Romans 10. Craig, I've got a note here that
I was going to quote either at the beginning of the Bible class
or the end, so I want to show it to you before I... I'm going
to run it in the bulletin, I hope, next week. Romans 10. Now, I've preached out of Romans 10
I don't know how many times. I like the philosophy of Brother
Tim James. He says there are certain sermons
that you have to preach every year. And I think he's right. But if he's right or wrong, that
doesn't make any difference. That's still where we're going
to be this morning. But I want to get to just two verses. It's what I'm aiming at. So let's
just read the chapter. And you know I can't read without
commenting, so I'll just try to make myself behave a little
better, I don't know. But anyway, chapter 10 and verse
1. Now before we read, let us beg
the Lord's help. Lord, we gather in this place. Oh, what a place it is. made special to our souls because
you have purposed in old eternity to put a gospel witness in this
place to the honor and glory of our Savior and your Son, the
Lord Jesus. What better passage of Scripture
to speak of that grace and of that mercy to ill-deserving,
hell-deserving sinners than Romans chapter 10. Lord, open our minds,
our spiritual minds and hearts. And if we don't have a spiritual
mind and a spiritual heart, it's because we're lost. Lord, save
us or we perish. We perish without question. I
perish, we all perish unless we have Christ. And how on earth
could we have him and not know at least once in a while that
we have him? Lord, you alone can do this,
the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Attach your
mercy, your grace, and your blessing to the words of Holy Scripture
that have been read and will be read in this place today.
Bless our time together. Lord, enable us to truly worship
and praise you through honoring and glorifying our Savior, the
Lord Jesus. Help us, we beg. Bring your people
to trust in Christ. We pray in His dear name, Amen. Now before actual reading, I
just want to make one comment. There are three chapters in Romans
that are close to 10. Chapter 9, chapter 10, and chapter
11. In chapters 9 and 11, Paul takes
the very same issues that are in front of us in chapter 10,
and he pursues them from a different perspective. You see, he resolves
this matter. Here's the charge that was leveled
at Paul, and it's the same charge that's leveled at you and me
in this community. If you folks think you know so
much, where is everybody? Paul, if you're right, where
are your converts? We don't have any converts. God
has to convert people in this place. We done been in the business
of converting people and baptizing sinners and coming out of the
water just more sinner than they were when they went in. Same
thing happened to me. But in those two chapters, 9
and 11, Paul resolves this matter in God's hands. Now in chapter
10, He gives us a view of what it is in regard to ourselves. It is the more human view, if
such a word could even be permissible. We'll use it. You can throw it
out if you want to. Alright, Romans chapter 10, verse
1. Brethren, my heart's desire and
prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. Now there's
nothing wrong with praying that prayer for anybody. especially
people that we know and love, and people to whom God allows
us to bear witness to the truth of the gospel. But he says about
his native people Israel, who will, before it's all over, have
orchestrated his martyrdom in Rome at the hands of the Roman
ruler, he said in verse 2 concerning Israel, And my soul, Paul, ought
to know he was the ringleader of that crowd for a long time.
And God just pulled his feet right out from under him and
put him in the dust on the road to Damascus. I bear them record,
the Jews record. And you and I can say we bear
the Gentiles record. People that ain't even religious
are religious. People that know God and people
that don't know God are religious. They have a zeal of God, but
it is not according to knowledge. It is an ignorant zeal. It's
misguided. It's misdirected. They don't
know the truth, either about themselves or about God. And
we were all in that same boat. And in verse 3, he's more specific
about the charge. They being ignorant. of God's righteousness. That's the rub. When we're born
in this world in our natural selves and minds and hearts and
so forth, we think we know that we sing, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord
God Almighty. But we didn't have a clue as
to how holy God is. The big word is He's ineffably
holy. You and I cannot perceive so
much as a thousandth part of it unless God reveals it to us. And there ain't no better place
in all the world to see the righteousness of God revealed on the cross
of Calvary where His Son was crucified. Why did Christ have
to die? Because that's how righteous
God is. That's how righteous God is.
They being ignorant of God's righteousness. And what do we
do when we don't know who God is and we don't know how holy
He is? Well, we just patch up a righteousness of our own. We
say, well, I tithe, I give, I go to church, I read my Bible, I
do this, that and the other. They go about the second. By the way, righteousness is
mentioned three times in the third verse. The first one is,
it's the essence of who God is. God is holy. God is righteous. The second one in verse 3, "...and
going about to establish their own righteousness." Paul labored
under that false notion for many a year as a Pharisee. Nobody
could match his zeal. That man had numerous people
put to death. And in Acts chapter 7, you have
an actual event recorded in the stoning of Stephen and Paul,
Saul of Tarsus. Now we know him as Paul. He was
the supervisor of that outfit, and he had to cast the first
stone. So the second righteousness is
self-righteousness, which ain't no righteousness at all. Lord,
if we had to depend on our righteousness even as saved people, we'd have
to trample that in the dust. I tell you, in God's sight, it's
all about Christ. Here's the worst charge of all
on any generation or nation of people. The third righteousness
in Romans 10.3, it says, we have not submitted ourselves unto
the righteousness of God. Now what righteousness is this? This is what all of Romans 3
is about. It is the righteousness of God
in Christ that he gives to sinners in the gospel. This is the righteousness,
not that God demands, but that He provides freely. Freely. And we want it so bad. We say, we lie of course. We want it so badly that the
only way we'll have it if God gives it to us over our objections. We ain't never going to read
21 verses. Number four. Here's the basis
now of what we've just read about righteousness. For Christ is
the end. That's kind of like a period
at the end of a sentence. That's the end. Christ is the
end of the law for righteousness. To whom? To everyone that believes. And believing on Christ and trusting
Christ is the grace of God and the Holy Spirit of God in the
soul. And Moses goes on. I'm going
to have to skip some verses. Moses goes on to talk about this
righteousness which is of the law. That's the second righteousness
in verse 3. He said that the man, in verse
5, which does those things shall live by them. But the righteousness
which is of faith, that is, which is of Christ, which is of the
gospel, speaks on this lies. And let me just summarize what
it tells you. It says, don't you dare say that something has
to be done before I can have this righteousness. Here we are told, Don't go to
heaven to bring Christ down from above. He's already been down
here, and now He's up there until the end of time when He comes
to take His children home. And then they say, don't descend
into hell, into the grave, into death. Christ is not there. He's risen. There's not one thing
left for our Savior to do, and there ain't nothing that you
and I can do, or could do, or ever will do, that will make
any difference. It is all Christ and Christ alone. Verse 8, but what does the Scripture
say? The Word is near you, even in
your mouth, and in your heart. That is the word of faith which
we preach. Hawker says the mouth speaks
it and the heart feels it. That's a pretty good distinction.
Verse 9, that if you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus
and shall believe in your heart that God has raised Him from
the dead, you shall be saved. For with the heart man believes
unto righteousness. What? We become righteous, how? Through
faith in Christ. And that faith is not of ourselves,
it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. With the heart, man believes
unto righteousness, and with the mouth, confession is made
unto salvation. For the Scripture says, whosoever
believes on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference, no difference between the Jew
and the Gentile. I know it says Greeks, but we'd
understand it better if we said Gentiles. You can divide the
whole human race into Jews and Gentiles. There's no difference
between the Jew and the Gentile. For the same Lord over all is
rich unto all that call upon him. All we have to do is call
him. Lord save me or I perish. Do
you know how hard those words are to say? You've got to sink
your own ship before you can say that. And we ain't too noted
for sinking our ships. We might sink somebody else's,
but not our own. Oh, you made me lose my place. Verse 13, was it? For whosoever
shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And here's the rub. Here's why
I brought you to Romans 10 this morning. Verses 14 and 15. By the way, I don't know if you'd be willing
to own up to this or not, but Romans 10 in my Bible ended at
the end of verse 13. Well, I had no clue about what
any of it was saying, but I thought it did. But verses 14 and 15,
I had no way to describe. Paul is telling us there are
four things. that must precede our calling
on Christ for mercy. And those four things in verses
14 and 15 begin with the same word, the word how. All you've
got to do is look for how, and you've got it. How then shall they call on Him
in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in
him of whom they've not heard? And how shall they hear without
a preacher? And what good does it do for
a preacher to preach if God doesn't own his message to our souls? It ain't going to do a thing
in the world. It might make us mad. It might make us glad. But
neither one of those things, or both of them put together,
make up salvation. Now, we've got to look at these
four halves. But I thought, I don't want to leave off the rest of
the reading, but I just can't do otherwise, because I know
I'll never get through. If we get through in time, I'll
go back and read them to you. I'd be glad to. But I want to
answer this question. This is the question that gives
the essence of what all three of these chapters 9, 10, and
11 in Romans are about. The question is this, when is
a person saved? Is it when he leaves the Methodist
for the Baptist? No. Religion in our day is all in
the same boat. It's all false. God's not in it. If people are to be saved, they
cannot be saved what's being preached in the average pulpit.
That's Baptist, Methodist, and anything else you want to name.
There ain't but two religions in this whole wide world. One
is due and the other is done. And we're in the done business.
Salvation is finished. Christ has completed everything. If we ever have salvation, it
will be a free gift of God's grace, and nothing less. Now the first excerpt, it's so
close by, how about turning to the right and just stopping at
the book of Galatians chapter 1. It's just a few books away. I want to read you a statement
here having to do with the Apostle Paul. He's now truly converted. He is now indeed a believer.
And he was from the moment Christ met him on the road to Damascus.
And now he's finding out what it is to be persecuted himself
for the cause of Christ. Alright? When is a person saved? You ready? When it pleases God. It's got nothing to do with pleasing
us. It ain't got nothing to do with pleasing the preacher. It's
when it pleases God. Did you find Galatians 1? Look
at verses 15 and 16. This is plain as day. The very first statement. Galatians
1, 15. But when it pleased God, who
separated me from my mother's womb." Paul, how long have you
been a believer? Oh, it's only a short time when
we find him in Galatians chapter 1. Ah, but he said he was God's
when he was in his mother's womb. When it pleased God who separated
me from my mother's womb and called me by His grace to reveal
His Son in me that I might preach Him among the heathen, the Gentiles,
immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood." When is a person
saved? When it's God's time to save
them. When it pleases God. I don't mean to be trivial. Everything God does, everything
pleases Him. Everything God does, pleases
God. Why? Because he decreed it that way.
Because he's able to do it that way. You and I do a lot of things
that we ain't too tickled with. But not God. Not God. Let me show you another scripture.
I should have asked you to hang on to Galatians, but we're going
to go to the left. 1 Corinthians chapter 12. I might even quote
that verse if I didn't. Sure as I try it, I'll flub it
up. Let's turn to 1 Corinthians 12. bows to the sovereign authority
and dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is our sovereign
Lord, the only Redeemer of sinners. Paul puts it this way in 1 Corinthians
12.3, Wherefore, I give you to understand that no man speaking
by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God, calls Jesus accursed. And here's the statement I'm
looking for. And that no man can say, not anybody, no member
of Adam's race can say that Jesus is the Lord in just
one way, except by the Holy Spirit. Now, I know and you know that
everybody and his brother can call him Lord, but I mean for
it to really be true, to really mean something. There's something
about Christ and there's something about me that just can't get
along until he redoes me in regeneration and the new birth. Third question, when is a person
saved? When the sinner is so convinced
of his own sins, that he takes God's side against himself, condemns
his own self, and justifies God. I tell you, that don't happen
all the time. That's not a frequent occurrence
in most places. Y'all know if we keep this up,
we ain't going to get to where we were going. But I'm going
to turn to Luke chapter 7. I'll just read it to you if you'd
like. It doesn't matter. I actually got that marked. How
about that? Luke chapter 7. While you're looking at that,
let me make another statement relative to this very same thing,
and the third statement about when is a person saved. Salvation
must include finding out the real character and nature of
sin. You know what the greatest sin
in the whole world? My religious sins. The things that I did for God,
thinking that I could win and gain His pleasure. And all the
time, all we did was spit in the very face of the precious
Lord Jesus Christ. Luke chapter 7, verses 29 and
30, John the Baptist is baptizing at the Jordan River. And we're told in verse 29, and
I mean he had some crowds, he was in the backside of nowhere. And all the people that heard
him, all the people that heard John the Baptist, and the publicans,
the most despised Jew on the face of this earth, a Roman tax
collector, a publican, All the people that heard him
and the publicans, here's what they did, justified God being
baptized of John the Baptist. In other words, submitting to
John's baptism was confessing themselves to be justified in God's condemnation
of ourselves. Therefore, John's baptism is
sometimes called the baptism of repentance. But just in case
you forgot, maybe, you can't separate repentance
and faith. They're like twin sisters. You
know, where one is, the other is. Alright, but the next verse,
verse 30, He's the kicker. And all the people that heard
him, and Republicans, justified God
being baptized with the baptism of John. Now, we can read just
not far from this very same reference and find out that the Pharisees
and the scribes refused to submit to John's baptism. Why? They'd have to justify God in
their own condemnation, and they ain't about to do that. They
got a reputation for being holy, and they don't want to spoil
it. All right, the fourth answer
to when is a person saved? When the sinner sees the glory
of God revealed where? In Christ crucified! God's glory is more, like Craig
was reading to us this morning out of pink on the attributes
of God. God's glory is so infinite and
so great We just have slight glimpses, if even that. We might as well turn to another
scripture while we're at it. Let me think. 2 Corinthians. Chapter 4. I'll give you the
verses in just a bit. 2 Corinthians chapter 4. The question is what? When is the
person saved? when the sinner sees the glory
of God revealed in Christ crucified. Wow, my Bible went somewhere. 2 Corinthians 4, verses 3 through 6. 2 Corinthians 4, beginning at verse
3. But if our gospel be hid, and
it is hidden until God reveals it to us, and some people He
never reveals it to, if our gospel be hid, it is hid
to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world, that is,
the devil, has blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest
the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of
God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves,
but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus'
sake." Watch this now, "...for God who commanded the light to
shine out of darkness." When this world was made and our Savior
spoke these words, There was nothing but darkness in this
whole universe. And our Lord said, let there
be light, and there was light. In the Latin Bible, they've got
that thing in just two words. It's dictum, factum. The word dictum is spoken, and
the word factum is done. God, who commanded the light
to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, where? In the face of our Lord Jesus
Christ. When is a person saved? When
he sees God's glory in Christ on the cross. Finally, number
five. Fifth question. When is a person
saved? When the sinner savingly looks
to Christ by faith. I hesitate to ask you to turn
one more time, but we've already blown it anyway. So how about
turning to Luke chapter 23? At least you can say you had
a sword drill this morning, can't you? Luke 23. My, what an answer this
is. What an answer it is. Our Savior
is on the cross in Luke 23. And at verse 39, we read of these
two thieves that were crucified on either side of our Lord Jesus
Christ. In the early part of their crucifixion,
they joined in the same talks that the people around them did,
telling our Savior to come down from the cross. Only they said,
when you come down from the cross, let us go with you. And then, at some point, Something happened to one of
those thieves. And he spoke first to his fellow thief and asked
him to stop railing with his words on the Lord Jesus. He said, seeing we both deserve
to be here on these crosses. So in verse 42, this other thief
that found out something that that other one did not find out,
He said unto Jesus, Lord, when you come into your kingdom, remember
me. Now, if our Lord ever looked
any worse outwardly than right now on this cross, I don't know
when it could have been. But this man is able to see past
all of that. All the blood, all the scars,
all the pains, all the groanings. Look past all of that. And see the King of heaven and
earth. Right in front of his eyes. And
the Lord Jesus answers him immediately. In verse 43, and he said to him,
verily, amen, I say unto you, today you shall be with me in
paradise. Not tomorrow, not next week,
not after a hundred years of penance. Today, today, today. The only person I know in the
whole Bible that Christ took home to glory, holding that right
arm. Today, you shall be with me in paradise. Well, I don't know. Let me see what else I've got
under this pile of stuff. Yeah, I do want to deal with
a thing or two on this page. I appreciate you leaving this
up here, Craig. Back to Romans 10, in your mind
at least. Calling on Christ for mercy. always follows believing on him. It's put this way in Romans 10,
14. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not
believed? Therefore, believing has to precede
calling. You remember that famous 13th
verse? Every last one of us probably
knew it. Almost by the time we got out of diapers, whosoever
shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Lord, how
many times was that drummed in our ears? By well-meaning preachers
who were blind just like we were, and except for the grace of God
we'd still be. Secondly, believing on Christ
always follows the preaching of the gospel, the hearing of
the gospel. You can't believe what you've
not heard. How shall they believe in Him
of whom they have not What is it about Christ that we have
not heard? What's the name of that little
book you've told me about? Attributes of God by AWP. Let me tell you,
about 99.9% of preachers in Hornet County don't even know who God
is. and would be up in arms at what
you spoke this morning, or what I spoke at the eleven, or what
that little book by A. W. Pink says. It's just a matter
of fact. That's how it is. The issues are this. Who is the
Lord Jesus Christ? He's God, and He's man. in one person, the God-man mediator,
1 Timothy 2.5. Not only who he is, but what
he's done. He's purchased redemption for
all of God's elect. Those people that God gave to
him in old eternity. And he's paid their debt in full. And if you want God to be mad
at you, you try to put something of yours besides what Christ
has paid. It would be like calling him
the filthiest names that could ever proceed out of a human mouth. Christ is the apple of God's
eye. Not only who he is and what he's
done, But where is he now? He's in heaven. What's he doing? He's governing this whole universe.
What else is he doing? He's begging God to send the
gospel to one of his lost sheep. Therefore, he's called our intercessor. Thirdly, this calling and believing on
Christ makes hearing the gospel as it is preached. Hearing the
gospel requires a preacher. And you're looking at the sorriest
one you've ever seen. Maybe you'll ever see. I don't know how long I'll live,
but I'll be a preacher till I die. How shall they hear without a
preacher? 1 Corinthians 1.21, it pleased
God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. And
fourthly, how shall they preach? This is in verse 15. The others
were in verse 14. How shall they preach except
they be sent? Now, that's got more than just
somebody telling you to go here or go there. This kind of scent
means that we're accompanied by our blessed Redeemer, the
Lord Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit. How shall they preach
except God is in that preaching and blesses that preaching? I
mean, the smartest people on the face of the earth do not
have a clue about the grace of God in Christ. It's got nothing to do with education.
It's got nothing to do with how much money you make, how smart
you are, what people think of you on down the road. None of
these things are nothing. Christ is everything. He's everything.