Okay, Romans chapter 10. As I
said, I'm gonna start with verse 11, which I ended with last week,
but I wanted to use it as an introduction for today's message,
where it says in verse 11 of Romans 10, for the scripture
saith, whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. And
then, In verse 13 it says, for whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved. And that's what we want to deal
with. And I'll get to verses 11, 12, and 13 here. Whosoever. You know, there is absolutely
no doubt from the scriptures, from the word of God, that anyone
who desires the salvation that God has provided, And that's
the key now. This is what we need to emphasize
to people. Somebody said, well, anybody
who wants to be saved can be saved. Well, everybody wants
to be saved from something. Everybody wants to be saved from
disease, from poverty, from despair. Everybody wants to be saved from
death. Everybody wants to be saved in
that way. So the Bible doesn't say whosoever
wants to be saved will be. Man by nature wants to be saved
his way, but there is absolutely no doubt that anyone who wants
to be saved God's way will be saved. They will not be turned
away by the Lord. We read last week in Isaiah 53,
where it says, all we like sheep have gone astray, we've everyone
turned to our own ways, to his own way. The Bible says there
is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but it's a way of death.
Christ spoke of the broad road, the broad way that leads to destruction. You see, there's only one way
of salvation, it's God's way. It's by his free sovereign grace
through the Lord Jesus Christ and there is no other way but
man by nature as we are naturally born seeks salvation other ways. And the common denominator to
all the ways of man is it makes salvation in some way to some
degree at some stage conditioned on man so that man can take some
glory for his own salvation in some way. It may be works, it
may be sincerity, it may be a decision, but man desires some glory in
the sense that he can bring it down to say, I made the difference. No matter what God did, No matter
what Christ did on the cross, I make the difference. That's
what man wants to say. That's the broad way. And however man makes the difference,
that depends upon what denomination they belong to. If they call
themselves Christian. But we need to consider this
verse 11, the scripture says, whosoever believeth on him shall
not be ashamed. Now a lot of people, there are
a lot of whosoever verses in the Bible. And I'll show you
some more in just a moment. Whosoever believeth here. Whosoever calleth. We're gonna
look at Revelation 22 where it says, whosoever, those who are
thirsty, whosoever will drink of the water of life. Yes, anybody
who wants what God has prepared can have it. But the Bible is
just as clear that man by nature, as we are naturally born, none
of us want it God's way. That's the problem. So here's
what the Bible says now. If anybody wants it God's way,
then there's been a work already accomplished in that person,
a work of God by the Holy Spirit to give them a new heart, give
them eyes to see, ears to hear, make them willing in the day
of God's power. Now a lot of people use these
whosoever passages to combat or deny the doctrine of election. You know, they say, well, if
God chose a people before the foundation of the world, and
the Bible says he did, you can't deny, well, I know they do deny,
but you cannot deny it scripturally. If God chose a specific number
to be saved, then that means that the whosoever wills aren't
any good. No, it doesn't. Now here's what
we need to see. First of all, we do ourselves
no spiritual or eternal good when we go through the Bible
and pick and choose what we'll believe and what we won't believe,
what we'll emphasize and what we'll ignore or even deny. And then we do ourselves no spiritual
or eternal good when we go in to pick out verses, take them
out of their context, define words however we want to define
them, instead of how they appear in their context. That's deadly. I'll never forget one time, this
was years ago, but a fellow who had heard me preach on election,
the doctrine of election from the scripture, He came up to
me, he was an opponent of that doctrine. Even though I showed
it to him, I said, look, I didn't come up with this. This is not
my invention. Here it is in the scripture.
God said, I'll be merciful to whom I'll be merciful. I'll be
gracious to whom I'll be gracious. It's not of him that willeth,
it's not of him that runneth. It's of God that showeth mercy.
What if God willing to show his wrath? Now what it says? Aren't the people of God called
the elect of God? Evidenced by their believing?
All of this, eh? And he wanted to deny that, he
wanted to be an opponent of that, and here's what he told me. He
said, when I get to heaven, I'm gonna look upon the gate, and
on the gate before I go in, it says, whosoever will may enter. And he says, when I get on the
inside, I'm gonna turn around, on the other side of that sign,
it's gonna say, chosen before the foundation of the world.
And so I told him, I said, well, there's a, I said, that's your
illustration. I said, that's not a biblical
illustration, you know that. First of all, there's no gate
with writing on it. But here, I said, your point
is this. I said, what you're saying is,
I'll deny the doctrine of election while I'm here on earth, but
I'm gonna accept it in heaven. Oh, I don't mean that. I said,
well, you've got another problem, too. What you say is written
on the backside of that sign on the gate, it's written right
here in the word of God right now. You don't have to wait and
see it on the backside of a sign on a gate. Right here it is,
in the book of God. Now who are we to say what God
says here is true, but what he says over here I don't have to
believe until I get to heaven? Now that's crazy. Why do we want
to deny the doctrine of election? Why do we want to deny God's
sovereign? I'll tell you why, it's our pride. We want to think
that we make the difference. I want to think that by nature
now. I want to think that the reason
I'm saved is because I was more pliable, more easily drawn to God, that my will was
not as stern as those over there who won't come to God. I believed
and they didn't. But you see, God has set this
thing up, as far as salvation, that he gets all the glory and
we get none. Now that's right. All the glory goes to God in
Christ. We have no goodness. There's
no spark of goodness in us. That's why people, when they
say the whosoever wills, they think, well, that means we've
got a spark of goodness. No, we don't, not in God's sight
now. Now, we have morals as far as human beings are concerned,
but in God's sight, there's none good, no, not one. We don't have
a spark of goodness. And all we need to do is get
some eloquent, dynamic, powerful preacher who tugs at our emotions
and fans that spark and drags us down an aisle. That's not
the way it works. Salvation is by God's grace. And anybody that wants it can
have it. And God would never turn anyone away who wants it
because if they want it, really, though His way, He's the one
who made them want it. They're His creation. But now the Bible teaches that
whosoever will, all right, whosoever believeth on him shall not be
ashamed. If you believe on Christ, the true Christ, not a counterfeit
Christ, in the glory of his person and the power of his finished
work, you won't be ashamed. Now if you don't believe on him,
the true Christ, you will be ashamed. Because what you're
so proud of in thinking that you made the difference, you're
gonna find out that it's nothing but iniquity. Depart from me
ye that work iniquity. But if you're in Christ, what
are you gonna do? You're gonna stand before God washed in his
blood, the precious blood of Christ, God's word tells us.
The blood that washes away my sins, totally. so much so that
my sins cannot be charged to me. You're gonna stand before
God in the righteousness of his son. God himself said, this is
my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Here he is. In other
words, listen, in Christ who went through our shame by bearing
our iniquities, our sins imputed to him and suffered and bled
and died, In Christ, he arose from the dead because of our
justification, and we stand before God, having his righteousness
imputed to us. We don't have a thing to be ashamed
of. My sins are all taken away. That's
what that means. The gospel is a call for sinners
to believe in Christ, not as false preachers preach him, not
as we naturally think of him, but as God's word sets him forth. Whosoever believeth on him, that's
the key. Who is the him here? Well, he's
God manifest in the flesh without sin. And so whenever we go to the
scripture, whether we see a whosoever, whether we see the word world,
whether we see the word all and every, all those words have to
be interpreted in light of the truths that have been set down
by God in the gospel. And if you remove that, then
you don't know what you're talking about. I've even, you know, I've
made this statement and I believe it holds true. Like, let's take
like the word all. Now this is the word whosoever,
all right? Whosoever what? It's not just,
they say, well, whosoever will. I heard a preacher say, man by
nature is a whosoever won't. Yeah, whosoever will. If you
will, What does the Bible say, if you
will? It means God has made you willing
in the day of his power. But take the word all. Somebody says, well, that means
everybody without exception. No, it doesn't. It never does. All is a pronoun, and it must
be defined by its antecedent. Somebody said, well, what about
the verse in Romans 3? For all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God. Does that mean all without exception?
No. It doesn't include the elect
angels. They're not included in that. They're an exception.
Somebody said, well, it's all human beings. No. It's not the
man Christ Jesus. He didn't sin and come short
of the glory of God. But he's God. Well, that's true. But he's
also man. So there's one exception in the
annals of humanity. that didn't sin and come short
of the glory of God. So who does the all refer to?
I'll tell you exactly who it refers to. You listening? All
who have sinned and come short of the glory of God. That's who
it refers to. That's who it means. No more, no less. Now have you
sinned and come short of the glory of God? Well, you're in
that all. Have I sinned and come short of the glory of God? I'm
in that all. That's who the all are. Well,
what about the world? Well, the word world sometimes
refers to the fallen, condemned world. Sometimes it refers to
the cosmos, the creation. Sometimes it refers to God's
elect out of the world, all over the world, Jew and Gentile. How
do you know? Look at the context. When you
read a passage like John 3.16, what does it say? It says, for
God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that
whosoever, now there's a whosoever there. Whosoever what? Whosoever believeth on him, in
him. Now, do we naturally believe
on him? No. Will we, if left to ourselves,
believe in him? The Bible says no. He came unto his own, his own
received him not, but as many as received him, to them gave
he the right to become the sons of God, which were born, not
of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but
born of God. You go back to the Old Testament
and you look at passages like Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 37, where
the prophet of God is talking about the future calling of God's
elect among both Jew and Gentile. And here's what God says. He
said, I'll give them a new heart. I'll give them a new spirit.
Well, why didn't he do that to the ones that he was talking
to in that present day? What was wrong with them? He
left them to themselves. But the call of the gospel's
the same, isn't it? Whosoever believeth on him. Who? Jesus Christ. God manifest in the flesh, who
died on the cross as the surety, substitute, and redeemer of his
people to whom God had given him before the world began, and
by his death satisfied the justice of God and brought forth righteousness
which God has imputed to them by which they are brought to
faith in Christ, and repentance of dead works. What's the evidence
of being a whosoever will? Do you believe on Christ? Have
you repented of dead works? Do you continually look to him
and him alone as the author and finisher of your faith? So the Bible teaches, there's
no doubt. You don't have to argue with people about whosoever will.
Whosoever, anybody who wants it can have it. But what does
the Bible teach us about our sinfulness and our depravity?
By nature we don't want, the natural man. Think about it,
1 Corinthians 2, 14, the natural man. What is it he won't do? Now think about that. Turn over to that scripture.
I've shown you this before, but this is a good passage for you
to, if somebody challenges you on this, this is a good passage
to look to. In verse 14, he says, but the
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God.
Now, what is the natural man? Well, that's speaking of men
and women as we are naturally born into this world. Didn't
Christ say you must be born again or you cannot see or enter the
kingdom of God? You must be born again, why?
Because as we are naturally born, we won't receive the things of
the Spirit of God. Now what is it we won't do? Well,
the natural man wouldn't think of smoking a cigarette. Wouldn't
think of drinking wine. Wouldn't think of gambling. No,
natural man would do all that. Wouldn't go to church. Wouldn't
walk an aisle. Wouldn't get baptized. Wouldn't
make a profession of faith. Would the natural man do that?
According to the Bible he will. What is it he won't do? He won't
receive the things of the Spirit of God. They're foolishness to
him. Neither can he know them. That
means know them intimately. Because they're spiritually discerned.
He doesn't have a spirit as far as the spirit of life. He's spiritually
dead. But now what is it specifically
about the things of the Spirit of God that the natural man will
not receive? Well, look up at verse 12. Now
he's already told us over in 1 Corinthians 1.18, the preaching
of the cross. To them that are perishing, it's
what? Foolishness. To them that are
being saved, it's what? It's the wisdom of God. Boy,
I tell you what, that ought to tell us that one thing we need
to understand without any doubts is what is the preaching of the
cross? Well, it's the preaching of the gospel, the person and
work of Christ, his righteousness. That's what it is, the righteousness
of God. But look at verse 12 of 1 Corinthians 2. Now we have
received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is
of God, now look at it, that we might know the things that
are what? Freely, unconditionally given
to us of God. That's what the natural man won't
receive. He's got to put conditions on himself to receive whatever
blessing he perceives. to say I made the difference,
but no, the spirit of God shows us that everything that we have,
now think about this, everything that we have in salvation and
a right relationship with God is free, free, free, but it's
based upon a just ground of one who paid the cost, whose name
is Jesus Christ, the Lord our righteousness. That's what the
natural man will receive. You mean to tell me that it's
not based upon what I do? I mean to tell you just that.
And even your willingness, if you're willing, to come to Christ
and receive him, even that didn't come from you, that came from
God. Now that's what the Bible teaches. Now why is that so important?
Why, you know, somebody said, well, you're just splitting hairs.
No, why is that so important? I'll tell you why, because the
glory of God is at stake here. And he's not gonna share his
glory. Well, look at verse, go back to Romans 10, look at verse
12. And here's how he makes his point. Well, there's no difference
between the Jew and the Greek, the Jew and the Gentile. Same
Lord over all. If God saved me and if God saved
you, truly, I can tell you something, it's the same God, not a different
God. It's not a God who saved you
based upon something else and then a God who saved me based
upon something other than that. Same Lord over all is rich unto
all, not all without exception, but all that call upon Him. All
that call upon Him. People in religion today have
denigrated the scriptures down to such a shallow way of thinking
And that it's really, you know, just like one old philosopher
said several years ago, he said, religion in America is 3,000
miles wide and one inch deep. And when he said that, he wasn't
talking about sincerity. What is the reason for our hope? We wanna climb into the scriptures.
I wanna hear what God says. I think we read this passage
last week, or I may be gonna read it today, I don't remember.
But it says, God, well, it's Psalm 85. Yes, we read it last
week. But in Psalm 85, one of my favorite
Psalms, where it talks about righteousness and peace have
kissed each other, mercy and truth are met together. It says
in verse eight, Well, it says verse seven of Psalm 85. Show
us thy mercy, O Lord, and grant us thy salvation. You know how
he puts that? It's not anybody can have salvation
who wants to be saved. No, here's what I mean. Show
us your mercy, Lord, the kind of mercy that the Lord shows.
Show us thy salvation, the kind of salvation that God provides. That's what I need to hear about.
And then it says in verse eight, I will hear what God the Lord
will speak. Now, if old pastor so-and-so
speaks to you about this issue, that's okay if he's telling you
what God the Lord has spoken. But if he's not, who's in trouble? Both of you, if you believe him. I will hear what God the Lord
will speak, for he, God, will speak peace unto his people and to his saints. But let them
not turn again to... I want God to speak peace to
me. How about you? And how does he do that? It's
not in dreams and visions and voices. It's in his word right
here. How does God save people? How
does he save the Jew? How does he save the Gentile?
Same way, by his sovereign grace based upon the righteousness
of his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. No other way. If God speaks peace,
there's peace. The Bible says there's joy and
peace in believing. In believing what? That's your
key. It's not just in believing. Could
you say there's joy and peace in believing that I'm good enough
to get into heaven? Well, that's wrong. That's a
lie. You're believing a lie. There's joy and peace in believing
what God says concerning who he is, who I am, and who Christ
is and how he saves sinners. That's where joy and peace is.
He says, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
All these things will be added unto you. So it's the same Lord
over all, he's rich and all that call upon him. Now look at verse
13. He says, for whosoever shall
call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Anybody, anywhere,
at any time, who truly calls upon his name shall be saved. Now what is it to call upon his
name? What is his name? It's not just a title. His name
involves his character, his nature, who he is, that distinguishes
him from all dead gods, that distinguishes Christ from all
counterfeits. His name is his way. How does
God do this? Why does God do this? How does
he save sinners? How can a holy God be just and
justify the ungodly? The answer to that is his name.
His name shall be called Jesus. For what? He shall save his people
from their sins. I'm gonna preach this in a few
minutes in the main message. People today, they don't understand
the dynamics that brought forth the cross of Christ. Why he did
it, what he accomplished on the cross. You see, the gospel involves
not what Christ tried to do, but what he actually accomplished
when he died. And what did he do? He established
righteousness. And what does that righteousness
do? It's imputed to all of God's people and ensures their eternal
salvation. Ensures that they'll have life,
that they'll believe, that they'll be preserved and brought unto
glory. So next week I'm gonna start with verse 14 on the subject
of what does it take? What does it take for a sinner
to call upon the name of the Lord? And he tells us there. It takes the work of God. Through
the preaching of the gospel. Faith comes by hearing and hearing
by the word of God. Now, let me close with this. Look over at Revelation 22. I already mentioned John 3.16,
it's in the last paragraph of your lesson there. But God so loved the world. Who's
he talking about? He's talking about the world
of his elect. Somebody said it doesn't say that. Oh yes it does.
Read the rest of the Bible. It also says that the whole world
lieth in the wicked one in 1 John chapter 5. Is that talking about
everybody without exception? No, it's talking about those
who are consumed and controlled by satanic deception. How do you know them? They believe
not. They won't call upon the name of the Lord. Well, look
here at Revelation 22 and verse 17. He says, He says, and the Spirit and the
bride say, come. That's the church, the bride
is the church, and the Spirit is the Holy Spirit. And what
he's talking about is the church as the witness of Christ here
on earth in the power of the Spirit. So that when we tell
people the gospel and say, come to Christ, believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ, see, we're guided by the Spirit of God. And so
the Spirit and the bride say, come. and let him that heareth
say, come. Now what's the problem? Well,
the natural man, he's spiritually deaf. How many times did Christ
say in the first two chapters, or in chapters two and chapter
three of Revelation, when he's talking to the seven churches,
that let him that hath an ear, hear. He told the disciples in
Matthew 13, blessed are your eyes for they see, blessed are
your ears for they hear. So if you hear, he that heareth,
come. What does that mean? It means
you're being given spiritual life. And let him that is a thirst
come. Now man naturally is thirsty.
He's thirsty for a lot of things. But he's not thirsty for God's
way. He's not thirsty for the water
of life, which is in Christ. He has to be made thirsty for
that. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
If you truly hunger and thirst after righteousness, you'll be
filled. Because if you hunger and thirst after righteousness,
you know what? It's the Spirit of God that made
you so. And he'll fill your thirst, and he'll fill your hunger by
pointing you to Christ as your only righteousness before God.
So let him that is a thirst come, and whosoever will, whosoever
is willing, let him take of the water of life, and here's that
word again, freely. Let him take up the water of
life. You see what he's saying there? Whosoever, yes sir, anybody
who wants it, can and will have it. God has never and he will
never turn any sinner away who truly, whosoever will, who truly
desires the salvation that he has established and provided
for his people.