I'm going to ask you that you
turn to a couple of scriptures today in the sermon. The first one, which we will
probably spend the most time with, is Romans chapter 10. So if you want to put a marker
there and hold your place in Psalm 116, we'll come back to
that too. But before we go much further,
I want to just give you an introduction, and then we'll turn to some more
scriptures. One of the most important things
that we find in scripture is this promise of God that says,
whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Now, this is a promise from the
Old Testament. It's a promise repeated in the
New Testament. It's a promise that was preached
by the Apostle Peter on that day when God poured out his spirit
to send the gospel throughout the world. Lord Jesus Christ
came into the world. Son of God was born in our nature. He lived his life approximately
33 years. He did everything God required
of us. He fulfilled the will of God.
And he suffered and died and was buried for our sins, and
God raised him up the third day. He then ascended to heaven and
took his place on the right hand of God in full majesty, the majesty
of God, as a reward for his accomplishments and as a reward to him for his
people. And on that very day when he
sent his spirit to preach this good news, this glad tidings
from heaven to sinners, he reiterated this promise that whosoever shall
call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And we find that
in the book of Acts, and we're going to read that also in a
minute. So I've entitled today's message, Whosoever shall call
on the name of the Lord. And what we just read in Psalm
116 repeats that phrase throughout the psalm. He says in the first
part, I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my
supplications. Because he has inclined his ear
to me, therefore, will I call upon him as long as I live. There's much to be learned from
this psalm, and I want to consider it today with you. Now, we have
to ask these questions because they are important for us to
understand, what does it mean? What does it mean to call on
the name of the Lord? That's the first question we
wanna try to answer from scripture. Why do we call on the name of
the Lord? Those two questions really go
together. What does it mean and why do we call? And then the
second question I have really from scripture, because scripture
is what raises these questions and answers them for us, is who
should call? And who actually does call? So
why do we call? What does it mean to call? And
who does call? Why? Why should they? And what is God's promise in
this? Calling on the name of the Lord. What is the name of
the Lord? So those are some of the questions
I want to try to answer for you today. And not just for you because
we're gathered here in order to hear a man, but because these
are God's promises. And this promise is a promise
that will not fail. When God makes a promise, he
does not fail. He cannot lie. And this is something
that's so foreign from our thinking because we're so used to lying
that lying is something we do by nature in practice so much
that we don't even recognize how often we lie. We don't tell
the truth. We misrepresent ourselves to
others and we take credit for things that don't belong to us.
There's so many ways that we distort the truth. One of the
main ways we distort the truth is we just don't understand what
God thinks. And so we take our own thoughts
and we assume that that's the way things are. So we lie to
ourselves, and we're deceived, and we deceive others. We're
just naturally liars. The scripture says in Romans
chapter 3, let God be true, but every man a liar. So there you
have it. God alone is true. God cannot
lie. His promises will not fail, not
only because he cannot lie, But because God is able to make his
promises come to pass, he can't fail. Not only can he not lie,
but he cannot fail. He is almighty. And so what God
has promised will most certainly come to pass. And what God has
promised here is salvation. And that's what we see from this
verse of scripture, which I'm about to read to you from Romans
chapter 10. So let's turn to Romans chapter
10 now. In Romans chapter 10, it's the
10th chapter of a book. So we're kind of jumping right
in the middle. There's a lot of information and argument that's
given before this point in this text of scripture. But let me
just read this to you. As we read this, I will try to
explain to you what's being said here. In Romans Chapter 10 and
verse 1, the Apostle Paul is writing to those who are in Rome. He says, brethren, so they're
obviously believers, He says, otherwise he wouldn't call them
brethren, or they might be just related to him by his natural
culture being a Jew as one of them. He says, brethren, my heart's
desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be
saved. Israel is the name of God's people,
that nation that was called by his name. God gave them that
name. Paul's desire for these people was that they might be
saved. That is my desire for myself
and for you. And with this desire, this is
the most important thing that you can have, is salvation. This
is, if you were to take your entire life and try to find something
in it of value, the one thing, if you could have it as a possession
of any value compared to anything else throughout your entire life
is this, God saved me. And so this is a great desire
the apostle Paul has for his people who were his people by
culture. They were related to him because
they were in the same nation. And he was born to Abraham and
all of those in Israel were born to Abraham. So he had this relationship
to them that was a physical relationship based on their common heritage
to their ancestor Abraham. His desire was that they might
be saved. But his desire was not the thing
that would cause them to be saved. It was not sufficient. He was
not able to save them. What were they to be saved from?
And who could possibly save them from it? Well, they had to be
saved from the wrath of God. They had to be saved from their
sins, which brought God's wrath upon them. And this is true of
all of us. All of us have sinned. All of
us have offended God by what we've done. We have failed to
do what he said to do. We've done what he's told us
not to do. And in the way we think, in our motives, in our
intentions, we're opposed to God's law. We're opposed to God,
God's rule. We need to be saved. We need
to be saved from who we are, our sin. And so he desires this,
but he can't make it happen. The only one who can save us
from our sin is the one we've sinned against. Our creator must
be our savior. So he says in verse two, about
the nation of Israel, his people who were naturally related to
Abraham as he was through physical birth and ancestry, he says,
I bear them record, they're not saved, but I bear them record
that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.
They were very zealous, very enthusiastic, very dedicated
and committed to God. But they were ignorant of what
really mattered. And so this teaches us that people
in general are very religious. Now, the religion that the Jews,
the people of Israel had, was given to them by God himself.
Of all the people in all the world, only that nation was given
a word from God written. a word that came from men sent
by God. The rest of the world was left
without a word. This nation was blessed with
God's own word. He wrote it. Moses wrote the
first five books of the Bible. He spoke to them by prophets.
He gave them the Psalms, all these songs about the truth of
God. He gave them signs and wonders
throughout the Old Testament. And finally, he sent his son.
But these people, to whom God gave the true knowledge of God
were ignorant, and yet they were very religious. And it just so
happens that this is given to us here to teach us that by nature,
we also are very naturally religious. And what I mean by that is we
concoct a way of living and thinking about God and about how God thinks
about us from our own imagination, and it's wrong. It's wrong, we're
ignorant of God. Even though men and women and
boys and girls can be very enthusiastic, very active and committed and
dedicated and zealous, as he says here, about God, they can
be totally ignorant of his truth. It's clear that these people
needed to be saved, therefore, right? They were ignorant, they
were busy, but what they did and what they thought was worthless. It didn't save them. That's the
problem. That's a big problem, isn't it?
In verse three, he says, for they, being ignorant of God's
righteousness, but going about to establish their own righteousness,
have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.
That's the issue right there. They were ignorant of God in
this way. They did not know his righteousness. And because they were ignorant
of his righteousness, what did they do? They went about to establish
a righteousness of their own. And how did they do that? Well,
it's because it says that they tried to keep The law, they tried
to do what God commanded because they thought that if they could
do it, God would give them life. And so you see this throughout
the New Testament especially. A man comes to Jesus and he says,
good master, what must I do that I might have eternal life? So
he reflects the mind, the thoughts of these people here. What can
I do? to have eternal life. That's
called my own righteousness. You give me something to do,
Lord, and I'll do it. And if I can do it, then you
will give me life. That was their thinking. That's
called our own righteousness. But that shows an utter ignorance. It's an utter ignorance in who
God is. It's a complete ignorance in
what he is for his people and what he does for them. Because
God cannot accept what a man does, because it's always full
of sin. Our best intentions are full
of sin. And I'll quote a scripture to
you. It says in Jeremiah chapter 17 verse 9, that the heart of
man is deceitful above all things, and who can know it? It's desperately
wicked. God himself understands what
we think and our motives and our intentions. And he says,
this is what we are naturally. We're desperately wicked. Our
mind, our thoughts deceive ourselves, and we deceive others. Our hearts
are deceitful above everything. And God knows our hearts and
he tells us about our hearts. And Jesus said, he said this,
out of the heart of man, not coming in from the outside. Psychologists
and psychiatrists will tell you that we are what we are by external
influence. But God says, no, the problem
starts with me. The fault is mine. The issue
is what's going on on my inside. Not what's going on in my environment,
it's what's happening in here. in my thinking, in my motives,
in my intentions, why I do what I do, and the things that I do
and think. Jesus said that you've heard
that a man should not commit adultery. And he says, but I
say to you, if you think, if you lust in your heart, you've
already committed adultery. So it's what's happening in our
motives, in our thoughts, in our heart, our conscience. And so we cannot bring anything
to God that is acceptable to God because our motives are wrong.
Our thoughts are wrong. We have a self-centered way of
looking at life, not a God-centered one. And so this is evidence
when we have this natural propensity, this natural effort to go about
to please God by what He finds in us. Something we do, something
we think, a motive that we have. I resolve to do better. I will
not do that again. And God will have to, I will
be able to turn myself from what I am to a new person. I can change
the way I am. All of that is self-deception. We're wicked and we can't change
it. Wicked in the sight of God. We've sinned against God. We
cannot produce a righteousness before God because we can't do
We can't do from our heart what God has told us we must do. And
God, in fact, gave us His commandments to show us our sin. It says that the law was given
so that every mouth would be stopped before God, have nothing
to say, and be found guilty before God. And so these people were
utterly ignorant of that. They were utterly ignorant of
what God required, that they could meet it. They thought they
could. They were deceived in thinking they could do what God
said to do. They were completely ignorant.
But they went about in this blindness, in this arrogance of thinking
that somehow I can please God. Me and myself. It was wrong. And we have a hard time accepting
that. We have a hard time accepting that, so much so that we get
mad at God for telling us that we are wrong. But that's what
the Bible does. It spends so much time laying
out what we are in scripture, that we are sinners against God,
that we have transgressed God's law. But here's the good news,
there is salvation. The Apostle Paul says, my desire
is that they might be saved. I bear them record that they
have a zeal of God, but it's not according to knowledge. Because
they're ignorant of God's righteousness, they go about to establish their
own righteousness, and they have not submitted themselves to the
righteousness of God. Now, what is that righteousness?
What is the righteousness of God? He says it in the next verse. For Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness to everyone that believe it. Now this is
the gospel. This is glad tidings from heaven. This is good news. I have no
righteousness. Any attempt on my own part to
try to justify myself by what I do, by what I am, by what I
want to do, what I think to do, intend to do, hope to do someday,
all of that is misguided, misdirected pride. But here, God says, now
you consider not yourself, but look to the Son of God, the Lord
Jesus Christ. He himself is the end of the
law. He fulfilled all that God required. He's the end of it. He fulfilled
it and therefore brought it to an end. What the law requires
of us, God did in his son. That's what he's saying here.
And he says that this righteousness which Christ himself worked out,
this obedience to God, so fulfilled the law, he did not need to do
it for himself because he himself never sinned and was right in
all that he did. He did it in order that he might
save to himself, save for himself a people who in themselves were
sinners. But because they were utterly
sinful and couldn't save themselves, he worked out what God required. He not only did what God required
for obedience, but he bore their sins. He himself took their sins
as his own, and God poured out the wrath upon him that we deserve. That's the good news of the gospel.
Christ is the end of the law. He satisfied God's law. He fulfilled
the obedience of the law. Everything that God requires
of his people, Jesus Christ did and is in himself. And this righteousness,
which is his, is the righteousness of everyone that believes him."
In other words, everyone who looks to who he is and what he
did and how he did it for his people, how God appointed him
to this and it was God's will that he work out what we failed
to do. What we offended God in, he would
reconcile us to God in that very thing by bearing our sins and
experiencing in himself the punishment that God's justice required of
sinners. And then in that love for us,
giving himself and fulfilling all of the law in that act of
love. That's the righteousness of God.
He himself is God and he is man. And so he is the one that we
believe. We have to believe God. We wouldn't
believe a man, but we believe on him. We believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ as our righteousness. This is saying to us here that
God accepts us for what Christ did. You see, this is so important. The fundamental truth of the
gospel is God receives and accepts and approves of his people not
for what they did in spite of what they did and for what they
failed to do, but for what the Lord Jesus Christ did that God
gave Him to do in order to magnify God's justice and righteousness
and to fulfill it. He counts what Christ did as
theirs. They did it in Him. That's the
good news of the gospel. And if God considers it theirs,
then God says they did it when He did it. This is God's doing. This is God's wisdom. This is
how God can be just and yet justify, can approve and accept a sinner. Now, these people, the Israelites,
the Jews who were ignorant of this, They were blind to it. They couldn't accept it. In their
pride, they held tenaciously to their own obedience, and they
expected that God, in the day of judgment, would evaluate them
and assess what they did, and they would consider what they
did good enough for God, as if God could compromise His holiness. They had a very low opinion of
God and a very high opinion of themselves. And so God contrasts
these two ways in which men, on the first part, is wrong,
think that they can be right with God, and a second way, which
is the only way they can be, that God appointed and fulfilled. He says in verse 5, for Moses,
which is the one God gave his law to, the commandments he gave
to Israel, Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the
law. This is what that righteousness is. The man which doeth those
things shall live by them. That's what I said earlier. If
you keep the law, then you can live. That's what the law promises. God said that. But no man can. Righteousness can't come that
way. He cannot. That's what God is saying. Verse
6, but the righteousness which is of faith, in contrast to our
own personal obedience, faith looks upon Christ and His obedience. Faith ascribes and gives credit
to God who, by the Lord Jesus Christ, honored His own law and
fulfilled His own law and satisfied His own justice and set forth
His own righteousness. He says, the righteousness which
is of faith speaks on this wise. This is how it talks, and it
comes off as a negative. He says, say not in thine heart
who shall ascend into heaven. That is to bring Christ down
from above. Now that seems confusing, but if you understand that to
ascend to heaven is what God promised his appointed Savior,
the Messiah, would do. He would be given all of the
honor and glory and reward of God and be so honored by God
that he would be set on heaven's throne in reward for his obedience. So faith says, I'm not going
to say this in my heart, who shall ascend into heaven, because
that would be to bring Christ down. In other words, only the
Lord Jesus Christ can ascend to heaven because he first descended
in order to do the will of God. The second phrase in verse 7
says, or, faith doesn't say this either, who shall descend into
the deep. That is to bring up Christ again
from the dead. To descend into the deep means
to take on the will of God in sacrificing himself and answering
and fulfilling that will for the sins of his people, suffering
the wrath of God, and then rising again to bring him up from the
dead. In other words, only the Lord
Jesus Christ could both ascend and descend, first descend and
then ascend. Only he could receive the honor
for having fulfilled the will of God. The point here is, as
faith says, it has to be the Lord Jesus Christ. It can't be
me. His work, not my work. That's the only work that will
work. He's the only mediator, the only
one who could come from God, provide God with all that he
requires, and do it for his people to save them. Remember, that's
the issue here. It's about salvation. Okay, do
you understand that? The point is, as he's saying,
this is a quotation from the Old Testament, that the righteousness
which is the faith basically says, look to the Lord Jesus
Christ. He's the one who first descended,
bore the sins of his people, answered God's justice, bore
their punishment and the wrath of God, fully expended that wrath
in himself and then rose from the dead. God justified him and
he ascended and was given glory and honor and sat down as the
Lord of all on the right hand of God. All right. So, the righteousness which is
of faith does not say, I'm going to try to do what only Christ
can do. But what does it say? Verse 8,
what does it say? This is what it says, the word
is near, or nigh thee in thy mouth and in thy heart, that
is, the word of faith which we preach. In other words, The word
of faith comes to you, God reveals it to you. And what is that word
that God reveals? Well, he's going to explain it
here. And he's going to explain it
first by just telling us that we are to believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ. But later, he's going to explain
how it is, what the content, the essence of this word of faith
is. The fact is, it's the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ in his
death for his people to save them from their sins. It's all
about him, not surprising. That's what faith is. Faith is
looking to the Lord Jesus Christ for everything, as a sinner with
nothing, needing everything and looking to him for everything.
Now, look at this in verse nine, Romans 10, verse nine. The word
of faith which we preach is near you. It's been preached to you. It's been revealed from heaven
by God through the preachers God sent, the Lord Jesus Christ
sent. And it's about him. He says,
that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and
shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from
the dead, thou shalt be saved. So to confess with the mouth,
is to say what's going on on the inside. We read last week
in Matthew chapter 12 that whatever is in a man's heart, that's what
he's gonna say. What we truly believe, it's gonna
come out in what we say. And to confess is to say, This
is it. This is what I believe. This is my hope. This is all
I have. If you shall confess with your
mouth the Lord Jesus. In other words, I'm going to
defer everything to Him. I'm going to ask God and I'm
going to tell you, as another poor sinner, that all of my hope
is in the Lord Jesus. That's what he's saying, confessing
with your mouth. I'm not going to be reluctant to tell you that
everything I believe, that the way that I can be saved, the
way that anyone on earth can be saved is only one place, in
the Lord Jesus. He's the Lord. That means he's
the sovereign. He can do whatever he wants to,
and he does do whatever he wants to. He's the judge. Everyone
has to be accountable to him. And he will judge everyone, and
he's the savior. Jesus means he shall save his
people from their sins. The Lord Jesus, the sovereign
savior. That's what he's saying. If you
believe he's the sovereign, like the thief on the cross said,
Lord, you're the sovereign. You're the king. God gave this
to you. You're hanging here on the cross
because you're doing the will of God to save your people from
their sins. Remember me. That's calling. And he says, if you confess with
your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God
raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. God justified
him. God said what he did was enough. It was all sufficient.
It's the righteousness of God, therefore He raised Him from
the dead. He justified everything He said, everything He did in
His resurrection. And with justifying Him, He justified
His people. But if you believe on Him, And
you say that because that's what you believe, you shall be saved. That's what verse 9 is saying.
Now, he says, For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness,
and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. With
the heart, it means it's not something It's not something
on the outward that we do. The Jews' religion was things
they did outwardly. I'm going to go forward in church.
I'm going to raise my hand. I'm going to say something to
the preacher. I'm going to attend church all
my life. I'm going to give my money. I'm going to attend mass. I'm going to wear certain kinds
of clothes and cut my hair a certain way. I'm going to talk a certain
way. All those things will get you nowhere. It's what you believe
in your heart about Christ that matters. That's the evidence
that God has revealed the righteousness of God to you and that has given
you this faith to trust Him. It's with the heart, not with
your outward actions. It's with what's going on on
the inside. In other words, God has to change
us. He has to write upon our inner
being, this subconscious part of us that causes us to think
differently about himself and ourselves and about our Savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what his word is given
here. He says, for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness,
we receive the truth of God concerning his righteousness in our heart,
in believing him. And with the mouth confession
is made to salvation, and we say, this is all my hope. In
verse 11, for the scripture said, here's the promise, whosoever
believeth on him shall not be ashamed. That's the quotation
from Old Testament. Whosoever, what does that mean? It means whoever. It also means
that everyone who is saved is only saved this way, because
they call on the name of the Lord. They believe on Him. Whosoever. There's no salvation except in
this way. We're sinners. There's no salvation
by our own selves keeping God's commandments or by being religious,
practicing the traditions of religion. All that will only
cause us to be rejected because we're not submitting ourselves
to, we're not trusting in the righteousness of Christ. We're
refusing it, we're putting it off in our pride. So whosoever,
this is the only way. We're all in need of salvation. And this is the only way that
we can be saved. And it's not believing on ourselves
or looking to ourselves to come up with what God requires at
all. In fact, we bring nothing to
God except our own disobedience and failings. And it's all our
fault. And we stand before Him with
nothing, needing everything, and we trust Christ as everything
for us to God. Whosoever believes on Christ,
on Him, the Lord Jesus, shall not be ashamed. You won't be
put to shame in the day of judgment. You won't be disappointed. You
won't be exposed. You won't be cast out. You will
not be ashamed. Verse 12, there's no difference
between the Jew and the Greek. We're Greek, or we're Gentiles. There's Jews, there's us. It
doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what your culture
is, how wise or how simple-minded you are, how noble, how rich,
how poor. All those things don't matter.
It doesn't matter if you're male or female, young or old, rich
or poor, wise or ignorant. God says it makes no difference,
for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon
him, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall
be saved. To call on the Lord, that's it.
Paul desired the salvation, and he says, my desire is that they
call. Now, listen to this. Verse 14,
ask the question, how then shall they call? on Him in whom they
have not believed. You see that faith is a prerequisite. You won't call on Christ unless
you believe Him, that He's the Savior, that you're a sinner,
that you can't produce what God requires and He has. And you
come to God knowing He has to look upon the Lord Jesus Christ
and only by Him can you be saved. If you don't believe that, you
won't call. That's what he's saying here.
I remember working with a man. I was trying to explain these
things to him and he said, why would I ever call on God for
mercy if I didn't believe him? I said, you're right, you won't. That's what the question is here.
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?
And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? We can't believe unless the truth
is given to us. Faith has to be given to us.
Faith means we understand the way things are as God has said
it, God has revealed it. And that can only happen if God
gives that to us, if he tells us. And how shall they hear without
a preacher? You see, God has to not only
tell the truth, but we can't come up with it on our own. Someone
has to tell us. And how shall they preach except
they be sent? God has to send the man or woman
who's going to tell us the truth. As it is written, how beautiful.
This is a quotation now, he's proving what he just said. How
beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace
and bring glad tidings of good things. What is it that we need
to hear? The gospel. And what is the gospel? It's a gospel of peace. How did
that peace come about? God made peace in the death of
his son. Notice verse 16. But they have
not all obeyed the gospel. Now he's talking about these
people here that heard the Jews, they had the truth, but they
didn't believe it. They haven't obeyed it. And what
was the obedience? What obedience was God looking
for? Faith in Christ. They have not
all obeyed the gospel. What is the gospel? He says next,
for Isaiah said, Lord who hath believed our report, And the
report that he's talking about here comes from Isaiah 53. And
let me read a couple of verses from Isaiah 53 to show you what
that gospel is. What is this gospel that God
has sent which we must believe in order to be obedient to it?
He says in Isaiah 53. All we, verse six, all we, like
sheep, have gone astray. We have turned, every one of
us, to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity
of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth like a sheep. He is brought as a lamb
to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his shearers is dumb,
so he opened not his mouth. When Jesus Christ bore the sins
of his people, and God delivered him up. The Jews and the Gentiles
accused him falsely. They humiliated him. They spit
in his face. They hit him with sticks. They
took a crown of thorns and pressed it into his head. They beat him
on his back. They did everything to make him
suffer and to mock him and humiliate him. And they eventually put
him to death. And God is saying, God did that. That was God's
doing. He was bringing it upon Him because
He bore our sins and therefore must bear what we deserve. He
was taken from prison and judgment. And who shall declare His generation?
He was cut off out of the land of the living. Listen to these
words. For the transgression of my people was He stricken. substitution. God had him, the
Lord Jesus Christ, stand in the place of his people and for their
transgressions against God. He was stricken by God. God did
this. And look at verse 10. It pleased
the Lord to bruise him. He put him to grief when he made
his soul an offering for sin. You see that? And then in verse 11, by my righteous
servant shall justify many, he shall bear their iniquity. So
what he's showing us here is that the gospel that is that
God gives to his servants to preach to his people, which they
need to hear from that preacher and believe, and therefore will
call, that gospel is what Christ did as the substitute for his
people when he bore their sins before God. That's the righteousness
of God. He did what God required, took
away our sins, and fulfilled all obedience. That's the gospel. That's the report. But he says
here in verse 16, they haven't all obeyed the gospel. They heard
it, but they wouldn't obey it. They would not submit to God's
righteousness. So then, look at verse 17, the
last verse in Romans 10, we're gonna read. So then faith cometh
by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Well, you see that? That's the answer. Who calls
them? Those who hear, how do they hear? The word of God is preached to
them. What is the message of that word? Christ crucified for
God's people to take away their sins. What is the reaction? What happens
when God sends his word to his people? God causes them to believe. And what do they do if they believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ? They call, they call on him. What do they call him? What does
this mean to call on him? Why do they call? They call on
him to be saved. They call on him to save them
from their sins. Now, this is very applicable
to you and me, isn't it? This is the big issue. This is
the constant and continuous concern and delight of all of God's people. There's an example of this. in
the book of Mark, and let me just read this to you. In the
book of Mark, it says that Jesus and his disciples came to Jericho,
and this is in Mark chapter 10, verse 46, and as he went out
of Jericho with his disciples, a great number of people, Blind
Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the wayside begging, and
when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to, notice,
cry out and say, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me.
Notice what he asked for, mercy. And many charged him that he
should hold his peace, be quiet, in other words. But he cried
the more, a great deal. Thou son of David, have mercy
on me. And notice, this was calling
on the name of the Lord. This was calling on the Lord
Jesus Christ. When he said this, it says in
verse 49, Jesus stood still. The Son of God, the creator of
everything, the Lord of glory, the Prince of life, the one who
is equal with the Father, at the cry of a poor sinner, a blind
man who could not see. And he knew it. I can't see. In other words, I don't understand.
I don't know. I have nothing. I'm a beggar. Have mercy on me, Lord. And Jesus
stood still and he commanded him to be called. Jesus called the blind man. And they called the blind man
and they said to him, be of good cheer, be of good comfort. He
calls you. And the blind man, casting away
his garment, rose and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and
said to him, what do you want me to do to you? What wilt thou that I should
do unto thee? The blind man said this, Lord,
that I might receive my sight And Jesus said to him, go your
way, your faith has made thee whole. And immediately he received
his sight and followed Jesus in the way. That's calling. Why
did he call? He was blind. He had heard. Faith comes by hearing and hearing
by the word of God. He heard of Jesus. And when he
heard he was coming by, he called to him. He didn't call on him
and say, Lord, consider what I've done. Remember all the things
I've done. Recognize me. Think about my
prayers. Think about what I did in order
to please you. He didn't cry any of those things.
He had nothing. He needed everything. He called
to Christ for the healing of his blind eyes, which represents
our blindness and our sin. And when Jesus asked him, what
do you want me to do? Remember, Jesus called him, and
then he came, and then he said, what do you want me to do? He
said, Lord, that I might receive my sight. What's the one thing
you need from the Lord Jesus Christ? What only he can do. What God alone must do, the impossible,
to save you from your sins. And when God convinces you that
the Lord Jesus Christ is the one who alone can do that, When
He convinces you and gives you faith in Him, you'll call on
Him. One more example of calling. He says in Luke chapter 5 that
the disciples were in the boat, a storm was on the sea, Jesus
came walking to them on the water, and Peter, who was sort of the
leader of the disciples, He said, when he heard that Jesus was
walking on the water, cuz they were afraid when they first saw
him. He asked, he said, Lord, if it's you, then commend me
to come to you on the water. And Jesus said to him, come.
And so in this chapter, it says that when he came, he was walking
on the water to Jesus. But when he saw the waves, he
was afraid. And he called out and he said,
Lord, save me. I'm looking for the exact verse.
This is a different verse. I've got the wrong one in my
reference here, but this is exactly what he says. Lord, save me. That's what it means to call.
Why do we call? For salvation. Who do we call
on? The Lord Jesus Christ. What do we call for? Save me. Save me. Do all for me. Be my salvation. And that's what
Psalm 116 is talking about here. Psalm 116, when he says, I love
the Lord because he heard my voice. He heard his voice when
he called because he inclined his ear to me. Therefore, I will
call upon him as long as I live. The sorrows of death compassed
me. The pains of hell got hold upon me. I found trouble and
sorrow. Then called I upon the name of the Lord, O Lord, I beseech
thee, deliver my soul. He called for salvation. The
Lord saved him. And he said, because the Lord
heard my voice, I will call on him all the days of my life.
Calling on the Lord Jesus Christ is not something we just do once.
It's something we do continuously. And if we call, it's because
He called us. If we believe, it's because He
told us the truth. And He sent a preacher to tell
it to us, and He sent the preacher. And it's all about His glorious
work and about Himself. It's not about us. It's about
Christ. We come to God not on our own
merit. We come to God asking Him like
Bartimaeus, the blind man, Lord, open my eyes, let me see Christ,
and receive me for his sake. Let's pray. Father, we pray that we would
learn to call on your name means to call on the Lord Jesus, who
he is, what he is to us as sinners. That to call on His name means
to cry out to Him to save us, who can do nothing for ourselves.
We've done everything to oppose God and our own salvation. We
need rescued. And we need to be raised up from
death. We need to be given life. Only
He can do that. And we call because we need Him.
We're among those who have to have salvation. You've revealed
to us where salvation is, your own righteousness in the Lord
Jesus Christ. You've given us this commandment
and this promise. It all hangs on you fulfilling
your word. It all hangs on the Lord Jesus
Christ himself who is the Lord and the only savior who fulfilled
all you required and suffered all we deserved. And we ask you
not to look upon anything we've done in spite of what we've done. We ask you to look on your son
and receive us for his sake. You've promised that he is the
end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. We
pray, Lord, that we would trust him with all that we are and
have, and we would ask him to save us like this blind man did. And even though the world and
our own selves would think that we have no business thinking
that we could be saved because we're such sinners, that this
is the very reason the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world was
to save sinners. So help us to trust him, Lord.
And with the psalmist, help us to take the cup of salvation
and call upon his name. You filled the cup, we drink
from it. This is the great blessing that
we need and must have. This is how we live and all that
we long for is that you would save us and bring us to yourselves
and make yourself known. In Jesus name we pray, amen.