he's just going to let us do it. He's just going to let us destroy ourselves. I thought that was rather insightful of Tyrone to say that. I said, you know, you're right.

You're right. He could just turn us over to our own depraved mind. Like it says in Romans 1, that could very well be the way that judgment comes upon this.

Nation.

It's already happening in this nation. And then he goes, I thought he was doing well, but then he said, we got to get rid of religion,.

Man.

We got to be done with religion. I was like, okay, well, this, this conversation suddenly took a completely different turn. And I said, but, but instead of arguing about religion, I just simply said to him, are you a believer?

Are you a follower of Jesus Christ? He said, yeah, I'm a follower of Christ. Jesus is in all of us. God is in all of us. And he said, how many gods are there? I said, there's one God. He said, that's right.

One God in you and one God in me. And I said, but what has that one God said to us? How do we know that one God? In one, in what way can we know God? And his answer was, well, I have God inside of me.

And I said to Tyrone, okay, you, you have God inside of you and you believe that God is saying one thing to you. But I believe that God is saying something different to me. So which one of us is correct?

And he said, well, it's the one God. He's got to be saying the same thing. I said, well, I don't think he is saying the same thing. I said, you don't, you don't believe that we have any sort of religion, but didn't Jesus say, I will come and build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

And he said, man, that's, that's, you're reading a Bible that was written in 1865. That was the year that he came back to here, but your Bible was written in 1865. That's when it was written in it. That isn't the words of God.

And then it became an apologetic of how we can know that the Bible is actually what God.

Has said.

But when he wouldn't accept the Bible, I just kind of tried to help him see that who you think is this one God is just subjectively you listening to the voice in your own mind. And how can we know what God has actually said?

How can you know that you know God? And so when judgment comes upon this nation, which he already acknowledged was going to happen, he recognized that you can look around and see how things are quickly declining and how many people are godless and walking around in the state of their own minds instead of in the fear of God, he recognized that.

So how can you know what is the right way to go? So that when the judgment of God comes, you won't perish in that judgment. Now, we didn't get to talk for very long. It was maybe about an eight or nine minute conversation, but at least ended on a friendly note, shook hands with him.

I prayed with the woman that he was with that whatever was ailing them, that God would show himself to them. And then I went on to visit the person that I was there to visit. I hope that he thinks about those things.

Wasn't really enough to get to the gospel in that conversation. I'm not sure that he would have listened to it even if we got to it, but at least recognizing sin and judgment and that you can't just believe in the God of your own thinking.

And hopefully those are things that God will put on his heart and convict his heart and bring him to a deeper knowledge of the truth. But Tyrone is an example of how people all have a righteousness that is their own.

There are people who seek to establish their own righteousness and they are ignorant of the righteousness of God. How can we know what the righteousness of God is? We know it according to the word, because of the word that is given to us.

And when Paul talks about, Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, it is through the law that we recognize I'm actually not righteous. And Paul has talked about this before back in chapter seven.

I didn't know what it meant to covet until I read in the law, do not covet. And then I realized I'm a covetor. When Jesus came preaching in the Sermon on the Mount, he said, you have heard that it was said, you shall not murder.

But I say to you, everyone who hates his brother in his heart has murdered him in his heart. If you've even called your brother names, if you've called him a fool, you are guilty of the fire of hell. You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery.

But I tell you, if you lust after a woman in your heart, you have already committed adultery with her in your heart. And Jesus, through the Sermon on the Mount, demonstrating you're not as righteous as you think you are.

Even if you could say, I've never murdered someone with my own bare hands, or I have never broken my marriage vows and slept with another man's wife. Even if you could say those things, could you in your heart actually declare yourself.

Pure?

Are you clean? Are you really as good as you proclaim yourself to be? Is your resume as white as you say that it is? And so it's through the hearing of the law that we learn that we are not righteous.

And I've given you this method before when it comes to sharing the gospel with somebody.

Else.

You use the law in order to do it. If you've ever watched those videos from Ray Comfort and the way that he does it, or Todd Friel when he goes on college campuses, same thing. He will ask a person, have you ever told a lie before?

And they will acknowledge, yeah, I've told lies. Everybody tells lies. What do you call a person who tells lies? Call them a liar. Have you ever stolen anything before? That's the one where people will tend to jump to, no, I've never stolen anything before.

There sure are a lot of honest people in not stealing anything from anyone based on these questions that I've heard Ray and Todd ask people. But then they will say something like, well, are you sure? Because you just told me you're a liar.

Well, maybe I've stolen something. Maybe I've, you know, padded my time card at work and I've taken money for hours that I didn't really work. You're stealing from your employer. What do you call a person who steals?

Call that person a thief. And so already we've got two commandments. You've lied, you've stolen. You go according to the commandment to not murder or not commit adultery the way that Jesus taught it. Now we find out you have hated somebody.

You've committed murder in your heart. You have lusted after somebody else. You have committed adultery in your heart. Have you taken the Lord's name in vain? Yes, I've done that before. Sometimes I've watched videos where the person will do it right there and take the Lord's name in vain as a swear word.

And so right here in a matter of 90 seconds, we've established that you are a lying, thieving, murderous, adulterous, blasphemer at heart. And if God is going to judge you based on this command, based on His law, would you get into heaven or would He send you to hell?

And there are quite a few people who when asked that question will say, I guess He would send me to hell. If that's the standard that we're going by, the righteousness that is based on the law, I realize that according to the law, I don't have that righteousness.

And so then, asking the question with the disciples once again, who then can be saved? Because they recognize that if people who do good, people that we would see with our own eyes as being righteous, if we would look at that person and say, that's a good guy or that's a good gal, if even they are not saved, who can be saved?

With man it's impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God. And so we go on to the next part. The righteousness of the law that we have not achieved, verse 5, and the resolution is given to us in verse 6, the righteousness that is by faith.

Faith, the Resurrection, and Christ's Descent

But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart who will ascend into the abyss, that is, to bring Christ up from the dead. What is Paul saying here by that? Well, he's exaggerating.

Can you go into heaven and bring Christ down?

No.

Can you go into the abyss and bring Christ back up from the dead? No, you can't do that either. Remember the quote that I gave to you from George Whitefield, there's actually a movie out in theaters right now about George Whitefield and the Great Awakening.

But George Whitefield said, righteousness by works. I may as well climb to the moon on a rope of sand. That's impossible. Who could ascend to the moon on a rope of sand? It's the same sort of thing that Paul is saying here.

Do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven. Can you go into heaven and bring Christ down? Can you do that? Can you be the one to say, well, I can't attain righteousness by the law, so I'm going to attain righteousness.

Tell you what, I'll bring Christ down to me. No, you could not do that. God had to send His Son. It was the Father who sent His Son out of His love for us, who died for us, so that whoever believes in Him will not perish under the judgment that we deserve because we've all broken God's law.

But rather, whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. John 3 .16. We don't ascend into heaven and bring Christ down. God so loved the world that He gave His Son. Can we descend into the abyss?

Can we bring Christ up from the dead? And therefore, I have the resurrection of Christ that justifies me, as we read previously in Romans 4 .25, that He was raised for our justification. Could we raise Christ to justify ourselves?

No, even that was the gift of God. Even that was by God's love for us, that He raised His Son from the dead so that we who believe in Him would be forgiven our sins and be saved. It is never by our works.

If it was ever by our works, Paul is saying here with this illustration, if it was ever by our works, if it was ever by your righteousness that you attain salvation, then you would have the power and the authority to ascend into heaven yourself and bring the Son of God down so that you could say, I did this, and I'm saved because I brought the Son of God, the God-man, into this world to justify me before God.

That is absolutely absurd, right? Who can say I brought Christ down? It was me by my will that brought Him here. None of us can say so. None of us could say it was us by our will who could bring Him up from the dead.

You know, it's always been interesting to me that when we read of the resurrection accounts in the Gospels, no one actually saw it. You consider that? No one actually saw Jesus rise from the grave and walk out of the tomb.

No one was there to see that. Now did He rise? Of course He did. The tomb is empty. The body is not there. The angel is saying, see where He lay. He is risen. Go and tell His disciples. The disciples coming and running, they look in.

They don't see the body either. They see the linen wrappings there. They see the face cloth that is folded and set to one side. But where is Jesus? Mary Magdalene wept. She went to a man she thought was the gardener and said, where have they taken the body of.

My Lord?

And it was Jesus she was talking to. And when He addressed her, her eyes were open and she saw.

Wow.

No one was even there to see the actual walking out of the tomb. If they had known the Scriptures, you have to wonder would there have been grandstands set up around the tomb on that Easter Sunday morning and everybody's hanging out, passing out popcorn and programs and they're like, when's He coming out?

And then the big celebration that day when the tomb opens and the angel descends and the Lord walks out in His body out of the tomb. I love what Brother Allen taught last week on Sunday evening where he said, the open tomb is for us.

The stone rolled away from the tomb is for us. To see that the body of Jesus is risen and is no longer there. Jesus didn't have to roll the stone away. He could just disappear and rematerialize somewhere else as He had been doing with the disciples.

They'd be sitting in a room. Suddenly, well, there's 11 of us here, but now there's another one and Jesus is right there and talking with us all of a sudden. Or He's breaking bread and passing it to us and then He suddenly vanishes.

Jesus did not have to continue to live by the physical limitations of this body in His resurrected body. The stone was rolled away for our benefit. That we would see that He is risen. And God has done this.

Nobody else. There was nobody even there to say that we saw His body walk out of the tomb. They saw the empty tomb. They interacted with Him for 40 days between His resurrection and His ascension into heaven.

But no one was there to actually physically see Christ walk out of that tomb. So no one can say, I descended into the abyss and I brought Him back up again. It is God who has raised Him. And this, my brothers and sisters, is said to us so that we would know that it is God who has done this by His grace and mercy for us.

Not by anything that we have done. Not by any works that we have done to merit our salvation. It is because God is merciful. Kind of get the feeling that Paul has a point to make. That he keeps making again and again and again, right?

Ten chapters of Romans and we're still hearing it. It is not by your works. The just, the righteous, shall live by faith. We all in our weakness want to feel like we can help God out. Maybe if I just do a little bit more, then I will have merited my salvation.

I'll have done enough. Now I can say that I've played a part in this. We play no part in it. As is often attributed to Jonathan Edwards saying. You contributed nothing to your salvation but the sin that made your salvation necessary.

And it is God in His work who has brought us up from the grave. And it is God in His work who has even seated us in the heavenly places with Christ. As said in Ephesians chapter 1. And so my friends, in summing this up, we have a righteousness that is not according to the law.

We have the righteousness that is based on faith. We did not bring Christ down, but He came down to us. We did not bring Christ up, but He rose for us. And now in Christ Jesus, we will be raised from the dead and we are seated with Him in the heavenly places.

Practical Implications of Righteousness by Faith

Practical implications of this. What does this therefore mean for us in our lives? Jesus said to His disciples in John 14, 15, you will show me that you love me when you obey my commandments. God has already demonstrated His love for us.

Romans 5, 8. God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He gave His Son to die for us. God has shown His love for us. How do we demonstrate then that God's love is in us and we love God?

We obey His commandments. We turn from our sin. We desire to live in the righteousness of Christ that we have been given. And as said in 1 John 2, 1, I've said these things to you that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate before the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one.

May our heart's desire be that we would live our lives in holiness and uprightness before God though we cannot merit our own salvation. We cannot merit our own righteousness, but we recognize righteousness has been given to us in Christ.

And so now having been given that righteousness, let us live righteously. Be convicted of sin, even that we have considered this morning. Walk in it no more. Bring it to God. Ask that He would cleanse you of this and give you a new heart and a new mind in Christ.

Jesus.

Confessing Sin, Rejecting False Mediation, and Walking in Holiness

Going back to 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This is something I was thinking about just this last week after I taught on Romans 10, 1 through 4 last week, but there are people out there who believe that they are meriting their own salvation by praying to Mary and other dead saints or praying to angels.

They believe that they are receiving absolution by confessing their sins to false priests. And my brothers and sisters, are you at least as zealous as they are to confess your sins to God and pray to Him and know that you have received salvation not because someone on earth has said that you have it, but because God in His Word has said that you have it by faith in Jesus.

We can make fun of the other religions. We can make fun of the worldly and all the ways that they think that they're attaining their righteousness and they do not. It's a righteousness of their own. They are not submitting to God's righteousness.

We can make fun of that, but do you have the zeal in your heart for God to confess your sins to God? Do you have the zeal in your heart to live holy, upright, and godly lives in this present.

Day?

A zeal that is not based on your own knowledge, but according to the knowledge of God, submitting to God's righteousness. Let it, therefore, be demonstrated in our lives that we are disciples of Jesus Christ.