Turn to Romans 9. I thought in singing that song, How Great
Thou Art, He spoke of the thunder rolling. Did you hear that thunder last
night rolling? I thought of God. I did. I thought of God. I thought
of what Job said, the thunder of His voice. And I thought,
God is speaking. Remember we read the other night,
God speaks once, yea, twice, man perceives it not. Most perceive
that to be a thunderstorm. God's children perceive it to
be God speaking. Not just a weather pattern going
through. I know it's weather. It's God's weather. It's God's
weather. The tornadoes that went through
here recently, they are God's tornadoes. He hath His way in
the whirlwind and in the storm. They are His. And everything,
as I said in the Bible class, everything that in creation has
a spiritual application, it should always lead us to Christ, to
look into Him and thinking upon Him, just as that song, How Great
Thou Art, the mountains. I was watching something last
night, but anyway, it was showing a wilderness area and this huge
mountain. And I thought, God made that.
That mountain is of God. He's the God of the mountains
and He's the God of the valleys. It's all His. The earth is the
Lord's, the fullness thereof, and they who dwell therein. Everything.
Everything is His. Something struck me the other
day when I was reading in Revelation. And the Lord was sending plagues,
and that's the reason I made a little note in the bulletin
about it. But I was reading it, and every plague came from heaven,
every one of them. And as I read that, I thought,
there is absolutely nothing that's not under the control of our
God. I couldn't sleep at night if
I didn't. Well, if I could, of course,
I'm dead. But to know that, to know that God is in absolute
control gives me comfort. I don't lose sleep. I don't. It's very comforting. That song
was just, it meant something to me more than usual this morning
because I've been thinking about it along those lines and that
storm that went through and I heard that thunder. I was thinking
of the thundering of His voice. I thought, that's God speaking.
That's a voice of God. All right, let's get to the message.
It might be in the message, but sometimes a message is just five
minutes long, and the rest of it just, I don't want to say
fillers, but it is. I'm trying, you know, I've noticed,
I've noticed, and I'm doing it now. I've noticed I'm starting
to go too long. I've noticed I'm starting to,
and I'm thinking, you know, once a person passes 30 minutes, he's
pretty much out of what he knows. And he's into the area of just
talking, for me. That doesn't apply to everybody,
but for me, it does. After about 30 minutes, I need
to shut up. I've learned that. Now watch me go 40. OK, I've already spent five of it
here, so let's look at this. I think we closed off in the
latter part of this chapter a couple of weeks ago around verse 25. But what we see here is this,
that God has a people, and He has a people all over this world.
The Scripture teaches us that God has a people out of every
kindred, tribe, tongue, and nation under heaven. There is no nation
on this earth that God has not saved a people out of. No nation. And the Gentiles have a big part
in that. You know, the Jews believed,
and this is what Paul's going to deal with here, they believed
that the Gentiles had no part. They had no part. But God has
a people among the Gentiles as well as the Jews. And Paul says there in verse
28 that the Lord is going to make a short work upon the earth
and He's going to cut it short in righteousness. Our Lord walked on this earth
for what, 33 years? And in those 33 years, what did
He do? He produced a righteousness.
He produced a righteousness by which you and I can be saved.
He produced a righteousness by which sinners are saved. And
then He died on the cross, and He's gone back to glory. And
in 70 AD, they leveled that place over there in Jerusalem. They
leveled it. The temple and all, they just leveled it. And I believe
that has a first reference to that. But also, if you compare
time to eternity, the work that the Lord is making upon this
earth, and it's a righteous work, is short. It's short. If it goes another thousand years,
it's short. If it went another 10,000 years, what is that to
eternity? It's short. No matter how long
it goes, when it finally ends, it's short. You know, I'm 65
years old. Where did all that time go? How
did I get here so fast? My dad turned 90. He's like,
how'd this happen? It's like it jumped on my back
and I can't get it off. How did it happen? It's just
like that. It's gone, it's over. It seems
like when you're a kid growing up, it's just like forever. It's
just like it's forever before I was gonna get to drive, and
then it was forever before I was going, and now look at me. I'm trying to put the brakes
on. It's just, it goes by, it's short. It's just short, and a
short work will the Lord make upon the earth, and He's going
to cut it short in righteousness. It's a righteous work that He's
doing. And He says here in verse 29,
He said, Isaiah said this. He refers it back to the Old
Testament. It's so wise to always refer back to the Word of God.
We have no reason and nothing to believe if it does not come
straight from the Word of God. And he says here, as Isaiah said
before, except the Lord of Sabaoth, that is, the Lord of Hosts, that's
what that means, if He had not left us a seed, we would have
been as Sodom and being made like unto Gomorrah. That place
is gone. It's wiped out. It's burned up.
And he said, if God had not left us a remnant, Israel would have been destroyed.
He said, nobody would be saved. No one would be saved if God
did not have a remnant. If God did not have a people,
no one would be saved. And that's what he's saying here
to these people in Rome and to the Jews that are in this church.
If it hadn't been for the Lord of hosts having mercy and grace,
on some sinners here in Israel, which Paul was an Israelite,
Peter, all the apostles were Jews. He said, if it hadn't been
for the grace of God, we'd all perish. We wouldn't believe either.
We wouldn't believe the gospel. So in conclusion of this, he
says here, how shall we conclude in verse 30, what shall we say
then? Or how shall we conclude this
matter. What shall we say then? That
the Gentiles, which follow not after righteousness, have attained
to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith, they have
attained to righteousness. They stand before God righteous. You and I who believe the gospel,
we stand before God perfectly righteous, perfectly holy. That's
how we stand in God's sight. How do we attain to that? Through
believing God. That's how we attain to it. We
didn't do one thing. Let me tell you something. Faith
and repentance did not make me righteous. They are the evidence
of life. It's the evidence of the work
of God. It is Christ who made me righteous. He made me righteous. And through the work of God,
through the work of the Holy Spirit, through the new birth,
through regeneration, I believe the gospel. And the righteousness
of that man, Jesus Christ, who kept the law perfectly, is imputed
to me, it's reckoned to me, it's laid to my charge." And he said, that's what the
Gentiles, they followed after Christ. God sent the gospel to
them and they believed. That's why I said, how shall
we answer this matter of the Gentiles being saved and for
the most part, most of those Jews perished? Well, first of
all, here's what we say. We say the truth. We don't take
the edge off from it. We tell the truth. God's not
going to save by lie. Would you rather me tell you
the truth this morning or lie to you? You want the truth because God
saves by the truth. I thank God no matter how painful
the truth is, no matter how devastating it may be to me, I thank God
He tells it to me. Don't you? I'm glad He tells
me. None good, no, not one. I'm glad
He said, not one, because I'm the one that's not good. For
a long time, I believe. You know, the first time I made
a profession when I was about 20 years old. I went to, my dad
went to, they all went to church. My dad pastored a church for
a number of years. And I had to go. And when he quit making
me go, I never went again. And then when I was 20, I made
a profession. And I told my brother, he said, you're a sinner saved
by grace. I said, no, I used to be a sinner. I'm not one now.
Well, three years later, I found out I was. And three years later,
I found out what it was to be lost. I was lost. I mean, a GPS couldn't have got
me back because I was lost. You know, one time I made reference
to a time that I was hunting up in the mountains of West Virginia
and I did get lost. A snowstorm came and I said, I didn't know
where I was at. And I was comparing, trying to
make a comparison between that and being lost. No, being lost
as a sinner is in darkness. That's a different loss than
taking the wrong direction down the road. I mean, it's lost in
darkness, lost in ignorance, lost. I mean, it's a loss you
don't know straight up. And all you can do is say, Lord,
be merciful to me, the sinner. That's like that sinner in the
gospel, smoldering upon his breast, so lost that all he could say
was, be merciful to me, the sinner. Unlike that Pharisee who said,
I'm glad I'm not like that guy. I'm glad I'm not like other men.
What he didn't realize, he's worse than other men. Self-righteousness
is the worst of all. You can pick any sin and self-righteousness
is the worst. It's the one sin that robs God
of His glory. Drunkenness does not rob God
of His glory. Self-righteousness does. Now,
drunkenness may rob your home of its money and of its parent,
but I tell you what, self-righteousness is an affront on God. It's an
affront on God. So how do we answer this? Well,
first of all, we tell the truth. Lying is not going to change
anything. You know, lying doesn't change a thing. You know, me
not liking something doesn't change it. Me liking it or not
liking it, it is what it is. And lying doesn't change it.
So how is it that the Gentiles have obtained righteousness,
a right standing with God, And the answer is just this, faith. They believe God. They heard
the gospel and they believed. That's what salvation comes down
to. It comes down to the fact that I believe God. I take sides
with God. I believe God. I believe God
concerning who God is. I believe God concerning who
Jesus Christ is. I believe God concerning who
and what I am. You know, Repentance. You know
what repentance is? Repentance is more than just
feeling bad over some things you've done. Because there's
a lot of things you've not done you should, and you should feel
bad over. Here's what repentance is. It's changing the way you
think of God. When John the Baptist came and
he was preaching repentance, He was not just saying, you need
to repent of things you've stolen and things you've... No, change
the way you think of God. Change the way you think of who
God is. Look, over in... I won't get
ahead of myself, but over in chapter 10, Paul says, Brethren, my heart's
desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be
saved, for I bear them record. They have a zeal of God. They're
very zealous of God, but not according to knowledge, not according
to the Scriptures. They had the Scriptures, but
they were ignorant of them. That's what the Lord said to
one of the Pharisees. You're ignorant of the power
of God in the Scriptures. Listen, for they being ignorant
of God's righteousness, of anyone that should not have been ignorant,
it was them, but they were ignorant of God's righteousness. They
didn't know God. They did not know who He was. And because of that, they went
about to establish a righteousness of their own, and they would
not submit themselves to the righteousness of Christ. They
refused it. They refused to do so. But back
here, the Gentiles obtained righteousness through faith. God sent the gospel
to them. They believed as Abraham believed. You know, they made such a big
deal of Abraham, but they never looked at the scene, all that
surrounded Abraham. Israel wasn't called Israel until
Jacob came along. And God changed Jacob's name
to Israel, then he had the 12 patriarchs, and then they broke
off and they made up Israel. Abraham was an idolatrous man.
He was in idolatry. God called him out of idolatry.
God made himself known to him. God promised him a seed, and
that seed that he promised was Jesus Christ. Isaac was a pitcher
of the seed. And that seed that he spoke of
to Abraham was the same seed that he spoke of back in the
garden after the fall when he said, "...the seed of the woman."
It's the same seed. And he said, "...through your
seed shall all nations be blessed." That seed is Jesus Christ. And
that blessing is that the gospel has come to all nations. And
God has saved a people out of every kindred, tribe, tongue,
and nation. And they've all been saved the same way Abraham was
saved. Faith. Faith. You know, righteousness,
it says in Genesis, was accounted to Abraham before he was circumcised? Before any of that happened.
See, they would receive the sign of circumcision. They believed
they were in the covenant. Abraham, when righteousness was
reckoned to him, it was before any of that. Before the law was
given? None of that was given. It was by faith. and all whom
God saves, He saves by the same faith that Abraham had." And
they missed it. They missed it. I pray God we
don't miss it. I don't want to miss it. This righteousness, this righteousness
by which God saves sinners is received by faith. It's imputed
through faith. The Gentiles did not seek acceptance
with God by work. They sought it by faith. They
just believed God. They believed the gospel when
it came to them. Some did. Not all of them, but some did. God sent the gospel to them,
and they believed, and it was imputed to them for righteousness.
This is how God saves everyone whom He saved from the first
one to the last one. By faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
It starts with faith and it will end with faith. Turn over to
Hebrews 11. I saw this this morning. Let's
see if I can point it out to you. And I want you to notice,
each one of these here that he speaks of are men that he saved,
men and women whom he has saved. Verse 4, By faith Abel offered
unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. Verse 5, By faith
Enoch was translated that he should not see death. He was
not found because God had translated him. For before this translation
he had this testimony, he pleased God. But now it explains this.
It explains what it's saying in verse 6, For without faith
It's impossible to please Him, for he that cometh to God must
believe that He is, and he must believe Him that is, and that He is a rewarder of
them that diligently seek Him. Verse 7, By faith Noah, being
warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared
an ark for the saving of his house, by the which he condemned
the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by
faith. Verse 8, "...by faith Abraham,
when he was called to go out into a place which he should
after receive for an inheritance, obeyed." He went out not knowing
where he was going. Can you imagine? Abraham is an
idolater. He's in the land of the Chaldeans.
And he comes home one day, he says, Sarah, pack your bags.
God has revealed Himself to me. Well, she didn't know God either.
It's like, I mean, you know, what are you talking about? I
mean, we've been worshiping this whatever, you know, and all of
a sudden you come in here, and God? Who is this God? But the scripture's silent on
that, and she followed him. And they packed their bags, and
whatever it was he was doing there, making a living, he just
packed his bags and left, not knowing where he was going. But
he believed God. He believed God, and he was heir
of the righteousness of faith. And by faith he sojourned, verse
9, by faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange
country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs
with him of the same promise. For he looked for a city which
hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. By that same
faith, this is exactly what we are doing. We are looking for
that city whose builder and maker is God. This is not home. This
is not home. I'm going home. We are going
home. This is not home. And then it says in verse 13,
These all died in faith, not having received the promises,
but having seen them afar off. And they were persuaded of them,
and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and
pilgrims on the earth. That's what we are. Verse 17,
By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac, and
he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten
Son, of whom it was said that in Isaac shall thy seed be called,
accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the
dead, from which he also received him in a figure. Remember Christ
said, Abraham saw my day and was glad he understood it. Abraham
understood the gospel. He understood substitution. Verse 20, By faith Isaac blessed
Jacob and Esau, Verse 22, by faith, Joseph, when he died,
made mention of the departing of the children of Israel, gave
commandment concerning his bones. Verse 24, by faith, Moses, when
he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's
daughter. Verse 27, by faith, he forsook
Egypt. Verse 31, by faith, Rahab the
harlot, the harlot Rahab, perished not with them that believed not,
when she had received the spire with peace. Now listen, verse
39, "...and these all, having obtained a good report through
faith, received not the promise." And here's why. God having provided
some better thing for us, they were not going to be there without
us. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all those whom God saved in that
Jewish race, they were not going to be saved without us. God having provided some better
thing for us that they without us should not be made perfect.
This is the whole purpose of God he's talking about. And all
of it was by faith, none of it was by works. And he points out
to the Old Testament saints that they held in high esteem. And
he says they all died in faith, they all walked by faith, they
lived by faith, they didn't live by their works, which they were
trying to do at that time. They were keeping the law. But Israel, in verse 31, which
followed after the law of righteousness, they pursued righteousness by
the law, by keeping the law. You know, God gave the law and
they said, we'll do it. They said, we'll do it, we'll
keep it. What's evident, they didn't know themselves and they didn't
know God. They were ignorant of God's righteousness. They
were ignorant of the exact righteous character of God. They said,
yeah, we'd keep that law. No problem. Well, it was a problem. They made a calf. They had Aaron
to make a calf before Moses got down off the hill, off the mountain.
And they made a golden calf, and they was dancing, and they
was having a wild time. I mean a wild time. They were
being just who they were. Exactly what they were doing.
They were being just who they were. And these are the very
ones who said, yeah, we'll keep that law. That righteous law,
that law that demands absolute obedience, absolute obedience
to perfection. Yeah, we keep it. That's why
they never attained righteousness. They couldn't do it. They couldn't
do it. You know that. If God has saved
you, you know you can't do it. That's why you flee to Jesus
Christ. That's why you flee to Him for mercy and for grace and
for salvation and for help. For help. That's why they couldn't
attain to it. They failed to attain that righteousness.
They sought because they sought it by works the same way, listen,
that Cain did. Abel brought a more excellent
sacrifice because it represented Jesus Christ. And it's the sacrifice
God said to offer. Cain brought the works of his
hands. I believe it was Scott Richards that said, you can't
get blood out of a turnip. And there has to be blood. There's
got to be blood. But Cain brought no blood. And it really came down to this.
It came down to this. They went through the ceremonies
without faith. It says their works were not,
in Hebrews chapter four, it says that faith was not mixed with
works and them that heard. They offered the sacrifice, but
they didn't see Christ. They offered the sacrifice, they
didn't see redemption in Jesus Christ. Some did, but most didn't. And they offered it without heart.
It was just like, this is what you... Like most people on Sunday.
What do most people do on Sunday? They just go to church. We came
here to worship. We came here to worship and we
came here to tell the truth on God. To glorify God. Not to just go to church because
it's Sunday. But that's how they went through
the ceremonies. It was just a ceremony. This
is not a ceremony. This is a worship service. And the reason they were rejected,
he says there in verse 32, the reason they didn't obtain this
righteousness, because they sought it not by faith, as Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, and all those others that we just read about,
they sought it by faith. They believed God and they followed
Him. They did not believe God. They believed they could produce
a righteousness that God would accept, and here's what they had a problem
with. They had a problem with reconciling His righteousness
with their righteousness. It's like, why do I need His?
It's like, if I have a full cup of water here, why do I need
more water in it? I've got my own water, thank
you. And that was their attitude. I have my own righteousness.
We're going to stand before God. Because that gives you boasting. That gives you rights to boast.
If you have a righteousness, you can stand before God. But the Scripture says no flesh
is going to boast in His presence. The only one we're going to boast
about is Jesus Christ. We're going to boast about Him. They sought it not by faith,
but as it were by the works of the law, for they stumbled at
that stumbling stone. It was always before them. Christ was always before them,
but they stumbled at Him. And when He came, they saw Him,
they said, we know you, you're the carpenter's son, you're not
the Messiah. You know, a Messiah wouldn't look like that. It wouldn't
look like He looked. They were expecting some great-looking
champion, you know, coming in on a white steed and just take
it over. They didn't expect a poor carpenter's
son. They didn't expect a man that
looked like Jesus Christ. A root out of dry ground. No
beauty that we should desire Him. That's why it says Isaiah
53. That's not what they were looking
for. They have Isaiah 53. They've read it a lot. And Isaiah
said, this tender plant, this is how He's coming. The Ancient
of Days is going to become an Infant of Days. And He's going
to grow up as a tender plant. And like a root out of dry ground,
He has no form of comeliness. And when we shall see Him, we're
not going to desire Him for His beauty. You don't think they
could have looked at Him and looked at this, Apart from the
Spirit of God, blind people can't see, deaf people can't hear,
and dead people can't, they can't do anything. They stumbled at Jesus Christ,
and here's what they really stumbled at the most, His message, His
message. Grace for the guilty. They said,
we be not sinners. We be not sinners. Don't call me a sinner. That's
why I said my brother. I was one, I'm not one now. I am one and I'll be that way
all the way to the grave. That part's not going to change.
I struggle with sin more now than I did 40 years ago. I find it rising up in me now
more than 40 years ago. I do. But thank God, thank God for
the rest of this verse. I lay in Zion a stumbling stone,
a rock of offense, it offends a lot of people, but whosoever
believes on him shall not be ashamed. Do you believe? It's not, well, you know, you're
waiting on a feeling? You're waiting to feel like you're
saved? You're waiting to feel like something? Don't trust feelings,
they come and go. Depends on what it's like when
you get up in the morning. They just come and go. But I
tell you this, I believe God. I believe God. He said, come
to Me, all you that labor and heavy laden, I'll give you rest.
I believe that. Lord, I come. I come. I believe
that. Whosoever shall call on the name
of the Lord shall be saved. That's so simply put, but impossible
without God doing a work. Because the Scripture says that
we love darkness rather than light. We love darkness rather
than light. I thank God that there's a remnant. God knows. Elijah said, I'm the only one
left. You ever feel like that? I'm
the only one left. And God said, hold on now. I have reserved to myself 7,000
men who have not bowed their knee to Baal. I have reserved,
I kept. It's just like the elect angels.
It speaks in Hebrews of the innumerable company of angels. He reserved
them. He kept them. And out of this
human race, God has kept the people. And they're sinners. I say to every sinner, look to
the Lord Jesus Christ. I have the authority of God's
Word. Christ died for sinners. He didn't die for anybody else.
He did not die for anyone else. He died for sinners. It just
takes the Holy Spirit to make a man a sinner or a woman. Until then, we've just got all
the excuses under heaven. Well, I'm not that bad. I'm not
this, I'm not that. So what? And Christ didn't die
for you. You say, I'm a sinful. Lord,
I'm a sinful man. Peter said, Lord, depart from
me. I'm a sinful man. I died for you. I died for sinners.