Romans 10:5-21 Simple Gospel

To the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches for his series in the Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in.

God’s Faithfulness, Church Milestones, and the Simplicity of the Gospel

Well, good morning, everybody,.

And welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsack, I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm glad that we've had this opportunity or have this opportunity this morning to gather together. I don't know how many of you realize this, but 10 years ago this week, it was actually the 13th of September 10 years ago that we had our launch service as a church at a storefront up on Red Arrow Highway.

And I think like many of you, some of you have come later, and this is, you're kind of new here, and then some of you have been here from the very beginning, and all in between that as well, and I've been overwhelmed by the many ways that God has blessed us as a church over these 10 years.

It's an awesome milestone, and we've grown in faith, we've grown in community, we've grown in service, we've grown in numbers, we've grown in staff, we've grown in facilities, and all of the honor and glory for all of that growth goes to God.

It's really him and him alone that has accounted for that. He is the almighty one, he is the one we worship, he is the one who affects change and does stuff and grows his kingdom, and so credit and glory goes to him.

If it were up to me and my strength, I think we would have faltered for sure. There's a statistic that was running through my mind when we first started Recast 10 years ago, and that is that 75 of church plants don't see the end of their second year, so by the end of two years, the majority, like 75 of church plants fold, and so we knew that going in, and we knew that if Recast was gonna continue, it was gonna be God's blessing and his alone, so we prayed and we sought him and we sought him, and he has done this, so glory to him, and with that kind of rejoicing in our hearts that God has moved in our community and has done that, let's turn our attention to God's word this morning and see what he has for us to grasp by faith here in Romans 10.

I don't know if you guys identify with this or not. I think you probably do, but how many of you would say that life is getting complicated? Life is pretty complex? Go ahead and let's try that again. How many of you think that life is complicated or complex?

I think that's most of us. 15 years ago, some of you are, I'm thinking 15 years ago is a long time for you, but 15 years ago, if you wanted to watch a movie as a family, what would you do? Well, you'd go to the video store, you'd rent it, you'd go home, you'd pop some popcorn and you'd watch a movie, right?

A pretty simple process. Today, if you wanna watch a movie, you have to check in to see if it's on Netflix. For free there, not there, how about Prime? Nope, it's not there. I guess we're gonna have to rent it from, well, is it Prime or is it Hulu?

Which one are we gonna go to? What was the password again? Linda, did you change the password? Because this mine's not working.

Five tries later, you're locked out.

And you haven't even started the thought about what movie you're gonna watch yet. So, first world problems, right? But anybody relate to what I'm talking about? And that's not even the most complex things of our culture because has anybody here ever tried to figure out your cell phone bill?

Anybody try to actually understand what it is that you're paying for on that stuff? I mean, there's a lot of complexity to life and I would suggest to you that we also add a layer of spiritual complexity to our lives.

We add a level of spiritual complexity where we think that things have to be complex and even our faith can at times be confusing and we wander our way through a variety of different things and thoughts, but this text is meant to bring us back to a simple gospel message.

The gospel is actually a very simple thing, a very, very simple thing. So, as we read together our text this morning, listen for the simplicity of salvation. Now, I'm not saying that the text itself is simple.

There's a lot of, I mean, at first reading, you might not necessarily get that out of it, but I'm saying that this text conveys the simple, the message of simple salvation. And so, if you're not already there, turn in your Bibles over to Romans chapter 10 and we're gonna be looking at 10 verse five through the end of the chapter.

That's Romans 10, five through 21. Navigate in your device or get your scripture journals out or grab the Bible under the seat in front of you or whatever, but let's follow along and read what God has to say to us, his precious word, God communicating with us, church, here in the reading of his word.

So, Romans 10, five through 21. For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down, or who will descend into the abyss, that is, to bring Christ up from the dead.

But what does it say?

The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith 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.

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed, and how are they to believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?

As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us? So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

But I ask, have they not heard it? 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.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you so much for your grace that has worked in our history as a church, for your grace that has worked in our personal histories to draw us to the place where we're here. And I know that everybody that's sitting in these seats comes from a variety of backgrounds and a variety of histories.

Even just our week has varied so much that some are sitting here with bad news and are working through that. Some are sitting here at a high point in life and things are going and just clicking really well for them and some are sitting here lonely and some are filled with relationships, almost overflowing and annoyed with relationships.

And Father, I pray that you would meet us where we're at. Father, that you would provide encouragement for those who need encouragement, challenge for those who need challenge, correction for those who need correction, and that all of us together would hear your word and our eyes would be opened.

Our eyes would be opened to the truth of this simple gospel. Father, if there's someone here who's been saved for years, I pray that this simple gospel would break open afresh on their lives in a call to reach out to others.

But Father, if there are any here who do not know the simple message of salvation, that today might be a day of salvation for them as well. Father, thank you that we have a chance to sing songs before you together in unity.

And so Father, I pray that you would accept this as worship to you, that you would allow all distractions to fade away and that we would see you as high and exalted and that we would think about you as we sing these songs, not our own voices, not the band on stage, but that it would all be for you and you alone in Jesus' name, amen.

Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated, but remember if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, you can take advantage of that back there. If you get up in the middle, you're not gonna distract me.

If you need to use the restrooms, those are out the barn doors down the hallway on the left-hand side. And then please reopen your Bible or navigating your device back over to Romans 10 verses five through 21, our text for this morning so that you can reference that.

I'm gonna reference it multiple times during the message and so we're gonna walk right through that just like normal. Paul has been concerned since the start of chapter nine, really a big outline heading, talking, moving into the sovereignty of God over salvation.

And he's been concerned since the start of chapter nine, really nine through 11 being that big heading of sovereignty with the integrity of God. So that's been fundamental to his arguments and what he's kind of explaining in his letter to the church in Rome.

And it is kind of this fundamental question that is the overarching question of nine through 11. How is it that God can be called faithful if the majority of his Old Testament people have not been brought into salvation under his Messiah, under Jesus Christ?

So the majority of the Jews during Paul's day and age were not accepting and embracing Christ. And so how is it that God can both remain faithful and the majority of his people don't accept him? And so he's made a case, Paul has made a case that it's God's prerogative to show mercy to whatever people group and whatever peoples he would choose.

And that goes all the way down to choosing the individuals to whom he would choose to show mercy and compassion to. But last week, God also made it clear through the apostle Paul and through his Holy Spirit revealing this, that when we look at it from another perspective, the human perspective, we see that most of the Jews miss the Messiah because of their own attempts at self-righteousness, because their own attempts to work for what God was freely offering and said, you can't earn this.

You can't pay me back for it. It is all of grace and grace alone. It is by faith and trust in what my son has done for you. And so all throughout the Old Testament, God has called his people to himself.

And in our text this morning, Paul is gonna expand on that idea. What is it exactly that the people of the Old Testament and the Jews were rejecting when they rejected the gospel? What were they rejecting?

And what particularly has kept the Jews from coming in? And if we come to understand what has kept the Jews out, then we may actually begin to see some deeper insights into our own hearts, the types of things that would battle against God in our hearts as well as in the hearts of humanity around us.

And so I have a loose outline this morning.

To help follow the flow.

Every point in this outline centers around the word righteousness because that's the main point of this text. Righteousness is the main point of this section of chapter 10 of the book of Romans. So if obtaining righteousness, here's the main point.

If you're taking notes, this is the main point. It'll be on the screen. If obtaining righteousness is so simple, then why isn't everyone lining up to receive it? That's a question that we ought to ask ourselves.

That's an important question to kind of think through even in our day and age. It's not just a Jewish problem, it's a human problem. If it really is so simple as this text is gonna convey, then why aren't they all lining up to receive it?

So here's the outline.

The first point is just one verse, it's verse five, and it's the tough road of a works-based righteousness. The tough road of a works-based righteousness. Then verses six through 11 are gonna be the simplicity and proximity of a faith-based righteousness.

The third point is the need to communicate, the need to communicate a faith-based righteousness. That's verses 12 through 15. And then the fourth one, not all will obey this faith-based righteousness.

That's verses 16 through 21. So let's launch out into this. The first point is just this first verse, verse five. That one verse, but this is primarily, verse five in this text of chapter 10 is primarily a quote from Moses from the book of Leviticus.

It's interesting that Paul had at his disposal quoting from the book of Leviticus. He had studied the Old Testament, he knew it, and he says, Moses wrote in Leviticus 18 .5 that the person who obeys the commandments.

Must live by them.

And that's kind of an archaic phrase to us.

It's something that doesn't necessarily.

Like communicate a lot. The verse could be understood in a variety of ways, and I had to do some research to kind of dig down to what is Paul getting at by this verse? But in context, Paul is using this verse to contrast an attempted righteousness based on obeying laws and rules, trying to earn your own self-righteousness,.

Trying to look good in God's eyes,.

Trying to get his attention, and contrasting that with the rest of the text, which is a righteousness that is given to a person based on faith and trust in Jesus. So two different brands, two different ideas, two different concepts of righteousness.

A righteousness that I can earn by being good, or a righteousness that can be given to me by God based on the work of Jesus Christ. So verse five is that front end. It's the righteousness that somebody would try to earn by obedience.

And the way most scholars understand Paul's use of this quote is that he's identifying the comprehensive, whole-life nature to choosing to live a self-righteous life, trying to obey rules and please God by the law.

Notice the last word in the English Standard version of the translation of verse five. It is the word them.

Well, what is them?

The person who bases, it says the person who bases their hope for righteousness on law must live by them.

What is them?

The laws. How many of them? Well, he doesn't minimize it, all of them. Not some of them, not a few of them, but all of them. So I just have to ask you, how much of this book is laws and rules? How many of you have read it?

How many of you have read through the Bible in a year? You've read this book. So you've got some idea. How many of you know that there's a lot of laws and rules in here? And then the other question to ask is how comprehensive are those rules?

Well, they cover every aspect of our lives, don't they? All the way down to what you eat and even in the old civil law, the things that you wear and sacrifices and all of those things. And so the law, it's just comprehensive.

There's a lot going on in there. And so how many of these laws do you have to obey to be okay with God? And that's a fundamental question if you choose a works-based, law-based righteousness. If that's what you wanna do, then he says you're gonna have to keep them all.

You wanna be a religious person and try to get right with God through obedience? Obey them, live by them, all of them. And now let's just take one little one of them. Honor your father and mother. How many of you have broken that one?

You don't really even have to raise your hand. I am a father and I've been a son and I know how life works. And so you don't have to raise your hand because I know that every single one of us at some point has dishonored our father or our mother.

So that's a given.

And that's one of the more simplistic laws. How about we take a more complex one?

Like love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,.

Soul, mind, and strength. I don't even need to go on to the neighbor part. How many of you ever broken that one? Anybody else O for two? Okay, I think we're all O for two on this one. I don't even need to go on.

Have you broke the Sabbath? Have you ever lied? Have you ever lusted? Have you ever, ever, ever, ever,.

And you just keep going through them and I mean, we're not doing too well. When we look at righteousness from this perspective, it suddenly snaps into focus. I'm in trouble if it's up to me to save myself.

If it's up to me and my perfection in keeping this law, I'm busted. And so in this short first verse, Paul says, you wanna seek righteousness in God's eyes by the law? Fine, simple, just do all of them.

Just completely and perfectly keep the law, then you'll be all right. You see, this is a tough road that never arrives at righteousness for someone who is a sin-cursed individual on this sin-cursed planet.

Now, certainly there is one who completed this righteous law on our behalf, right? His name is Jesus Christ and he fulfilled it for us. So I can't say there's no one that has ever achieved righteousness through this because Christ did so on our behalf.

But the road to a works-based righteousness is a tough and eventually fruitless road for any of us. So let me just stand up here as your pastor and just say, don't go down that road. Like, that's not the road for you.

That's not the path that you want. You don't want to have gone that road that leads to the judgment. There's another road that leads to judgment and it's a much more pleasant road at the end. Maybe a more difficult road along the way, but it's a better road.

And yet, so many, so very many take this road of attempting to assert their own righteousness and their own great standing in God's eyes. But the contrast comes in verse two. There's a righteousness that is based in faith and it doesn't require radical and heroic actions and deeds.

The journey to salvation is not like an epic quest. It isn't a radical search for a hidden savior that we must climb the stairways to heaven to find and bring him down to us. We need not plunge into the depths of the abyss to conquer the underworld to bring up our savior.

We are not Hercules. We are not Perseus. I mean, think about all the Greek things that Paul would probably have been aware of, all of the pantheon of Greek and Roman gods and all of the stories about charging the gates of Hades and winning people back and doing all of those heroic and epic deeds.

But salvation cannot be achieved through heroic and epic means. No, actually, our savior willingly just came down for us. And our savior has indeed come back from the abyss for us. We are not, hear me carefully, church, we are not the main characters in our own stories.

Despite what every magazine headline and self-help title tells you, you are not the hero of your own story. You are the helpless character who needs rescuing in your story. So it is not girl, wash your face.

It's girl, have your face washed. That's really the message for all of us. It is that one would come and take care of you,.

Not you. Working and working and working.

And heaping on all kinds of things for you to accomplish these epic and heroic deeds of the day. What are we called to? A humble trust in the work that our hero has done for us. He has done it.

We can't.

We are the helpless character in need of rescuing in our own story. And so in this sense, salvation is a simple thing. What we're being called to in our understanding, what we're called to in our day-to-day, not just talking about the one time of salvation, but the daily reminder that we need to wake up and remind ourselves salvation is accomplished for us and that changes our day if we grasp it.

If you wake up in the morning free in Christ, you wake up free to live for him, to honor him, to love him. No longer under the fear and the tyranny of, I've got to do all of these epic things for him today.

But in Deuteronomy, Moses wrote that the word is near you in your mouth and in your heart. He's quoting Deuteronomy, but he's talking to the church and he's talking in terms of the salvation and this righteousness.

And what he's basically getting at is the simplicity and proximity of salvation in this quote. Wherever the gospel is proclaimed, salvation has drawn so very near that it could rightly be said that it is in the mouth and the heart of the hearer.

The one who hears the gospel and understands it and comprehends it and takes it in with their ears, it is in their heart and in their mouth. It is so, so, so very near when the gospel is proclaimed. I had the chance a few weeks ago to share the gospel with a 97-year-old, a 97-year-old woman that I love.

And my hope, my only hope for her, she's not a believer, my only hope for her is that here in these last days, last weeks, we don't know how much longer we have with her, but my hope is that the words of Christ are in her mouth and that the words of Christ are in her heart.

And that's the hope that we obtain when we get the chance to speak and proclaim the gospel to someone. No one is beyond the realm and the reach of God, as long as they have breath, as long as they have life, as long as they have a mouth that can speak, as long as they have a heart that can believe.

There's hope in that. And the only hope, of course, that I have is that I've had an opportunity to proclaim the gospel with her. Without that, I don't know if she's heard it, I don't know if she gets it, I don't know if she believes it.

I certainly don't even now know whether she believes it, but I know she could. I know she could profess it right this second because she knows it and she has it now. Is that making sense? In her mouth and in her heart, waiting to be expressed if she would choose to express faith in the words of life.

How heroic is our part in salvation? How heroic is our part in saving ourselves? Well, it says in the text in verse nine, we confess that Jesus is Lord with our mouth and we believe in our hearts that he died and rose again.

And we will be saved.

That doesn't sound super epic. That doesn't sound super heroic. It sounds just simple. Salvation is close to anyone who has heard the gospel. It is as close as mouth and heart. And a word about the necessity to confess with your mouth, because some of you might be kind of like.

Weirded out by that a little bit,.

Like do I have to speak it, do I have to say it out loud? And what if somebody can't, what if their mouth literally doesn't work? Then can they be saved? You know, and kind of think of like, exceptions and stuff like that.

But you might be wondering, do you have to say it out loud? Is it like a magic formula? And I don't believe at all that's the case. Paul is using an Old Testament quote from Deuteronomy to bring the Jews along into his explanation of the gospel.

He has hopes that some of them might receive this. And so Paul explains in so many places, all throughout his writing, that faith alone is necessary for salvation. But here he adds confession or profession with the mouth as a logical outflow of saving faith.

And he does so in order to parallel the Old Testament that he's quoting, mouth and heart from Deuteronomy. So taking something that the Jews, a formula that the Jews would have understood, and he's borrowing that and bringing that into Christianity, bringing that forward into his message and saying, no, mind and heart with the law in the Old Testament, mind and, I mean, mind and mouth in the Old Testament law, or heart and mouth in the Old Testament law, heart and mouth in the New Covenant as well.

So we know this, by the way, because we have so much of Paul's writing to compare this with.

So you can kind of be,.

Don, are you just kind of trying to get us out from underneath something here? But there's so much of his writing. He only uses the word confess that's used here in this text three times in all of his New Testament writings.

Paul uses that three times. He uses the word for faith in conjunction with salvation 40 times in the Book of Romans alone. So he is faith, faith, faith for salvation, not faith plus confession, faith plus baptism, faith plus, it's faith for salvation.

And then other things come along, other things will come along with that. The foundation of salvation is believing in your heart. The outcropping of that salvation by faith is that you would confess Jesus with your mouth and you would do so readily given the opportunity.

That is part of it,.

That given the opportunity to confess Christ as your Lord,.

You will.

And the simplicity of the gospel is expressed in various ways throughout this text, but verses 10 and 11 intentionally show simplicity. You can look at verses 10 and 11 there. Justification comes by believing in the core of your being, in your heart, believing that Jesus was indeed victorious over sin and death, and with your mouth you confess Jesus as your new ruler.

He's your leader, he is your king, he is your Lord, your master. I'd suggest to you that we love to complexificate things. Yeah, probably not. But to be honest, I think that that's one of the main points in the text.

That's one of the main things that Paul has an interest in expressing to us. The fact that salvation is so simple is what causes many to stumble. It can't be that easy. We ought to be able to earn it, or we should at least be able to contribute something to it.

It's hard for the arrogant to get in because they're used to trusting in themselves. It's hard for the wealthy to come in because they're used to trusting in their wealth to buy their way through life.

And what God is looking for is belief and confession. A genuine humility that says, I'm not the Savior, Jesus is. A genuine humility that says, I'm not king, Jesus is. I'm not even king of my own life, Jesus is.

In verse 11, there's a direct correlation. Everyone who believes in him, it says, will not be put to shame. We heard this before at the end of chapter nine. Chapter nine ended with that quote, that same quote from Isaiah, but here the emphasis is a little bit different in chapter 10.

The simple hope, the simple gospel, the simple salvation is the hope for all. Everyone who believes, everyone who believes will be shameless before him.

On that great day of judgment.

So this locks together, by the way, here in verse 11, this locks together those whom God shows mercy and compassion to with those who believe in him. We know we have been selected for mercy and compassion.

Why?

Only because we have believed in him. So there's a simplicity and a proximity in a faith-based righteousness here. And as long as you have a mouth and a heart, you are only belief and confession away from salvation.

No movement necessary, no heroic or epic valor required. That's the second point. The third point in the outline begins in verse 12. This faith-based righteousness must be communicated. A troubling question might be teasing at the edges of your mind right now if you've been following the text and thinking it through.

If a faith-based righteousness comes by faith that leads to confession, then what about those who haven't heard the message?

What about those people?

Have any of you ever thought that question before? What about those who haven't heard? What about those, like, the tribes out there? You know, you kind of get your mind wrapped around these conundrums or these exceptions and things like that.

If a faith-based righteousness comes by a faith that leads to confession, then what about those other people? And instead of saying, you know what? Look at what Paul says here. Instead of saying, you know what?

God will save people who haven't heard the gospel in some other way. He's got another back door. Surely there are tribes of people far removed from Jesus and they can come through some other means. There's gotta be another way, right?

But instead here, Paul doubles down once again on Christ as the simple but necessary door for salvation. Jew and Gentile alike must come through the door of the Messiah, the Lord, the King.

He is the Lord of all,.

Whether or not he is recognized as such, but he is so gracious to bestow his riches of mercy and grace and forgiveness to all who would call on him,.

The text says.

And so in verses 12 through 13, we see the repeated word call here. All who would call on the name of the Lord will be saved. In order to call on him, we need to know who he is, which will be clearly expressed in verse 14.

But what does it mean to call on him? Is it enough to just utter the name of Jesus?

Is that what it means?

If I've ever said the name Jesus, then I'm saved? But of course not. But Paul quotes from the prophet Joel here in verse 13. And interestingly, the word that's used in Greek here, whenever it has a personal direct object, did that help anybody in the room?

Probably not. Oh, let me back up. The Greek word, whenever it is used for a, you're calling out to a person for help, or whenever you're calling out to a person, it is always for help in the Greek language.

So that word for call always means asking for help, crying out for help when it's used of someone else. So whenever you're calling a person, it is for help. And calling on the name of the Lord, of course, then means calling on him for help.

So the question of, am I chosen by God that might have been on our minds a couple of weeks ago ends up being swallowed up by the more imminent question, have I called out to the lifeguard for salvation?

Am I still working for it on my own, or have I given up on my own flailing attempt to save myself in the waters? Have I cried out and said, I, I need help? It takes humility. Have I cried out to the name, a beautiful name, the name of Jesus, the name that means he saves his people?

The name is powerful.

The name of Christ is powerful because of what it means. Jesus is a beautiful name because if you actually and honestly trust in what the name means,.

You will be saved.

Do you believe he is the one who saves his people? Enough to cry out for help to that name.

Jesus, save me.

Jesus, rescue me. Do you believe that he is the one who will save his people? Then why not become one of his people? But again, all of this presupposes that we have some understanding about what Jesus has done.

And that is why the third point is the need to communicate a faith-based righteousness. It has to be spoken. It has to be proclaimed. It has to be declared. How could a person call on the name of one they don't believe exists?

And how will they believe in one whom they've not heard of? And how will they hear if nobody proclaims to them? And so the conundrum about the tribe out there that doesn't hear is that we know and we need to go to them.