Let's open our Bibles again to
Romans chapter 10. I'd like to begin the message by
asking you an honest question. I hope that you'll deal with
your own heart and your own soul honestly and answer this question
to yourself honestly. Do you want to be saved? Do you? Are you willing? Do you want
to be saved on God's terms? I will confess to you that is
my heart's desire. There's nothing I desire more
than to be saved from my sin. To experience in the soul the
forgiveness of my sin. There's nothing I desire more.
And I can tell you honestly, there's nothing I desire more
for each of you than to be saved. to know the Lord. In our text this morning, the
Apostle Paul gives us the experience of every person God saves. It's
my prayer that the Holy Spirit will make this message so plain
that you cannot miss the way of salvation. I pray that someone
here this morning will hear and be saved. The title of the message
is Whosoever. And first, Paul tells us here,
Romans 10, beginning in verse 13, Paul tells us who it is that
can be saved. It's whosoever. Verse 13, for
whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Whosoever is a pretty wide word, isn't it? Are you a whosoever? You're a whosoever if you're
a person. So this message is for every person here. It's for
every whosoever. This word whosoever is so wide,
it includes all of us. So this tells me you can be saved. And I love the way God's word
reads. Only God could write his word
this way. You notice this doesn't say,
if the elect call upon the name of the Lord, they'll be saved.
It doesn't say that, does it? Now that's true, but it doesn't
say that. And I'm glad it doesn't, because I couldn't find any comfort.
If God said, if the elect call upon the name of the Lord, they'll
be saved. Because I may not know if I'm one of the elect or not,
but I know I'm a whosoever. So I like this whosoever. I'm
glad it doesn't say, if Frank Tate calls upon the name of the
Lord, he'll be saved. I might not know if that's me.
He might not mean me. My dad's name was Frank Tate.
In the 1980s, there was a middleweight boxing champion named Frank Tate.
It might mean him, not me. There's a jazz trumpet player
named Frank Tate. I wouldn't know who this meant.
But God says, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved. I can fit in that. Can you? Whosoever? You
see, the gospel is not exclusive. The gospel, God's gospel, never
keeps a sinner out. ever. The gospel is inclusive. God's gospel is the only message
that's inclusive. The message of man's free will
requires you do something. And if you don't, you're excluded.
The gospel of God's free and sovereign grace is the only message
that includes sinners. And God words it this way, whosoever,
because the gospel declares that the way of salvation is wide
open for sinners. And I can tell you why this says
Whosoever. It says whosoever, first of all,
because all of us are equally lost in Adam. Look at verse 12. For there's no difference between
the Jew and the Greek. There's no difference between
the religious and the heathen. For the same Lord over all is
rich unto all that call upon him. Now we as human beings are
very fond of making a lot of distinctions, aren't we? Distinctions
between people. But you know, all of those distinctions
are man-made. God doesn't see those distinctions.
Rich or poor, how much money you got in the bank, how much
land you own, how big your house is, that doesn't matter a bit.
Because we're all equally lost. It doesn't matter whether you're
black or white. It doesn't matter whether you're religious or heathen,
whether you're male or female, because we're all equally lost
in Adam. There's nothing better about
any person in this room nothing about us that makes us better
in God's sight than the leader of ISIS. That's it. Whosoever, because we're all
equally lost in Adam. Second, this says whosoever,
because there's no difference in who Christ saves. Christ saves
sinners. That's who he saves. It doesn't
matter whether they're black sinners or white sinners, whether
old sinners or young sinners. You know you don't have to be
a certain age to be saved. All you have to be is a sinner.
Christ saves sinners. Christ saves outwardly moral
sinners like Paul, and he saves outwardly immoral sinners like
the woman at the well or the thief on the cross. Christ saves
sinners. That's why he says whosoever.
And thirdly, he says whosoever because there's no difference
in the way any sinner is saved. We're all saved in Christ. We're
all saved by God's grace through faith. We're all saved through
the blood and the righteousness of Christ. So who can be saved? Whosoever. Secondly, the salvation
is had in a call. Whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved. Again, only God could do this. Something as eternal and as extraordinary
and as beyond our imagination as salvation can be had by something
as simple as a sinner calling to the Savior. That just comforts
my heart. Now everybody here knows what
a call is. Everybody here knows how to call. Calling on God is simply humbling
yourself before Him. and calling on Him, begging Him
to have mercy on you, begging Him to do for you what you can't
do for yourself. I'll tell you when we'll call.
Everybody knows how to call, but we won't until God gets us
in trouble. Then we'll call. And we won't
have to be taught how. You won't have to have some preacher
writing a big old thick book and explaining to you how to
call on God. The moment God gets you in trouble, you'll call.
Remember Peter, the Lord came walking to him on the water.
Peter said, Lord, bid me come to you on the water. And the
Lord said, come on. And Peter climbed out of that boat in the
middle of that storm and started walking on the water. And then
he looked at the storm and the waves and he started to sink.
Now John back there in the boat didn't say, Peter, you got to
do this. He didn't have to teach Peter how to call. Lord, save
me. And the Lord reached and saved
him, didn't he? Everybody here knows how to call.
Blind Bartimaeus knew how to call. Blind Bartimaeus never
read scripture. Blind Bartimaeus never saw anything.
Blind Bartimaeus never saw the Lord Jesus, but he knew how to
call. He heard Jesus is passing by,
and he cried, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. And
all those with him, they were the important people in town.
That's how it is when an important person comes to town. All them
important people come out to go through town with him. And
they say, shh. Bartimaeus, shh. We'll give you
a dollar later. Just shh for now. Jesus, thou son of David,
have mercy on me. That man called, and the call
of that sinner stopped the Savior in his tracks. He commanded him
to be called, and he healed him. You know how to call. I don't
have to teach you how to call. A baby knows how to call when
it's hungry. Maggie never taught Daisy how
to cry at three o'clock in the morning when she's hungry. Never
had a teacher like that. She can do a lot of things you
don't teach her. That just comes naturally to us. If God ever
makes you hungry, you'll call Him. You don't even have to audibly
be able to speak to call to the Lord. The Lord hears the heart
cry of His people. Just like you didn't have to
be able to see that serpent lifted up on the pole to be healed,
all you had to do was look. He didn't say, see. He said,
look. You just turn your heart to that
serpent lifted up on a pole and you'll be healed. You call to
God from the heart and you'll be saved. But now here's the
thing about a heart call. A heart call is genuine in it.
I might say some words that are not genuine, but the call of
my heart, now that's genuine. This calling on the Lord is not
just saying some words. This calling upon the Lord is
not repeating a prayer some soul winner tells you to say. This
is the call of a sinner in deep need. A drowning man going down
for the last time. It's a genuine call. Now if you
need to be saved, you call on the name of the Lord. Now I know
only the elect will be saved. And I unapologetically preach
that because that's what God's word teaches. Only the elect
will be saved. God didn't send his son here
to try to save anybody. He sent his son here to save
his people. Only the elect will be saved. But you write this
down. Election never has stopped any
sinner from coming to Christ. Never. Never. Any whosoever can
call. And every whosoever who's ever
called on Christ has been saved. You call on Christ and you'll
be saved. You'll find out soon enough you
called Him because He first called you. You'll find out soon enough
that you called because God gave you faith. He gave you life.
You'll find out soon enough you called on God because He chose
you first. But none of that is why you call on God. Nobody ever
called on God for mercy because they knew they were one of the
elect. They always find that out later. Everybody who's ever
called on God has called on Him because they're a sinner. Now,
out of your sin and out of your need, out of your need for the
Savior, out of your need for forgiveness, you call on Him.
And He said, He'll save you. Every whosoever. You remember
the leper that came to our Lord? He was a whosoever, wasn't he?
And he called. Whosoever are always nobody.
This leper, he's a nobody. But he called. Lord, if you will,
you make me clean. And what'd our Lord say? I will.
Be thou clean. That poor Osiro-Phoenician woman
was a nobody, just a whosoever. She said, Lord, would you have
mercy on a dog like me? He said, oh, your faith is great. Be it even as you will. You leave here this morning.
I point those examples out from Scripture so you'll know this
is true. If you leave here this morning lost, it's your own fault.
That's right. It's your own fault that you
didn't call. And if you leave here saved this morning, you
don't get any credit. That's all God's doing. Both
of those are true. Aren't both of those true, Dan?
Then don't try to figure it out. You just call. Call. Call on
him, call on the Lord to save you. Suppose you are drowning. You're out there in the ocean
and the waves battering you and you can't swim. And a lifeguard
sees you and he runs out there and throws you a life preserver
with this rope attached to it. And there you think, only the
elect will be saved. I don't know if he threw that
life preserver to me or not. He says, Grab ahold of a life
preserver. I don't know if he's talking
to me or not, because only the elect will be saved. And you
drown? It's your own fault. But if you reach out and grab
that life preserver, and that lifeguard pulls you to shore,
you're not saved because you grabbed a life preserver. You're
saved because the lifeguard saved you. And the same thing is true
of salvation. You call. You call on the Savior
out of your need for Christ, and He'll save you. And you won't
be saved because you called. You'll be saved because you made
a decision. If any of us leave here saved this morning, it's
because Christ saved us. By His grace, by His blood, and
by His righteousness without any help from us. But yet this
is true. Always. There's no salvation
without calling on Christ. And you call on Him. If God ever
gets you in trouble, you'll call on Him. Here's the third thing. Salvation. This is the experience
of everybody God saves. Salvation is calling on a specific
Savior because there's just one. There's only one Savior. There's
only one Christ. Whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved. Now, you've got to understand
this about this Romans 10, verse 13. The key phrase in this verse
is not whosoever. The emphasis of this verse is
not whosoever. The emphasis of this verse is
the name of the Lord. He's the Savior. We're not saved
because we called. We're saved because we call on
the name of the Lord, because he is, Christ is the Savior of
sinners. Now, like I said, there's no
salvation without calling on the name of the Lord. And the
key to that is the name of the Lord. Because the name of the
Lord tells us who he is. The name of the Lord describes
his character. So when we call on the name of
the Lord, who are we calling on? A particular, a specific
Savior, aren't we? If you're going to be saved,
you've got to call on the Savior. If there's just one, and there
is, there's only one Savior, then you've got to call on that
one Savior, don't you? You've got to call on him. Be
sure you're not calling on another Jesus now. People throw the name
Jesus around pretty flippantly. There could be another Jesus.
Paul said there was, they preach another Jesus. So be sure you're
calling on the right, the right savior. Be sure you don't call
on some false Christ because our Lord says there are many
of those are going to arise and many false prophets are going
to say, Oh, here he is, or here he is, or here he is. And they're
all lying. Be sure you call on the right
one. How, what's the name of the Lord?
Can you tell me what's the name? What is the name of the Lord
so I can call on him? I can't. If you'd be saved, you've
got to call on the name of the Lord that's revealed in scripture.
Don't you call on the name of the Lord that I tell you who
he is. Don't you call on the name of the Lord somebody else
tells you who he is. Call on the name of the Lord who God
says he is. Look at Exodus chapter 33. Let's
see what does God say his name is. That's what matters, isn't
it? God tells us what his name is.
Exodus 33 verse 18. And he, Moses, said, I beseech
thee, show me thy glory. And God said, I'll make all my
goodness pass before thee. And I will proclaim the name
of the Lord before thee. Here's the name of the Lord.
And will be gracious to whom I will be gracious. and will
show mercy on whom I will show mercy. You know what the name
of the Lord declares? That He's the Sovereign Savior.
He saves whom He will, when He will. We can't make Him do it.
We can't make Him do it by our call. We can beg Him, but He's
gonna save His people of His own free and sovereign will.
Look at Matthew chapter one. He's the Sovereign Savior. Here's
another time we hear the name of the Lord. His name describes
exactly who He is. His name describes His character. Matthew 1, verse 21. As she shall bring forth a son,
and thou shalt call His name Jesus, Savior. For He shall save
His people from their sins. This Savior that we call upon
is the successful Savior. The Lord Jesus Christ did not
come to make salvation possible. He came to surely and certainly
save His people from their sin. You call on His name. His name
is Jehovah Sidkenu, the Lord our righteousness. You call on
Him because you don't have any righteousness of your own. His
name is Jehovah Jireh, the Lord will provide. You call on Him
because you don't have anything of your own to commend you to
God. His name is Jehovah Rapha, the Lord the healer. Then you
call on Him because you're full of sin sickness, the disease
of sin. You're dead in sin. His name
is Jehovah Rapha, the Lord my shepherd. You call on Him because
you're lost and you cannot find your way back to Him. Call on
Him. Now I want you to listen to me. Don't just call on the
name Jesus. Like I said, Different Jesus's. False Jesus's aren't they? And
I really dislike when I hear anybody talking about Jesus.
People say Jesus this and Jesus that. I told Jesus this. I talked
to Jesus this. Like he's some equal of theirs.
I know that Jesus, you call his name Jesus. You call his name
Savior. That is the earthly name of our Savior. Our Savior is
the Lord Jesus. That man Jesus isn't God. The
name Jesus is a highly exalted name, a name exalted above every
other name that in His name every knee bow, and every tongue confess
that He's what? Lord. And always refer to Him
as Lord. Always refer to Him as the Lord
Jesus. When the disciples wrote in the
Gospels, they wrote about what Jesus did, they're talking about
what the man did. But when they talked to him,
never one time, as it recorded in scripture, they called him
Jesus. They always called him Lord. You and I better do the
same thing. My dad's name was Frank. I loved
him and respected him like no other. His name was Frank. Never one time did I call him
Frank. Ever. Always dad. Out of respect. Well, how much more respect should
we have for the name that saves? How much more respect should
we have for that name which is above everything, the name of
the Savior? You call on the Lord Jesus Christ,
for neither is there salvation in any other, for there's none
other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be
saved. You call on the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and you'll be saved. He's the Savior of sinners. Here's
the fourth thing, and this is an important question. I ask
you, I want you to answer this question, deal with this question
honestly. Do you want to be saved? But now, we need to talk about
this for a second. Saved from what? Have you ever
thought about that? What do you want to be saved
from? Many people say they got saved, or they want to be saved.
But now, I have to ask you, saved from what? Salvation, the salvation
that is talked about in scripture and in our text here this morning,
is not being saved from hell. Now, unless somebody is just
insane out of their mind, nobody wants to go to hell. What a dumb
question. Of course, I don't want to go
to hell. But salvation, not being saved from hell. Salvation is
being saved from sin. Sin. And not everybody wants
to be saved from sin. Do you know that? Not everybody
wants to be saved from sin because everybody doesn't think they're
a sinner. But if you're a sinner, you've got one hope of salvation.
You call the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved from your sin. You'll be saved from your sin
in the Lord Jesus Christ because Christ was made sin for his people
and he suffered everything God's justice demands for that sin.
You call on Christ to be saved from your sin, and you will be,
because Christ died to take away the sin of his people. And that's
our great need. Now, everybody here has got different
walks of life and, you know, different things going on in
our lives, but I tell you, this is the great need of every person. You don't have a greater need
than this, to be saved from your sin. That's what salvation is,
saved from sin. And if you're a sinner, then
you call. Here's the fifth thing. Is salvation
from sin? There's an order to it. God is
a God of order. You know, salvation is, you'll
not find anything in scripture about walking an aisle or doing
all these crazy things people do. God has an order to salvation. Scripture teaches, we just read
it, you've got a call. There's got to be a call to a
specific savior to be saved from our sin, doesn't he? But like
I said, there's many Jesuses out there. Well, how will we
know which Jesus to call upon? Verse 14, this is what Paul asked. How then shall they call on him
in whom they've not believed? And how shall they believe in
him of whom they've not heard? And how shall they hear without
a preacher? Now, scripture teaches us we've got to call on a specific
Savior. Paul gives us four vitally important
questions here. Now, these are vital questions. Yet, they're not hard to understand
at all. And if you take any time at all
to think about them, these four questions, you'll see God's order
in salvation. Here's the first question. How
shall they call on him in whom they've not believed? Now we
know there's no salvation without faith, without faith in Christ.
You must believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. You
must believe Christ or you will die in your sin. But now if you
believe Christ, whoever you are, you'll be found not guilty. Look
back at verse 11. For the scripture saith, whosoever
believeth on him shall not be ashamed. There's that word whosoever
again. Now there's no salvation without
calling, right? Whosoever shall call. And there's
no salvation without faith. Whosoever calls on the name of
the Lord and whosoever believes on him shall be saved. You'll
never call on Christ until you believe. The moment you believe
he's your only hope of salvation, that's when you'll call on him. Here's a second question Paul
asked. How so they believe in him of whom they've not heard?
Now that just makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, the gospel is not
hard to understand. You can't believe on somebody
you don't even know exists. We have to hear who Christ is
before we believe on him. That's obvious, isn't it? But
now let me give you a warning. Simply hearing the gospel with
these ears, simply hearing the name, even preached in truth,
the name of Christ preached. That's not salvation. Believing
Christ, knowing who he is, that's a work of grace in the heart.
Doesn't come from a natural understanding. Look at verse 16. But they've
not all obeyed the gospel. They've heard, but they haven't
all obeyed. For Isaiah said, Lord, who has believed, I report.
Isaiah felt like nobody's believing. Who has believed? We've got to
believe. Now, I know I need Christ. I
need Christ to save me. I've got to call on Him. I've
got to know who He is. Somebody's got to tell me who
He is before I can believe. I see that. But how can I hear
about Him? Can somebody tell me how I can
hear about Him? He's the great need of my soul.
Is there anybody saying who He is? That's Paul's third question. How shall they hear without a
preacher? We must believe on the name of Christ. We must call
on Christ to be saved. But now somebody's got to tell
us who to believe. There's so many different religions
preaching so many different ways of salvation and different saviors.
Somebody's got to tell me which one of those is right. Somebody's
got to tell me who to believe. And the way we'll hear is through
preaching. It's please God by what men call
foolishness of preaching. It's not foolish preaching, as
Brother Henry said so often. It's what people think we're
doing here this morning. People think it's foolish. You
know, people think in our day we've evolved to the point where
we have sharing and do all these different... God hadn't changed,
brethren, by the foolishness of preaching. God has chosen,
He's ordained to save them that believe. Could God save sinners
without preaching? Of course He could. But will
He? No, He will not. Because God
has chosen, has pleased Him to save His people, to save sinners
through the preaching of Christ. Now, if you're lost, and you
know it, if you're lost, you know it. If you don't know Christ,
you know you don't know Him. Don't you ever think that there's
nothing you can do to be saved. Don't you ever think that. You
can be sure that you're in a place where the gospel is preached.
You can do that. If I didn't know Christ, I would be sure
I could hear Christ preached as often as I possibly could. Because what verse 17 says, so
then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
If saving faith cometh by hearing the word of God preached, I believe
I'd be there as often as I could to hear him preached. Wouldn't
you? And again, here's another warning. We're talking about
preachers and preaching here. Everybody who calls himself a
preacher is not a preacher. You know this, this is as obvious
as the nose on your face. Somebody wearing a robe, wearing
a religious costume and making all this show of the flesh is
not a preacher. But somebody wearing a dark suit
and a dark tie, standing behind a pulpit reading the Bible, all
them aren't preachers either. How can I know that somebody's
preaching the gospel? How can I know somebody's preaching
the Christ that I must believe and that I must call on? Here's
Paul's fourth question, verse 15. And how shall they preach
except they be sent? As it's written, how beautiful
are the feet of them, and here's the message, that preach the
gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. Now,
no man can preach unless God equips him. No man can preach
unless God gives him the message and God sends him to preach it.
And no man is sufficient for these things. Of himself, no
man is. And sadly, many people don't
know that. So many people talk, but few
men actually preach. How do I know if a man who calls
himself a preacher is really a preacher or not? Well, God's
preachers tell the truth. Even if it offends you, God's
preachers preach the truth. They preach the gospel of peace.
Now, if we're going to preach the gospel of peace, first of
all, we've got to tell why there's a war, don't we? There's war
going on. Man has fallen in Adam. Man has
declared war on God. God's angry with the wicked.
We've got to have peace with God. Now, the message that says
if you do something or you do it well enough and you have peace,
you know in your heart that's a lie. Go to bed at night. It's late. Nobody else is awake in the house.
You wake up in the middle of the night. And you think about
that. Does that give your heart any
peace? That's not the message of peace. The message of peace
is this. God has made peace for his people
through the blood of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
when we talk about the cross, we're not just talking about
that piece of wood. We mean all the substitutionary work of Christ.
There's peace with God in His blood that cleanses us from all
sin. There's peace with God in His righteousness that makes
us stand before the Father righteous. There's peace with God, not because
we did something good enough, but because Christ, our representative,
obeyed the law perfectly. That's the message of peace.
You lay awake at night and you can toss and you can turn and
you can worry, But to the believer, what our heart always comes back
to is this. I don't know what's going on.
I don't know what all this stuff means. My only hope is Christ. And we get there, there's peace.
He is the gospel, the message of peace. God's preachers preach
glad tidings of good things. There are no glad tidings and
no good things telling us to do things. There's no good glad
tidings in our works because we don't do anything good. So
if we're gonna preach good, glad tidings, we can just preach one
message. There's none good but one, that's
God. We just preach Christ. Here's how you can tell God's
a preacher. He's got one message. I don't care what scripture he
selects as his text, the message is Christ. He is the glad tidings
of good. God's preachers never preach
the goodness of man, because there isn't any. We always preach
Christ. The glad tidings of the gospel
is the Lord Jesus Christ. Peace on earth, goodwill toward
me. Now that's the message. If God's
given you an ear to hear it, if he's given you a name, you
call on him right now. I pray God will give us the faith
to call on Christ. Not just once, but to continually
call upon Him and to depend upon Him. Let's bow in prayer. Our Father, how we thank You
for the plain, simple message of Your Word. Father, I pray
that You would cause what we've heard this morning from Your
Word to be mixed with faith. Father, give us faith to believe.
Give us faith to look to Christ, to depend upon Him, to call upon
Him that He might be our all and in all. I would thank you
for full, free salvation without any works of our own in our Lord
Jesus Christ. We do truly pray to Him being
all the glory and praise and adoration, not unto us, but unto
Thee, O Lord. Father, we thank you for this
food that we're about to eat. We thank you for this time of
fellowship, and we pray that you bless it. And we do thank
you for the occasion. And we thank you for young Brooke.
Father, we pray your continued mercy be upon her, that you watch
over her, that you protect her, that you guide her every step
as she begins this next chapter in her life. Father, don't leave
her alone. Watch over her. Protect her.
We pray your richest mercy and grace be upon her. And we thank
you for making her one of ours. Bless us, Father, we pray. In
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, we give thanks and we ask these
blessings.