Good evening, let's pray. Father, we are glad to be able
to get together tonight. Lord, we thank you for the grace
that's given to us through Christ, to the gospel, for the gospel
that is your power unto salvation for your people. And Lord, I
pray that as we learn and as we see this important text, Father,
that we would, for the first thing, Lord, that we would just
be glad and thankful that you've given us eyes to see. And second,
Lord, I pray that we would be prayerful and patient with those
who don't, that we would just continue to proclaim the truth
and correct the wrong, trusting in you the whole time for the
fruit of it. And we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.
All right, let's go to Romans 10. I'm going to kick off there.
And by the Lord's mercy, if I don't fall asleep, we're going to do
all 10 verses. First 10 verses of this text. Let's read it together. Romans
chapter 10. Brothers, my heart's desire and
prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear
them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to
knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness
of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit
to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness to everyone who believes. For Moses writes
about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the
person who does the commandment 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." I'll continue to read there for continuity.
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. Now we're not going to go through
verses 11 through 13 tonight because they really sort of close
out a complete thought there and introduce, they segue into
another thought. So we'll piggyback on these just
like we're doing tonight. We're piggybacking on what we've
already learned. In Romans 10, the first four
verses, there's some things that we need to be reminded of. First
is that Paul does have a desire, a true desire in his heart for
his kinsmen to be saved. All of them. We should just take
that cue and recognize that one of the things that we realize
as believers is that God's mercy has been given to us that we
can be saved, that we are redeemed, that we are God's righteousness
through Jesus Christ who's imputed his righteousness to us. And
those who are not, it should cause us great disturbance, great
burden. So that we would come to realize
that Only the elect will be saved, but it does not remove the burden
for us to desire all men to be saved. It is not wrong to desire
out of affection for the truth and out of an affection for people
to want them to not face the wrath of God. But we know the
truth, that desire in human's heart does not move the hand
of God, yet we do pray for God has not given us divine knowledge.
We do not understand the intricacies of His election and how it operates
and how He has done what He's done, for He does not give an
answer to us, but we answer to Him. So Paul does desire this. And we see that not only here
but in other places that we've already looked in chapter 8 and
9 where he talks about these things. But he says that there,
in verse 2, he says, I bear witness to them that they have a zeal
for God. A zeal for God. We need to remember that we've
learned over the last few weeks on our midweek enrollments that
the righteousness of God is Jesus Christ alone. The righteousness
of God is Jesus Christ alone. So if Jesus' righteousness is
not imputed to us, we are not righteous before Him. That is
the heartbeat of the gospel message. And then there are others in
our world today, just like there were in Paul's day, the Jews
by birth, who had a zeal for God, but they did not know God. They did not know God, for they
could not know God, because God had not granted them a new eye,
a new heart, a new mind. He had not birthed them anew
to grant them repentance so that they might see that their righteousness
was in Christ and not in themselves. That their righteousness was
by mercy, not in obedience to the law. That their righteousness
was by just the love of God and not because of Moses. They had
a zeal for God. And in that zeal, it was a zeal
for law keeping. Not a zeal for mercy. Not a zeal for the righteousness
of God. They felt that their zeal for
the law was indeed a zeal for righteousness. Then he goes on to say, but they
have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Jesus
says in John 17 three, that this is eternal life, that they know
you, the one true God and the son whom you have sent. This
knowledge of God and the knowledge of Jesus, the son of God is essential
to salvation. It is not that which causes one
to be saved. It is a result of one's, of Christ's
saving work on one's behalf. It is what happens when God the
Spirit, as He wishes, births us anew. We believe and we trust
in the finished work of Christ. So knowing God is to know how
God has revealed Himself through the Word. Everything that God
the Father testifies about God the Son in relation to His cross
work, to the finished work of redemption, to how He justifies
His people, how He is propitiation for their sins, and the list
goes on. So knowledge is eternal life
in Jesus Christ. So therefore, the knowledge of
God is the knowledge of Jesus and everything that the Bible
speaks of Him and to Him. The ignorance of true righteousness
then, if we look there, not according to knowledge, it says verse 3,
but being ignorant of the righteousness of God, being ignorant of the
righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they
did not submit to God's righteousness. Now this is review, we talked
about it last week. But ignorance of true righteousness, what Paul
is saying, is self-righteousness. Well, we're looking to see how
we are righteous before God, how we stand just before God. That is that we are righteous
before Him and we are righteous because of the imputation of
righteousness that belongs to Christ that's not our own. And
I know I'm repeating myself over and over again, but that's how
this argument works. And if I don't say it, you may get confused
because I will. And I don't want to be confused because then you
might really get confused. But this righteousness is either
imputed or it is self-righteousness. And those who seek after self-righteousness
are ignorant of true righteousness, thus they are ignorant of Jesus
Christ, which is the ignorance that Paul is discussing here.
They do not submit to God's righteousness. Because they fail to see, as
many people do in our day, that Jesus is either the righteousness
of God or the law is the righteousness of God. Which one is it? Paul
has argued very passionately, very clearly over nine chapters,
that it is Jesus Christ alone who displays, in a true sense,
the righteousness of God in any way. That the law and the prophets
bore witness to Him. It's never been about the law.
And it's just frustrating because I have more conversations with
people in evangelism, in this community, about this very topic
than I do anything else. The polarization of the doctrine
of election is not as hostile as the doctrine of imputed righteousness. Those who believe in election
by choice and free will are the ones who believe that because
they believe in some sort of synergistic approach to God in
establishing a righteousness of their own. But then they'll
say, but it's all of Jesus. He did the work. But then he
offered it to me. That's a lie. It's demonic. It's
not ignorance. It's blindness. Jesus is the righteousness of
God. The law is not the righteousness of God. So then submission to
God's righteousness is what? Faith alone in Jesus Christ alone
who is, how many times have I said righteousness already, the righteousness
of God. And then that brings us to verse
4, which is where we'll pick up tonight. And this for is to explain more
about what Paul is teaching. For being ignorant of establishing
their own glory, I mean their own, righteous of their own,
seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to Christ's
righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone who believes. What does it mean for Christ
to be the end of the law? Now see, this is where even our
historic creeds and confessions have been so confused. It was
that we used terms like sanctification, which could have dual meaning
based on what? Context. Be holy for as I am
holy. Be set apart as I am set apart.
God established the law of Moses to what? To distinctly separate
His people from all the peoples of the world. They did things
and followed things that no one else did. And in the world seeing that,
they saw people that were distinct. that were not a people, that
became a people, that weren't doing like the world, didn't
have their own culture, had some kind of big list from God. And
they followed after this list, and it was to show the world,
to show the nations, it was an image of what? Election. That's
all it is, a picture of election. It's a picture of God's mercy,
unconditional election. It's a picture of His limited
work to atone for people of Himself. And it was not true. It was a shadow. So Christ then
is the end of the law. Why? Because the law is death.
So Christ is the end of the law of death. The law is always subject
to be executed with prejudice. The law equals death for all
who are under the law. Anyone who is going to be judged
by the law must recognize that the outcome of that judgment
is going to be the death of their soul eternally. Anyone who is
measured by the law is going to be found guilty of breaking
all of the law. Anyone who has established a
righteousness by the law is ignorant of the righteousness of God in
Christ Jesus and therefore they are condemned already for they
are not believing in the only Son of God. Anyone who continues
in the law, once they have supposedly been born again as a way of assuring
themselves that they are the righteousness of God by imputation,
have made a grave error. For they are doing what the Galatians
did by being persuaded to add to the gospel of free and sovereign
grace in a way that would, what? Put someone else in charge of
going to heaven and getting Jesus to bring him down here to die
on the cross and then going in the grave and getting him up. Which is
the example Paul gives. He basically says the Jews, as
you'll see in a minute, are guilty of trying to put Jesus where
he needs to be so that he fits in with the way they look at
how righteousness should be. I haven't used this term in a
while, but that's exactly what legalism is. Legalism doesn't
always say I'm justified because of my obedience. Legalism says
I'm assured because of my obedience. Legalism says that I am more
spiritual because of my obedience. Legalism says, I have some obedience. You see that? Now that might
not be the historical use of that term, but that's what Paul's
dealing with here. And really, legalism is not even
a good term. It's called unregenerate. It's called blindness. It's called
not submitting to the righteousness of God. Submit to the law or
you won't. You will be found guilty. You
will be condemned by it. Christ is the end of the law
of death. And for us, for all who believe, for we who believe,
there is no death now. There is no death, there is no
condemnation because Christ is the end of the law. The law is
fulfilled in Christ. He fulfilled the what? The consequence
of the law by dying in our place. So the law has satisfied its
justice against Jesus, now we are free. Free from the law,
oh happy condition. That is one of my favorite hymns. Christ is also the end of the
law of self-righteousness. Christ is the end of the law
of self-righteousness in that we no longer have to strive in
such a way of seeing if we're worthy of the grace and mercy
of God. That's oxymoronic. How can we
be worthy of that which is an exercise of mercy? Are we worthy
of mercy? No, that's why it's called mercy.
If we're worthy of mercy, it'd be called a wage. Mercy's not
a wage. Grace is not a wage. It is not
something that we deserve whatsoever to the contrary. Those who seek
to establish a righteousness of their own through the law
in any form or any tenant, the Decalogue included, in any way,
are refusing the free gift of God through Jesus Christ and
are in every way rejecting that which they do not deserve, which
is mercy, and receiving that which they do deserve, which
is the law and its condemnation. So Christ is the end of the law
of death. Christ is the end of the law of self-righteousness.
Christ is also the end of the law of spiritual blindness. The
law blinds. The very nature of humanity,
as Nicodemus would sit before Jesus as a very good man, the
teacher of Israel, knowing a lot of things that Jesus was talking
of in that dialogue in John 3. Yet Jesus said, you must be born
again. You must be born again. But your flesh, so because your
flesh, you cannot see the kingdom. Let's put it in perspective of
what Paul teaches here. Let's use words that are synonymous
with Jesus' teaching in John 3. Unless God makes you alive
in a new way, you cannot see His righteousness. And unless
God makes you alive in a new and spiritual way and creates
in you a spiritual newness, then you cannot, what? Enter into
His righteousness. Jesus is the righteousness of
God. Jesus is the kingdom. So synonymously, then we can
take this doctrine of the righteousness of God as Jesus Christ to be
received by faith alone as a gift of God through his grace in the
same way Nicodemus saw it. It's in view here as Paul deals
with Deuteronomy 30 in just a few minutes. Christ is the end of
the law of blindness. Once we see what the law is pointing
to, we see the righteousness of God, and we receive by faith
the fullness of this, and we rest in this fullness. And in
doing so, we recognize that it is God's mercy that has done
this, and we do not boast whatsoever in ourselves. We never say to
someone, I'm so proud of you for being saved. I had that question
last week. Someone had worked with a local
VBS in Tattnall County and the Friday evening of that VBS they
got all the children together and made up much to do about
being proud of these children for making the decision to be
saved. And it sort of struck them. What
I've been listening to you say doesn't match with what the Scripture
teaches, what they say, what we did doesn't match. What do
I do? My advice then was to leave the church. quickly. Christ is the end of the law
of blindness. Christ is the end of the law of all these things
in that sense. For whom though? For every man? No. Just for the believing ones. And the believing ones are only
and always only the elect. Those for whom Christ died are
the ones who have been what? Set free from the law. Christ
is the end of the law for the believer because that is the
point. He is the point of the law. That's
the point. The law points to him. He says
these words there, Moses wrote of me. Look at verse five. For
Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law. What
does that righteousness do? Is it the same righteousness?
that we're talking about today? How we stand before God in a
righteous way? The answer is no and the answer is yes. The
answer is no in that Moses wrote to a people who lived by the
commandments of God in such a way that they would receive, listen
to this, the temporary promises of God like land, food, life. But all of those things pointed
to the true righteousness of God where Jesus says in John
chapter 4, Moses will indict you I mean, John chapter 5, Moses
will indict you for he wrote of me. So let's put Jesus' words
again in John 5 and Paul's words of Romans 10, chapter 10, verse
5. Moses wrote about Jesus Christ,
who is the righteousness of God. But Moses did not write about
Jesus Christ in a way that man could obtain that righteousness. So there was the shadow of the
law that ultimately was fulfilled in the perfection of Jesus. You
see that the person who does the commandment shall live by
them. What does that mean? If you live by the commandments,
you are judged by the commandments. If you're judged by the commandments,
you are condemned by the commandments. Even the children in this room
right now, if I say, do you obey and honor your father and mother
in all things? And they know that they don't. And they know that they never
will. So they're worthy of all the wrath of God. Jesus Christ,
who is God's righteousness, is displayed in that commandment.
For everything he did was to the glory of God the Father. Christ is the end of the law
because He is the point of the law. Moses wrote of Christ. Jesus says that. Moses wrote
of me. The Father has testified on my behalf. This is my beloved
Son. God has been speaking through
the prophets of old, even before Israel ever existed. Abigail had a real funny wittiness
about her. Last week, we were talking about
the story of Isaac and the crucifixion, the sacrifice of Isaac. And so
I found, I looked on YouTube, tried to find a little depiction
of this story. So I found one and I'm sitting
there watching, and I said, that's not the way it really happened,
Abby. All right, now that's not really, but then when they would
quote the scripture, And here's Isaac holding the sticks. And
he asks his father again, Father, where's the sacrifice? And Abraham
looks at Isaac and says, Son, God will provide for himself
the sacrifice. And little Isaac drops the sticks
and Abigail goes, well, he's not laughing now. His name means
laughter. He knows he's about to die. And
I look at her and I go, child, you can turn the most serious
thing into a comedic turn. But think about Isaac. Was Abraham righteous before
God because he was willing to sacrifice his son? No. Abraham would never find favor
with God. Though God granted him the grace to be able to lay
his son upon that altar and put the knife into the air, and God
stopped him before he struck his son dead, but even had his
son died that day, the apostles say clearly, Abraham believed
God could even raise from the dead. Because God had promised
to redeem his people through Isaac, throughout the whole earth,
every nation coming dry. So though Abraham grieved over
that intentional loss, the ultimate purpose of Isaac and Abraham
on that mountain was not to show us how powerfully faithful Abraham
was, but to point to the righteousness of God, who is Jesus Christ,
who is the sacrifice that God the Father has provided for himself. So Christ is the end of the law
in justice, for His sacrifice has set justice
to truth. God is just to forgive you because
He crushed His Son instead of you. Christ is the end of the
law for wrath, for condemnation. There is therefore now no condemnation,
for God has put His condemnation on His Son. And Christ is the end of the
law. Listen to this word, it's going to burn some people. An
obligation. We are not obligated to follow
the precepts of the law in any religious way. And we need to
be careful. Though we see the righteousness
of God, we must look past the law to the Christ. We must look
past the law to the cross. We must look past the cross to
the resurrection that proved the cross worked. Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness sake, it says. To everyone who believes. That
means in full, Christ is the end. He's the Alpha, He's the Omega.
The law is just a little bit of color and book, previews between. And there is no form of righteousness
in obeying the law of God. Because the only form of true
righteousness is Jesus Christ. And by faith we are in the pure
form of righteousness because Christ's righteousness is ours. There is no picture of righteousness
in obeying the law. That's what the problem with
the Jews. That was the problem. Moses writes about righteousness
that is based on the law that the person who does the commandment
shall live by. Doesn't work. There's no point of righteousness
and being set apart by the law. The Jews, as I've already said,
were set apart. The law was part of that sanctifying
picture. And it was fulfilled in Christ.
Only those who have Jesus as their righteousness can stand
before God. Having been freed from the law,
they will be judged by Jesus whose body we are. So Jesus fulfilled this righteousness
and he did it only for the elect. It is a completed work of full
pardon and absolute and finished atonement, atonement. And only
those who then possess Christ and only those who are possessed
by Christ are then pronounced righteous before the father.
Forever. So this law, as it was a picture
of righteousness that pointed to Jesus, it's also a picture
of election being set apart and sanctified that ultimately then
what? Pointed to Jesus. That those
who are set apart by God, if they're not given to Jesus, then
Jesus' cross work did not apply to them. I think Trey talked about that
about a year ago on a Wednesday night and he talked about Sanctification
is being set apart by being given to the son who died. Jesus is the finished picture.
He is the true for his people who believe in this. It is our
life. So Moses spoke here in verse
5 of a conditional works that yielded to a temporary blessing
as I've already said. Thus, personal obedience to the
commands of God in relation to being righteous before God makes
Christ alive. Christ has finished this work. His word even through Paul this
day establishes a witness that he is the fulfillment of righteousness
that the law pointed to but did not complete and never could.
So to think that obedience works in relation to being righteous
to make Christ a liar. The law, listen to this, gives
no mercy. It cannot give mercy. And Jesus
says God's righteousness cannot give mercy except that he died
under the law in order for his mercy to be just. For without his death, without
him being under the law as a human, His mercy would be unjust. Verses 6 and 7, but the righteousness
based on faith says. Now I want you to see what's
happening here. You know what personification means? Personification is when
something that's inanimate or does not have personality is
given attributes of personality. We do it with animals. We see
it in cartoons. We see it in movies. Men do it
with their vehicles. My father has named every car
he's ever owned. We know all the names. He names
all of his dogs, too. They're always female. But he
names his cars. He personifies them. I'm sure
he names his tractors, too, but I don't hang around him much
when he's tractoring. It's not my line of work. So what's being
personified here? The righteousness based on faith.
It says, it saves something. What does it say? Don't say in
your heart who will ascend into heaven. Or who will ascend into the abyss.
Who will ascend into the grave? Who will go into heaven? Who
will go down into the grave? Who will go up into heaven? Who
will go down into the grave? Who's going to do this? The righteousness,
based on faith, says don't say these things. Now what's happening
here? The law was a shadow. as we've
said. And what God requires for this
life is this. This is what Moses is saying
in verse 5. This is what God requires of
you as you live right now. To point to what? His true righteousness
that God reveals in Jesus Christ. So the law and the gospel are
at odds. I'll get to this point here in a minute. For one points
to the other, not the opposite. The law pointed to Christ, but
Christ doesn't point to the law. Because Christ fulfills the law.
The law gives the divine requirements of God's perfection, then it
points to the one who fulfills those requirements. To think
that someone else needs to inquire and go into heaven and figure
out what it's going to take for someone to get somebody down
here to save some people is the same thing as to say, I am doing
the work of God through obedience, therefore in some sense working
with God in a way of righteousness. As if the Jews had to go up to
heaven and get Jesus out of there so he could become a Messiah.
As if after he died, the Jews had to go down into the grave
and get him to come back to life to prove that it worked. That's
how Paul equates being under the law as a believer. As if
we held the hand of Christ to do his work for him. Life that comes from the law
is Jesus. And it can be obtained for the believer because Jesus
came down from heaven. We didn't go get him. And he
revealed himself as God to us. He revealed himself as the Christ
to us. Jesus alone is the mercy of God to give life. There is
no manner in which man can attest to his own image of Christ. Let
me talk about it for a second. There is no manner in which a
man can attest to having in himself the image of Christ in obedience. From one degree of glory to another.
Christ is the glory of God manifest and one day he will share that
glory in glorifying his resurrected people. That's the point of that
text. We're not becoming more glorious.
As a matter of fact, entropy makes that lie liable. We're getting older. Our skin's
loosening up. Our hair is turning gray. Our joints hurt. We grumble less
from the outside and then more on the inside. And then when
we get really old, we're going to grumble on the outside too. No man has a boast about Christ's
image in him except Christ be all alone to his account. Who
will ascend Who will descend? That would suggest Christ that
what He did was not sufficient. That what He did was dependent
upon us. Don't you see this? It's important because this is
the precursor to Romans 9, 10, 9, and 10. Which when I close out tonight,
I will see just how much you love me. No other means to know God and
be righteous apart from Christ Jesus coming in the flesh and
dying to produce all righteousness and having done all the work
necessary for His decree to save His people from their sins. Nothing
else matters or works. So verses 6 and 7, as we've said
there, righteousness based on faith is saying what? You are
cursed because you cannot obey and you will not obey. But Christ
is life alone. Canaan is the gift of God just
like Jesus is the true mercy of God. We do not get Jesus for
ourselves and plug Him into our own righteousness. He did it
all. Verse 8. But what does it say? Still speaking. It does not say,
it says, do not say this, but what does it say for you to know
and to do? What's the positive here that the righteousness that
is by faith say? The word is near you in your
mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith that
we proclaim. All right. In verses six and seven, if we
look there, who will say, do not say who will ascend into
heaven, who will descend into the abyss. That is a quote from
Deuteronomy 30 verse 13. Neither is it beyond the sea
that you should say who will go over the sea for us and bring
it to us that we may hear it and do it. So it's an illusion
with a little bit different wording as it relates to the gospel in
comparison to the law. But the very next verse in Deuteronomy
30 verses 14 says, but the word is very near you. It is in your
mouth. It is in your heart so that you
can do it. This isn't about God transforming
us to obey. It's about God making us alive
to see what true obedience is and trust in the significantly
perfect obedience of Christ and His righteousness. Otherwise,
we are going over there and getting what God has for ourself, versus
Him graciously granting it to us. This establishes our argument
that we've been saying all along, that the law points to Jesus,
and that is not the answer to man's inability. Jesus is not
the answer to man's inability to perform the law. Jesus is
the fulfillment of God's righteousness, which the law points to. The
truth of God's grace eternally. That's what it points to. God
does not make man able to obey. He mercifully gives him life
when he cannot obey. Because Jesus has. So Paul then
is saying... It's exactly what God said through
Moses thousands of years ago. that Jesus is the point of the
gospel and Jesus was the point of the shadows. So stop conflating
the law and the grace of God as a nice mixed religious smoothie. That's how I close that in my
head. Because verse 9 and 10, without verses 1 through 8, really I believe are more abused
than John 3. The truth one holds, remember
saying this about two weeks ago, the truth that one holds as their
hope or their assurance is their faith. It is the object of their
faith. So the truth one holds as their
faith is Jesus, if you are a true believer. And it's Jesus as revealed
here in Romans. not a pretext, not a simple verse. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ,
which is the power of God and salvation. This is the revelation
of God concerning his son. And everywhere else in scripture
that we see this testimony of God, it is where our hope rests. Just as righteousness was personified
and then speaking in the previous verses, now one's faith is speaking. Look, if you confess, what does it
say? The Lord is near you, the word
of your mouth? Because if you confess, all of
a sudden your faith is, you are saying something. Who's you? Who's he talking to? Do you remember? to all those in Rome who were
loved by God and called to be saints, through whom we have received
Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received, what?
What does he say there? Grace and apostleship to bring
about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among
all the nations, including you, who are called to belong to Jesus
Christ. You who are called to belong
to Jesus Christ have a hope that is not in you
because of you. It is in you because of Christ. And it will not fail you because
if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe
in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall
be saved. So we have heard the abuse of
that text for so long, we can't make heads or tails of it, can
we? So it takes a while. It actually takes about 20 readings
of the book of Romans to get it to start to stick for me. Just read it. Just read it. And then it starts to make sense. Paul is speaking to believers.
He's not giving a prescription for salvation, for being righteous
before God. It's not in view, it's not in
the context, and it never has been. Let me give you a parallel words
that we should think of when we hear people say this is a
prescription for salvation. Did God really say you would
die? who said those words. Lucifer
said those words. Lucifer twists this text in the
mouth of his people to tell somebody else, this is the prescription
of how you can be saved. All Roman roads lead to hell. Paul is speaking to believers.
This has already been established. The gospel of grace has been
established for nine chapters. And this is the continued argument
against works and actions and will and decisions to rest surely
and only in the person of the work of Jesus Christ for righteousness.
The context of his manner of speech regarding the word saved
and not justification or eternal life is not justification or
eternal life. So there must be something else
in view here. He's not talking about eternal
life. He's talking about the end of the law. The end of the
law is doing things that get you right with God. The end of
the law is saying things that make you right with God. The
end of the law is following things that make you right with God.
Christ made you right with God or you're condemned. Period. This sentence here, verses 9
and 10, the second half of the sentence, carries the weight, carries the weight of the entire
epistle this far. One can confess to be in Christ
all day long. I'll tell you, when we have our,
what's the next holiday we've got coming up? Fourth of July,
they don't do anything here. uh, the harvest thing. That'd
be the next, there'll be 5,000 people out here. If you came out here and stood
up on a building with a megaphone and said, how many of you would
say that Jesus is your savior? Almost all of them raise their
hands. How many of you believe Jesus is Lord? Almost all of
them raise their hands. Jesus Christ is good. Almost everybody
say Amen. If you love Jesus, raise your
hand. I mean, it would be a dance party out there. And the dancers in the room start
moving. Anybody can confess to believe
in Jesus. The cults confess to believe in Jesus. One can confess
to be in Christ or to believe in Him, but if that same man
denies the person of Christ, which includes the work of Christ,
as revealed right here in Romans, in the letter to the Romans,
that man is a liar and he is not born of God. I'm going to
say that again. Anyone confess to believe in
Christ, but if they do not believe or they deny the person and the
work of Jesus Christ in sovereign grace, they are not born again. Do you see the implications of that?
But yet that is the text that is used by people who continue
to purvey false hope to a world of false converts throughout
my entire lifetime and longer. Just confess with your mouth.
Say the words. And really be sincere in your
heart. You're saved. Just do it. Will you do it today?
Will you say it today? Would you come down now? That,
let me make myself clear. is demonic. It is demonstratively
demonic. I will put my entire life in
ministry on that statement. Our hearts should weep the way
Paul's did. It is my heart's Desire and prayer
to God for them is that they would be saved. Because they
are utterly and hopelessly lost in self-righteous actions and
law-abiding synergism and decisionism. This is not a power punch pretext. to issue in some mystical witchcraft
incantation for eternal life. And that's how it's used in our
day. And I said that for the first time in 2004. And you should have seen the faces.
We didn't have a fly problem in Virginia for two years. They
sucked them right on in and swallowed them. It's witchcraft. That's how it's used. The proof in that is when the
statement is made out of these verses that I just made, when that statement
is made related to these two verses, the people who believe
in a false gospel are the ones who trust in their words and
actions and decisions. They are repulsed by what they
just heard coming out of my mouth. Now I know that's a straw man,
but I don't care. They are repulsed. They are disturbed. Because every
heartbeat of their spiritual lives depends upon what they
did with their mouth and with their heart and with their mind
in order to be justified before God by receiving some special
dispensational offer of mercy that they worked to get. They hate the message that Paul
gives here in this chapter. Literally given in the context
around these two verses. Paul would undergird what he
says right here with what we're saying right now. I am not ashamed
of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's easy to cry out Jesus is
Lord when He's not the Lord of the Bible. because the populace
of religious zealots without knowledge of true righteousness
follow you with a resounding Amen. But when you speak of the
Christ of Scripture who imputes His righteousness to His people
by the mere pleasure of God and that there is no qualifying or
determining condition that any human being must meet that Christ
has not already met, those who have zeal are trying to establish
a righteousness of the Lord. Hate you. The death of Jesus
Christ, believe in your heart that God has raised Him from
the dead. This establishes the finished propitiatory work of
Jesus to atone for His people as true in His death. It establishes that we believe
that Christ is God who came in the flesh and died in the place
of us and gave us the righteousness that Paul has so eloquently and
ironcladly argued and taught thus far. People can confess all they want
and they can believe all they want, but if it's not the Christ
of Paul, it is the devil himself. Redemption, the death accomplished
righteousness and redemption and resurrection accomplished
proof of God's testimony concerning Jesus Christ and the redemption
that he gave us. The words of Paul are echoing
through my mind right now. Test yourselves to see if you
are in the faith. Do you believe in that gospel?
Or is the test of your life how you're living it? Woe be unto
you if the test of your life is how you live it, rather than
who you believe for it. For with the heart one believes
and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved."
We are united in the death of Christ, and we are united in
the life of Christ by faith. That is, God's gift of hoping
and trusting and being assured in the work through Christ is
how we know that we are in Christ as His elect objects of love
and mercy. The Gospel imparts can be grasped
and apprehended by any manner of unregenerate people. But hope
for righteousness in all parts without contemplating the ends
and means by which to follow them and find it in one's own
self is not something the natural man can accomplish. Let me paraphrase
that. Anybody can believe a lot of
different things about the gospel, but only God's elect who have
been born again can put their trust in the fullness thereof
and understand it completely as their only hope to stand righteous
by Him without any accomplishment of their own. Faith is granted
by God the Spirit, and that faith is the only means through which
a man can have assurance. Some people here will utilize
this verse 10 as the anchor of their hope and they say they
know the right thing. But that's not what's being taught
here. So the gospel is not truly believed except by those who
have been made alive and those who are made alive are only those
for whom Christ died. And these know the father and
they know the one that the father has sent. So what is then this
confession? Well, as needed, when you have
opportunity to speak the truth of who Christ is and what he
accomplished for his people, that is a confession. When you
are confronted with anything in life, when you are When you
come across people, as you grow in the knowledge of grace, you
have opportunity, as the Lord wills, to present a confession. This is the method by which we
discern who is and who is not in the faith, by their confession. Well, I know I'm a believer,
some people say, because I confess Him as Lord and believe in my
heart. What are you confessing? What are you believing concerning
Him? That's how we see who is a believer.
That's how we discern who is truly to be called a brother
and sister. We hear and we listen to that testimony. We observe
their testimony in times of trials, not by how they act, but by where
their hope lays. We encourage them in their declaration
of what gospel they preach, they teach and share and receive them
in unity by the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead,
that establishes our hope to validate the claims of God about
Jesus. Confession then is a statement
of what is true and accurate. Thus, in this text, the statement
of man's teaching and the statement of his witness concerning how
he has been made righteous before God are testimonies of their
salvation. Therefore, those who deny the
gospel as taught by this congregation and this church have denied in
whole the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. Explicitly. See, that's a bold
statement. Why? Because Paul is not a liar. God is not a liar. What do we
do with it? We rest in it. The Lord Jesus Christ has revealed
himself here in context. And only by His mercy have you
seen it. Proclaim it to others. Don't
hide behind it. Confess it. We'll stop there. Let's pray. Father, would you
have mercy on us? Would you have mercy on those
who will hear this message over the next few days as our congregation
catches up? Lord, would you help us to resolve
to understand truly that what we believe is what we confess
is the true Christ? And that if what we believe the
Bible says about the true Christ is the true gospel, then by implication,
those who reject it do not believe in Christ. May our prayers be
fervent. May our hope be unshakable. May
our unity be divinely intimate. May our resolve be that of peace
that surpasses all understanding. Father, the greatest need in
our congregation is not physical, emotional, relational, or financial
problems. Our greatest need is a spiritual
solidity. in each of our hearts and each
of our homes that we might together stand in unity for the gospel
of Christ, for your glory and for your namesake. And it is
in Christ's name that we pray, amen.