Romans chapter 10, and we'll
read from the beginning of the chapter. Brethren, my heart's
desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be
saved. For I bear them record that they
have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they, being
ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish
their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto
the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. For Moses describeth
the righteousness which is of the law, that the man which doeth
those things shall live by them. But the righteousness which is
of faith speaketh on this wise. Say not in thine heart who shall
ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down from above,
or who shall descend into the deep, that is to bring up Christ
again from the dead. But what saith it? The word is
nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart. That is the
word of faith which we preach, that if thou shalt confess with
thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart
that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth
unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made
unto salvation. For the scripture saith, whosoever
believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference
between the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord over all is
rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call
upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they
call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they
believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they
hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except
they be sent as it is written? How beautiful are the feet of
them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings
of good things. But they have not all obeyed
the gospel. For Isaiah saith, Lord, who hath
believed our report? So then, faith cometh by hearing,
and hearing by the word of God. But I say, have they not heard? Yes, verily, their sound went
into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.
But I say, did not Israel know? First Moses saith, I will provoke
you to jealousy by them that are no people, and by a foolish
nation I will anger you. But Isaiah, sir, Isaiah is very
bold. and saith, I was found of them
that sought me not, I was made manifest unto them that asked
not after me. But to Israel he saith, all day
long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and
gainsaying people. Amen, may God bless to us this
reading from his word. Just a wee word of prayer. Heavenly
Father, as we come before thy scriptures, as we seek thy face
in the reading of thy word, as we would meditate upon these
things for the building up of our own faith and for the leading
of the Holy Spirit into truth. We pray that this night thou
wilt come amongst us and minister to us in these holy things. We
ask that thy name will be glorified in the things that are said and
done. We ask that the Lord Jesus Christ will be lifted up. We
ask that God the Holy Spirit will have free reign amongst
us. and that the things that honour thee will be our hearts'
desire, and we will look unto thee for all thy good, for all
thy grace, and thy mercy towards thy church and thy people. For
Jesus' sake we ask it. Amen. Last week, as we came to Romans
chapter 10 and we spent a little bit of time in the earlier verses,
we saw how the Apostle Paul, in teaching us of confessing
Christ and believing in Christ, identified these aspects as spiritual
experiences. They are spiritual experiences
that are initiated by God the Holy Spirit. God the Holy Spirit
originates the work of divine grace in the soul of the individual. That work transfers into the heart and
from the heart to the lips in confession of faith. It originates
in the soul, it enters the heart, and it finds expression in public
confession of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is what we call
conversion. This is what we call an individual
being brought to a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ as their
saviour. And Paul showed us in the 13th
verse, for example, of chapter 10, that it doesn't matter what
our backgrounds are, where we've come from, what our religious
heritage might have been, that both Jew and Gentile, whosoever
he calls it, Whosoever cometh to Christ, whosoever calleth
upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And we saw that this
confession and this belief, it doesn't occur in a vacuum, but
rather it is the product of a divine enabling in the soul, which then
takes knowledge of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ
in his accomplishments. Faith, as it is gifted by God
the Holy Spirit, is always granted with an object in mind. It always seeks for Christ. When faith is given to an individual,
it is given as God's gift to that individual. It is given
not based upon works, not based upon merit, not based upon any
good that the individual has done, but as a free gift from
God. But when that faith comes, it
doesn't rest alone. It doesn't go to sleep. Faith
in an individual is always looking for Christ. It searches for Christ
and it may well be that there will be a time of real anxiety
and distress and concern about the individual's soul and well-being
as it seeks out Christ. And we ought to be sensitive
to these things in the lives of other people. Those of us
who are born again and who know the Lord Jesus Christ and have
come into a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, we ought
to be aware that there may well be people out there who are seeking
for Christ. upon whom the Holy Spirit is
working, to whom the gift of faith is being granted, has been
given, and they are seeking out the Lord Jesus Christ. They are
seeking to hear Him in the preaching of the Gospel. And therefore,
when we come to speak to people, we should always be aware that
the things that we say ought to be savoured with a kindness
and a gentleness and a generosity of spirit towards those who are
yet outside of Christ. We don't know, but that that
very conversation that we are making might be that which helps
an individual to find the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith has an object. It always looks away from self
and it always is looking for something to satisfy it, someone
to satisfy it. It is looking for Christ. True
faith looks to the Lord Jesus Christ and the Lord Jesus Christ
is that one and to whom all men and women must come if they seek
salvation. The Lord Jesus Christ is that
one whom all men and women must call upon. When I was preparing
for this evening's service, I was doing a little bit of reading
and I read this sentence. It comes from Dr. John Gill. And I just thought that it was
such a profound and important statement. And I want to leave
it with you tonight. I want you to think about this.
It says this, every man calls upon the God he believes in. and only Him. Every man calls
upon the God he believes in, and only Him. We've been directed
here in the apostles' writing to understand that whosoever
shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, but who
is the Lord that they are calling upon? Of all the gods, Of all the gods
in this broad pantheon of man's imagination, there is but one
Lord Jesus Christ. Do you know there are many gods
that go under the name of Jesus? Did you know that? There are
many lords that go under the name of Jesus. Just about every
religion out there has got a place for Jesus somewhere in it. And that Jesus, if it is not
the Jesus of Scripture, might have the same name as the Jesus
of Scripture. but it is a Jesus of man's own
construction, a Jesus of man's own imagination, so that when
every man calls upon that Jesus, they are calling upon the Jesus
of their own imagination. Only the Christ, only the Jesus
of Scripture, only this Jesus, brings salvation. There are many
gods in this world, but there is only one Lord Jesus Christ
who saves sinners. Sometimes we talk about an object
lesson. I remember when I was young and
maybe at Sunday school or Bible class and someone would say,
well, bring us an object and then give us a little lesson
from scripture based on that object. And maybe it would be
a ruler or a key or something. some object that would trigger
a thought in one's mind about scripture. We used to call them
object lessons. Well, here's an incident lesson. Do you remember when Peter and
the disciples were in the ship in the midst of the storm? And
they saw the Lord Jesus Christ walking on the water in the midst
of the storm. And they were afraid and some
of them thought that it was a ghost and Peter recognized him. He
said, no, it's the Lord. And he called and he said, let
me come to you. And we discover that Peter gets
out of the boat in the midst of that storm and he starts to
walk on the water towards the Lord Jesus Christ. And in Matthew chapter 14 in
verse 30, we discover that he begins to sink. He takes stock
of the situation that he's in. He becomes aware of the wind
and the waves. He becomes distracted. It's as
if his eyes are taken off the Lord. and he begins to be overwhelmed
by the things that are around about him. It's reminiscent of
what we often encounter in our own lives, is it not? But as
he was beginning to sink, he cried out, and he cried out saying,
Lord, save me. It is probably the most efficient
statement in the whole of scripture. Lord, save me. To whom did Peter cry out that
prayer? Who was he speaking to when he
cried that? Why? He was speaking to the Lord
Jesus Christ. Of course he was. He was calling
out to the Lord. But why did he call on the Lord? Because he believed that the
Lord could save him. You see, that was the one that
he cried out to because he believed that that Lord could save him. The Lord was his hope. And in
that moment of fear, in that moment of need, I was trying
to think about it. I guess some of us have been
ice fishing in the past. If the ice was to break underneath
you as you were standing on the water and you began to feel yourself
sinking, you began to feel yourself falling, how much time would
you have to do anything about it? None. You're in that water before you
realise it. That water, that cold water has
hit you before you even realise you're falling. Maybe a split
second, but that's all it takes for you to be subsumed into the
water. Well, that must have been something
like what Peter was like. He was on the water in one moment
and the next moment he was sinking. He was going down and all he
had was that moment. Lord, save me. as the water came
over his head. What did he not cry out? What
did he not say? He didn't say, I'm coming back
to the ship. He didn't say that. He didn't
say, I'm gonna have to find my way back because there wasn't
time for that. He didn't ask for his friend's
help. He didn't shout, Andrew, throw
me a rope. He didn't shout that because
it was too late for that. He was already in the water.
He was already going down. The wind and the waves, he was
in the midst of a storm. He knew that he was lost. He didn't shout, to the gods
of the age. He didn't shout Zeus, Jupiter. I looked up to see who the god
of the sea is because if he was going to shout anything, he should
have shouted to the god of the sea, right? Poseidon, Neptune, help me. Save me. Do you know he didn't
even call on the Father or the Holy Spirit? He shouted to Jesus
for help. He shouted to Christ. He appealed
to the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is because Peter knew
that in this one, salvation was to be found. He believed him.
He believed that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Christ that he knew,
was the Christ who could save him. And that's what conversion
is about. And that's what, when we read
here the Apostle Paul's statement about calling upon the name of
the Lord, we are to understand So the apostle is now building
upon these truths. He's building upon this unique
role of the Lord Jesus Christ as the object of faith. And as
we go into this back end of chapter 10, as it were, he is showing
us that Christ is the object of faith. And how are we going
to believe in him? Paul has proved through chapter
8 and chapter 9 that there is a remnant will be saved. that there is a people of God
and that the saving purpose of God rests upon those people of
His choice, that remnant people. It's a people from amongst the
Gentiles and a people from amongst the Jews. It's not all the Jews.
The Jews had forgone the privileges of the revelation that God had
given them because they did not seek after Christ. They sought
their righteousness by another road. They sought their righteousness,
their justification with God by their own works. Verse 3,
he says in chapter 10, being ignorant of God's righteousness,
that is the Lord Jesus Christ, and going about to establish
their own righteousness, they have not submitted themselves
unto the righteousness of God. So God is a people, a people
of His choice that He is delighted to save. A people that He has
identified and that He knows, that He has chosen, that He has
elected, and they are called a remnant of grace. Upon these
individuals, God has, from before the foundation of the world,
in the eternal counsel and covenants of His purpose, set His mercy
upon. Endowed them with His love and
compassion. brings to them the grace and
mercy that he alone can give and that will provide for them
the righteousness through the work of Jesus Christ that they
require. Everything needful for the accomplishment
of the salvation of that remnant people That election of grace
as Paul calls them in chapter 11 verse 5. The election of grace. We'll come to that on a future
occasion, God willing. The children of promise. Everything
needful for these individuals has been provided in the covenant
purpose of God. Salvation for these people is
done and effected. It's a finished work. So much so, that even faith itself,
which lays hold upon the benefits and the blessings of God's covenant
purpose towards the elect of his choice, even the faith which
allows them to lay hold upon the blessings and benefits of
salvation is a gift from God. That in itself is a gift. For
unto you, the apostle says in Philippians chapter 1 and verse
29, for unto you it is given to believe on him. It's given
to us as a gift from God. There is nothing earned, not
even the faith that we have. It's given to us. It's a work
of God the Holy Spirit. Remember we started off our thoughts
this evening speaking about the fact that it is implanted in
the soul. From there it enters the heart
and ultimately is expressed by a confession upon the lips. But it is a work of grace in
the soul, in the heart of an individual as God gives that
new life, that quickening power, that regenerating work, and he
quickens and makes alive the soul of the individual. Faith
is never our own creation. The strength of faith is not
our own works, neither the desire for faith in the part of an individual. Rather, faith by God the Holy
Spirit is bestowed as a gracious gift. It is implanted and it
is enabled in the individual, not earned or merited, but God
gives it. And that is a principle that
we must not renege upon. That is a principle that we must
hold first and foremost as far as the gospel is concerned, that
even the faith of the individual is a gift from God. However,
we spoke about the fact that that given faith is a faith that
looks out, that looks away, that looks to Christ, that looks for
Christ. It's a spiritual desire that
is implanted, it is a hunger, it is a thirst that seeks after
righteousness, that seeks after Christ, because Christ is the
Lord, our righteousness. Christ is our justification. So that implanting of faith in
the life of an individual is itself something that is looking
outward, looking for Christ, active in desiring after spiritual
things. And that's what we call our regeneration,
our enlivening, our quickening. And when it looks out, it looks
for something that satisfies. It looks for the Lord Jesus Christ. So God uses a means in order
to bring his people to a knowledge of the truth. He implants faith,
the new life, but he uses means to bring the benefits of salvation
to individuals. What are we talking about? Well,
we're talking about what Paul goes on to explain here in the
end of chapter 10. to bring to a knowledge of the
truth, to bring to a confession of the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour,
a means is brought to bear by the Lord. Faith is given and
then faith is exercised. Faith is exercised when Christ,
the object of our faith, is set before us for us to know in a
spiritual way. I was brought up in a Christian
home. Right from the very earliest days, my parents, my mother,
my father, those people around about me would have spoken about
the Lord Jesus Christ and did. I knew about saying prayers when
I went to bed. I knew about saying grace before
every meal. I knew about going to Sunday
school. I knew about sitting in the Bible class. I knew about
hearing countless sermons preached. And they were preached about
Jesus. They were preached from the Gospels. They were preached
from the Holy Scriptures. I knew about Jesus. But With
every believer there comes a time when the Lord Jesus Christ stops
being the historical character, the subject of the narrative
and he becomes the living reality and he becomes the personal friend
and that's the conversion experience. That's hearing by faith. That's receiving the Lord Jesus
Christ as our Lord and our Saviour in that personal, deep, profound
way. The Apostle Paul uses an impressive
logic in order to drive our understanding in these verses in the second
half of chapter 10. He uses a series of questions
to drive home the importance of gospel preaching in the process
of bringing individuals to salvation and a knowledge of the truth.
In the gifting of the Holy Spirit, in regenerating power, and the
exercise of that gift of faith in the object which is the Lord
Jesus Christ, there is a necessity of means. There has to be these
means coming to bear upon the issue. We must believe, says
the Apostle, in order to call upon the name of the Lord. You
see, Peter believed when he was sinking in the water. He believed
that the Lord Jesus Christ would save him. If he didn't believe
that, he wouldn't have shouted on Christ. He would have shouted
on Andrew. He would have shouted on Neptune.
He would have shouted on whatever it was he thought was going to
be able to help him. I'm coming back to the boat,
lads. throw me a rope. He would have
been preoccupied with whatever it was that he thought was going
to save him. But he knew his own strength
was gone. He knew his abilities weren't there. He knew that the
God of the heathens wasn't any good to them. So he trusted Christ
and he called upon Christ in order to believe we must know
who the Lord Jesus Christ is. And believing implies knowledge. If you believe in something,
you can't believe in nothing, in an emptiness, in a vacuum. You believe on something. There
is a focus, there is an attention, there is an object to the things
that we believe. We believe what we know to be
true. Now you can say something else. You can profess something else. But we believe what we know to
be true, to the best of our knowledge. So we must believe in order to
call upon the name of the Lord. But in order to know the Lord,
the gospel has to be heard. the message of the Lord, the
accomplishments of the Lord, the purposes of the Lord. The
gospel of Jesus Christ is sometimes called the gospel of God. It
has to be revealed to us. And that revelation is through
the preaching of the gospel to our hearts and to our ears and
to our understanding. To hear the gospel preached requires
that a preacher declares it. To hear that gospel, that gospel
which we must hear in order to know who Christ is, that Christ
whom we must know in order to call upon him, requires a preacher. And for a preacher to come with
the authority of God and with a clarity in his message he has
to be set apart by God to that task and authorised and enabled
to do it. Preachers must be sent from God
and the Apostle Paul uses this lovely little phrase where he
speaks about the beautiful feet that the preacher has and It's
just a lovely phrase. When the messenger, when the
apostle, when the individual that carried the message of good
tidings, of good news, was heard or seen coming over the mountains,
coming through the passes, coming along the road, coming into the
village, coming into the town, coming into the house, How delightful
the presence of that individual was, beautiful feet. And he uses a lovely little phrase
with regard to the message that these beautified messengers bring. They come with glad tidings of
good things. That's a delightful little phrase. Glad tidings of good things. They come with the gospel of
peace. That peace has been made. Peace has been made. Can you
imagine what it would have been like if two armies were at war
and a peace A treaty is established and the
messengers are sent to tell people that the war is over. See the
pictures of the celebrations that there were in the allied
countries at the end of And there is so much rejoicing that all
of the heartache, all of the trouble, all of the problems
that war brought as far as loss and expense and dear ones being
taken away had come to an end. Good tidings, good tidings, glad
tidings of good things. A gospel of peace is sent. And
this gospel is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it
has to be declared faithfully by sent individuals, as it indeed
has been. And we see from the beginning
of time that God established a message which grew in its scale
and its detail as the revelation became greater and greater through
all of the ages of the apostles or all of the ages of the prophets
and the apostles and the ministers and the evangelists and even
the Lord Jesus Christ himself. The Apostle Paul draws these
multiple examples from Scripture to show us how that Gospel was
sent through the ages, principally to the Jews, principally to the
House of Israel, but not exclusively. We've spent a little bit of time
in recent weeks thinking about how that Gospel went even beyond
the boundaries of Israel, how the nations around about Israel
knew either because they saw the pictures that Israel had
been given or they saw the message, they heard the message that Israel
had been given and indeed it seems that very often the people
in the nations around about Israel had more understanding and idea
of the nature of the one true God than the people of Israel
in their hard-heartedness and stiff-neckedness. would countenance. And so the Apostle Paul draws
to our attention the fact that this message has indeed gone
forth and it is going forth now. He says in verse 18, but I say
have they not heard Verily, their sound went into all the earth
and their words unto the ends of the world. This is the gospel.
The Lord Jesus Christ said, go ye into all the world and preach
the gospel. And this message has gone into
all the world for the redemption and recovery, for the salvation
and deliverance of that remnant people. whom the Holy Spirit
would place faith in their lives and they would respond to that
gift by seeking the Lord through the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is designed, this message
is designed to show us the sovereign purpose, the completeness of
the purpose and plan of God. Hearing alone doesn't save, but
hearing attended with the divine power of God the Holy Spirit
brings the experience of salvation to the individual. And that hearing
comes through the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit
quickening, regenerating, and effectually calling that faith
forth in an individual that they may trust in the Lord Jesus. Israel, the Old Testament people,
the Jews of the Old Testament, they had all the benefits of
God's revelation, but they did not seek their righteousness
by God's way. They sought it in their own works,
in their own righteousness, in their own accomplishments. But
there is no justification, there is no righteousness under the
law or the works of man. And Israel proved themselves
to be insufficient. and disobedient and contrary
to the will of God. They condemned themselves by
their waywardness and their rebellion. They had lost that access to
God and now God was calling out a people from amongst the Gentiles
and a remnant from amongst the Jews whom he would be gracious
to and upon whom he would bestow his love and his mercy. As I was thinking about these
verses, I noticed a little phrase, and I just want to touch upon
this by way of a sort of postscript, really, to draw your attention
to it, because I thought that it was interesting. In verse
16, we're told there, speaking about Isaiah, that is,
he says, but they, speaking of the Jews, have not all obeyed
the gospel. It's interesting that there's
a reference there to obeying the gospel, because we often
think of the word obey in the sense of law, and in the sense
of obligation and in the sense of duty. And that's true. That's true. Obeying is in the sense of law
and duty and obligation. But there is also an obedience
to the gospel as well. And that's what the apostle is
talking about here. In what sense then do we obey
the Gospel? You see, believers are those
individuals of God's choosing to whom He has sent His Holy
Spirit that He has implanted this gift of life, this gift
of grace, that are looking for the Lord Jesus Christ, looking
for that one who will satisfy, that one who will help, that
one who will comfort, that one who will give them a sense of
the deliverance out of the conviction and out of the need that they
feel, this weight of sin, this burden of sin. that they feel
upon their soul. And faith looks for Christ, it
looks to Christ. And when Christ is preached,
then that faith responds, that faith reaches out and takes and
receives the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is what is meant by
being obedient to the gospel. It's this receiving Christ that
is receiving the benefits of Christ and the work of Christ
and the blessings that flow from that work into our own soul,
believing them and giving thanks to God for what he has done. The Apostle Peter uses the same
phrase in slightly different context. He says, What shall
the end of them that obey not the gospel of God? What shall
the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? In 2 Thessalonians 1 verse 8,
Paul says, Of them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ. And in Hebrews 5 verse 9, Christ
became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that
obey him. And that obedience to the gospel
that these apostles are talking about, that obedience to the
gospel that was not received by the Jews here in verse 16,
they have not all obeyed the gospel, is the believing and
the confessing and the following and the calling upon the name
of the Lord that the Apostle has been drawn our attention
to here. The Lord Jesus said in John chapter
6 verse 40, This is the will of God. This is what we are called to
be obedient to. This is what faith seeks in the
person of the Lord Jesus Christ, our obedience to the gospel of
Christ, the gospel of peace, the good tidings, the glad tidings
of good news. And that's an evangelical obedience,
an obedience to the will of God, an obedience to the purpose of
God, an obedience to the call of God in the gospel as it goes
forth to individuals. Not because we're any better
or any smarter or any more able than anyone else, but because
that gift of faith is granted to us, which lays hold upon that
message that comes with power, that message that comes at the
behest of God through a saint preacher. and we receive it and
we believe it and we understand it and we call upon the name
of the Lord Jesus Christ and we experience the gifts of salvation
and the blessings of grace. Christ is preached in the gospel
and that is what the subject of our preaching always has to
be. We're out there preaching Christ
to people who have faith. And that faith will receive the
Lord Jesus Christ. That faith will seek the Lord
Jesus Christ, hungering and thirsting after him. Because this is the
will of God for all his elect, for all his people. And Christ
will raise us up at the last day. Amen.