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As we go out with the gospel of Jesus Christ, desiring to see people repent of their sins and be saved, there are gonna come times when those that we love will not accept that message, but we still must hold fast when we understand the text.
This is when we understand the text, a daily study of God's word, that we may be filled with the knowledge of his will. Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. I'm working on finishing up a book right now. Yeah, another 40 book, just like my first one I came out with last year, 40 of the most popular Bible verses and what they really mean. This is another book with 40 in the title, and I could have it done next week or the week after, and I'll tell you more about it when I get that finished up.
So pray for me as I finish that one. You can find the other book at the website, www .utt .com. If everything goes according to plan, I could have three books done between now and the end of the summer.
We'll just kind of see how life unfolds for me along the way and see if I'm able to keep up with that. All right, we're gonna go back to Romans 10 and finish up the chapter today, verses 18 through 21.
But first, I wanna jump back to verse nine. Yes, that oh so famous verse, 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. Believe in your heart and you will be saved. And we've taken that passage to say, if you accept Jesus into your heart, you'll be saved.
Not what the verse says, doesn't say accept Jesus into your heart, it says believe in your heart. Do we understand what that means to believe in your heart? It means to believe down to the very deepest core of your being from the inside out that you believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and that God raised him from the dead.
Now, all through the course of this letter to the Roman Christians, Paul has been presenting a case for justification by faith. We are justified by faith alone. That is how we receive salvation. Suddenly he is adding confession into this.
So it's not that he's contradicting something that he has stated before. What is the understanding of this supposed to mean? Simply that if we have been changed, truly changed from the inside out, then there is gonna be an evidence of that on the outside that we believe in our heart that Jesus Christ is Lord.
With the heart, the mouth, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. The mouth speaks what the heart believes. That's the understanding that we have here. Now, I actually went back to an old Paul Washer sermon today to kind of draw out an example to put some better context into this.
What would this have meant to the Christians in Rome that were reading or hearing this letter from Paul being read? What would this have meant to them? And Paul Washer actually gives a great example here to help us understand this verse that has been so taken out of context in America today.
He helps us understand it better with this illustration.
I wanna put this really quickly in a cultural perspective. Let's say that we're all a church, about 20 people, first century Roman empire. You know, from the epistle of Romans that these Christians are being put to death, some of them.
They're dying like sheep. All right, now let's say that we have a, we're 20 of us and we all work construction. So we're working on some kind of a building there in Rome. Construction, no problem, beautiful day.
It's lunchtime, we're taking a break. Spring, we're laying out in the grass, having a good time, resting. And all of a sudden though, we hear this. We hear drums. We look up and we see soldiers coming.
And they're carrying a little altar. And on that altar is a little bowl of incense and a little fire built. And we become terrified. As all the construction guys come to their feet, most of them unbelievers, and there we are, a little church in the midst of them.
The soldiers rally us all together and they say, come forth, pay homage to Caesar. And so the first guy, unbeliever, goes up there and gets a little bit of incense, throws it in the fire and says, Caesar's Lord.
Walks off as happy as he can be. The next one and the next one. And finally it comes to the first of us, the Christians. And one of us walk up, soldier prods him with a sphere. Pay homage to Caesar. Jesus is Lord and he dies.
And the next one of us. Jesus is Lord and he dies. And the next one of us. And we have taken that truth that Paul is teaching right here. That if you truly believe, you will confess Christ even though it cost you your life.
We have taken that beautiful truth and reduced it down. If you pray a little prayer before a bunch of people in a church in America, you can be guaranteed you're saved if you think you were sincere. That's not what it's talking about.
Again, the moment a person calls upon Christ in faith, they are saved. But the evidence of salvation is not that one time in their life they were sincere when they prayed a prayer. The evidence of their salvation is is there genuine repentance, is there faith, and do those both evangelical graces continue on in their life and grow?
In other words, the evidence of justification by faith is the ongoing work of sanctification through the Holy Spirit.
All right, does that help you understand Romans 10, nine a little bit better? I thought that would provide a good illustration here as we were still in Romans 10. A person is saved by faith. It is not by saying magic words.
It is not by repeating after me. It is belief. It is realizing the sin that has separated us from God and that only through Jesus Christ can we receive forgiveness and right standing with God. And that belief is gonna show from the inside out with all that we say and do, there will be an evidence of a continual growth in an understanding of the things of God, growth in love for God and an understanding of his scriptures, growth in love with the brothers and sisters in Christ.
These are all going to be evidences of the salvation that we have. It is not salvation by works, but the works are the evidence of the faith that we have been given by God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And how did we come into that faith?
By hearing. Romans 10, 17, faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. So now we're gonna go on from there. Verses 18 through 21. But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for their voice has gone out to all the earth and their words to the ends of the world.
But I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says, I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation. With a foolish nation, I will make you angry. Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, I have been found by those who did not seek me.
I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me. But of Israel, he says, all day long, I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people. We go back to verse 18. Paul says, but I ask, have they not heard?
Indeed they have. And I think it's necessary for us to understand this in context. He's talking specifically about the Jewish people, the ethnic nation of Israel. This is not Paul saying that all people on earth have heard the gospel.
That's not what he's saying here. But the Israelite people have heard the message of God. They were given the oracles of God. They knew these things. Their voice has gone out to all the earth and their words to the ends of the world.
Now he's quoting Psalm 19 for there, which is actually a statement of general revelation. But Paul is using that verse to specify a specific revelation. I think I was a little bit redundant there, but anyway.
So he takes an example of general revelation and he applies it as a specific revelation to the Jewish people. But I asked, did Israel not understand? First, Moses says, then he quotes here from Deuteronomy 32, 21.
I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation. With a foolish nation, I will make you angry. And if you know something about the end of Deuteronomy, that's a pretty significant statement. Because first of all, Moses is saying to the Israelite people, you're gonna go into the promised land and you are going to acquire the land that God promised to give to Abraham, to give to the descendants of Abraham.
You're gonna receive that land now. That's what you're going into the promised land to do. And as long as you remain faithful to the statutes of God, as long as you remain faithful to these commands that are being given to you today, you will remain God's people and he will remain your God.
But Moses even prophesized to the Israelite people, but here's what's gonna happen. You're not gonna remain faithful to God. You're actually gonna end up falling away from the Lord and following after these other pagan gods.
When that happens, here's what the Lord is gonna do for you. And he is going to turn you over to the exile of your enemies and then he is gonna restore you again. So Moses even tells the Israelites exactly what's gonna happen, but tells them to remember these things and to speak them to your children and to their children and on and on down the line so that they will remember the promises of God and how he is gonna restore them from their misfortunes when they fall away from the Lord and start chasing after false gods.
So it's in the midst of that prophesying that Moses says, Deuteronomy 32, 21, I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation. With a foolish nation, I will make you angry. And Paul is now applying this to the Gentiles.
So those that you had previously thought as being fools and were not a nation at all, they were scattered about all the earth. That is who God is gonna reveal himself to and who he is going to give his promise of grace to.
Then Isaiah is so bold to say, this is verse 20, I have been found by those who did not seek me. I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me. That's Isaiah 65, one. And so now the Gentiles have received this gift of justification from God, though the Gentiles were not seeking after God.
Verse 21, but of Israel, he says, all day long, I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people. I think of Luke chapter 19, beginning in verse 41, when he drew near and saw the city, this is Jesus, he wept over it saying, would that you even you had known on this day the things that make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes.
For the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and him you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you because you did not know the time of your visitation.
This is right after the triumphal entry when Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey and the people shouting, Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. But even though there were some that believed, there were most of them who did not.
And so Jesus weeping over Jerusalem that they did not know who had just come within their midst, who had been prophesied by the prophets that was going to come that day, and yet they did not know who he was, how he had longed to gather them to himself, and yet they would not come to him.
Verse 21, again, in Romans chapter 10 of Israel, he says, all day long, I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people. Again, he's quoting Isaiah 65 too. And folks, for us, if we come back to remembering the call that is upon us as Christians to go out with the gospel, which had been commended there in Romans 10, verses 14 through 17, if we understand this charge that has been given to us as believers to now take the gospel that we have heard and deliver it to others that they might hear, there are so many that we are going to be holding our arms out to, waiting for them to receive this gift that we are offering, the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they won't take it.
And it will break our hearts, and it will shatter us to watch people that we love turn away from the only message that gives life. But we must be very steadfast to the word of God, because I have seen so many people compromise their understanding of God's word for a person that they love who would not believe.
And so they just bend their beliefs just a little bit to try to satisfy the hurt and the ache that they feel in their heart for this other person that they won't believe. More often than not, I see this happen between a parent and a child.
They'll have a child that grows up and won't be a believer in Christ. And so they will bend in their beliefs a little bit to accommodate the ache that they feel for the child that does not believe. And so suddenly what had previously been a very strict teaching of, you must believe in Jesus Christ to be saved.
If you don't believe in Jesus Christ, you will go to hell. Suddenly they might change a little bit. Well, my son or daughter is a good person. You know, they believe in God, they're just not going to church, you know, or something like that.
They'll bend a little bit on their beliefs to try to soften the blow of realizing that their son or daughter is not walking with the Lord. That's the example that I'm using, but we're gonna see this happen in our lives with people that we know and love who will not accept the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We must remain steadfast. We must remember at the end of Romans 9, verse 33, as it is written, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.
They're stumbling over the stone of Christ is what's happening. And then if we believe in him, we'll not be put to shame. Don't be ashamed of what it is that you believe. Remain steadfast, fixed upon the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And let us pray earnestly for those who do not know Christ that they would repent and believe in the gospel of Christ. I'm turning to 1 Timothy here as I am talking to you. 1 Timothy chapter two, starting in verse one.
First of all, then I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.
This is good and it is pleasing the sight of God, our savior, who desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Notice that Paul is charging here that we pray for all people because God desires that all people would be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.
Let there not be anyone that we would withhold sharing the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ with, and not softening that message, but delivering it with all of its intensity, not withholding any part of it so they would truly hear and have a chance to repent of their sins and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
If we think that there is a part of the gospel that would end up pushing another person away and so we would withhold that part because we don't want that friend or family member to push us away, I tell you, if that is the mentality that you have in your mind or in your heart, you do not truly love that person.
You love yourself so much that you don't wanna lose that person in your life, but what they need to hear from you is the gospel of Jesus Christ. They need to hear you call them to repent of their sins.
So let us remain faithful to this word and obedient to God's calling. Lord, we thank you for these scriptures and I pray that we would be reminded to pray for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions.
There was a shift in a lot of political news this week, but let us not be jumping to one side or the other or feeling defeated because our side's not winning or whatever the situation might be. Instead, in all situations, we lift up in prayer.
Those who are running for president, those who are the president, everyone in high position that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way, desiring all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth, even our presidential candidates, even the president of the United States that we have right now.
We pray for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, who are running for president and also for Barack Obama. None of these names that I have mentioned have confessed with their mouths that Jesus Christ is Lord and believed in their hearts that God had raised him from the dead.
None of those individuals believe that, but Lord, we desire that they would repent of their sin and come to believe that so that they might lead this nation in a godly way that is pleasing and acceptable to you.
We pray and ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.
Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find out more online at www .utt .com.