Believe in Yourself and Be Lost, or Believe in Christ and Be Saved August 27, 2017 Romans 10:1-10:13 Matt Rawlings

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1 1 Believe in Yourself and Be Lost, or Believe in Christ and Be Saved August 27, 2017 Romans 10:1-10:13 Matt Rawlings ESV Romans 10:1-10:13 Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. 2 I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. 5 For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. 6 But the righteousness based on faith says, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'"(that is, to bring Christ down) 7 or "'Who will descend into the abyss?'"(that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8 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); 9 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. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, "Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame." 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." [Pray] Have you ever been under attack and had to try to justify yourself when you were unjustly accused? Paul had. The question came up often about why the Jews had failed to come to Christ. And often, the blame was laid right at Paul s feet. Peter and James and the other disciples looked after the Jewish mission in Jerusalem. Paul was sent out to the Gentiles. The Jewish mission had largely failed or at least it seemed so in comparison. Paul s mission to the Gentiles was thriving and growing. Paul, haven t you caused this division? Paul, you ve preached against legalism and preached against trusting in the law aren t you responsible for the divide? Paul says no the reason for the divide is not based on me but based on two fundamentally different ways of trying to relate to God on our own merit or on His merit. Main Idea: We can try to be right with God on our own and fail, or we can have faith in Christ s rightness for us and be saved by God. We all struggle with this, don t we? We are all tempted to try to relate to God either before becoming a Christian or afterwards, based on our own merit in some way. We can try to relate to God on the basis of our own zeal for Him as we see in this passage. Or we can try to relate to God by being good enough but it will never be good enough. Or, we can have faith in Christ s righteousness by believing and confessing. Paul says, there are only two options for everyone and because the Jews picked the first way, they haven t been saved. So, the passage can be looked at in two halves verses 1-5, where 1

2 2 trying to be right with God on our own means being lost. And in verses 6-13, being right by faith is how we re saved. So, let s look at the first big idea that Paul lays out for us. 1. We are lost when we try to find the righteousness of God on our own. Paul says the Jews were sincere but not based on what God had revealed. 2 I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Paul could say that he bears them witness, because he himself was once a Jew who was extremely zealous for God apart from any real knowledge of God personally. Now think about that for a moment. Paul himself could bear witness that it is possible to have zeal for God but still not have a personal knowledge of God. They had a zeal for God, but their zeal was misplaced. Their zeal was uninformed by God s revelation. They had zeal for their traditions you know what that might look like don t you. And zeal for their people and even zeal for the Promised Land. Some misplace zeal for a tradition with knowledge of God. Some might have zeal for a certain style of music or worship or dress, or liturgy, or be anti-liturgy and claim that they are driven by zeal for God in all of these things, but it is a zeal not according to knowledge of God. Just like many before and since have had a sincere zeal to be with God or to be reconciled to God, but their zeal was not based on what God had revealed. Today, I think of many different kinds of people who have a zeal for God. Some try to get to God through Mormonism, but their zeal is not according to true knowledge. The Jehovah s Witnesses have a zeal for God, but not according to the knowledge that God has revealed in His Word. Muslims have a misplaced zeal for God, that is ultimately about works but it is not according to the knowledge that God Himself has revealed. People who trust in science may have a zeal to understand God but will never be saved on the basis of their understanding alone. Religious people who call themselves Christians may know a lot about God, but if their zeal for God is based on outward appearances or outward behavior or church attendance or ritual or even knowing the right information and being moral, it is a zeal that is not according to true knowledge. In the verses that follow Paul outlines two ways of righteousness. He shows that there is a way of righteousness by faith and a way that tries to secure righteousness through the law. People don t have to go to great heights and depths to receive righteousness. Jesus has Himself come down from heaven for us and He died and was raised from the dead for us, so that we might be righteous in Him. All we must do is accept this by faith and publicly confess Christ as our Lord. 3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. Zeal for a relationship with God based on anything other than the righteousness that comes from God is ignorant and devoid of the truth. Any attempts on our own to seek righteousness from God, as if it somehow depends on us or is on our own terms, is pride. When Paul says that seeking to establish their own works equals they did not submit to God s righteousness, what does he mean? To submit to someone or something means to obey or to subordinate ourselves to that person or thing to subject ourselves to their authority over us. So, when Paul says that seeking to establish one s righteousness before God ourselves, is not 2

3 3 submitting to God s righteousness the righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ He means that any attempt to establish any ground for righteousness or confidence before God by our own means or our own works is to refuse to submit to God and His righteousness. You see, seeking for our efforts, our works or any merit in ourselves to be the source or grounds for our righteousness before God is like rebellion against God and the means He has given for our righteousness. So, seeking to establish our own righteousness is no minor thing it is pride and ultimately, if one hopes in establishing their own righteousness, it results in being cut off from God. But there is good news. God does provide a righteousness outside of our own efforts. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. God has provided Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God to be the end of the law. To say that Christ is the end of the law has a double meaning of sorts. He is the end of the law in the sense that He completed and fulfilled the law He completed all the requirements of the law perfectly. Jesus Christ is also the end that the law aimed at He is the very purpose and point of the law. The law was never meant to save it was meant to show the need for Jesus Christ. And by His perfect keeping of the law, He has fulfilled the law, for righteousness. Meaning, He is the end of the law, so that everyone who believes might receive His righteousness. He is the termination point of the law, since the function of the law has come to an end in Christ. The law still functions, but it functions to point us to see we cannot keep the law and that its fulfillment is in Christ. Now that Jesus Christ has come, He has ended the old period of the jurisdiction of the law and brought about the new way of the Spirit. ((Seeking to establish our own righteousness also means rejecting that Jesus is the end of the law.)) He didn t come to destroy the law but to complete the law and so, Christ is the end of the law. And then in the following verses Paul gives us the basis for this claim by saying, for. For what? He explains, Christ is the end of the law, for Moses writes 5 For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. Now, verse 5 tells us that if one were to try to be righteous based on the law, the person who does the commandments shall live by them. Paul is quoting Leviticus 18:5, where is says that life is guaranteed to the one who keeps the divine law and that may seem ok at first. But the problem is that, besides Jesus Christ, no one has ever kept the law perfectly. If you try to become righteous through the commandments, then you must live according to the rules of the commandments. The thing is though, if you try to live by the commandments but fail in any one of them, you have failed completely and you deserve the punishment of the commandments. Even if one could claim to be blameless in relation to the law, in man s eyes, no one could be blameless and perfect in all of their motives and intents. 2. We are saved when we lose ourselves and find Christ s righteousness. 6 But the righteousness based on faith says, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'"(that is, to bring Christ down) 7 or "'Who will descend into the abyss?'"(that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 3

4 4 Paul is quoting Deuteronomy chapter 9 and chapter 30, but what in the world is he saying here? He is telling us about a different kind of righteousness a righteousness based on faith. He is saying that faith is opposed to any self-attainment. Receiving righteousness by faith admits that we weren t the ones who ascended into heaven to bring Christ down. And this kind of faith acknowledges that we weren t the ones to descend into the abyss as if we could bring Christ up from the dead. Receiving the righteousness based on faith is opposed to any heart motives that would try to claim credit or merit for Christ coming down to you as if you went up into heaven and brought Him down. And the righteousness that is based on faith is opposed to any notions that you could have brought Christ up from the dead. To receive the righteousness of God, we are not expected to make the incarnation and resurrection happen. Instead the righteousness based on faith puts hope in the fact that the word is no further away from us than our mouth and heart as verses 8-10 show us. 8 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); The word of faith is so close, that it is in your mouth and in your heart. And in verses 9-10 he explains what this word of faith that we proclaim is 9 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. If we confess the truth with our mouth, that Jesus is Lord, and we believe in our hearts that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, we will be saved. This isn t saying that there are some magical words or incantation that we say that saves us. But what it means is that we are bold enough to publicly confess our faith that Jesus is Lord Lord over all and Lord over our lives If we hold fast to this good confession if we are trusting in the fact that He was raised from the dead for our sakes, we can be sure that we will be saved. I like the way Cranfield put it when he said, for Paul, the confession that Jesus is Lord meant the acknowledgement that Jesus shares the name and the nature, the holiness, the authority, power, majesty and eternity of the one and only true God -Charles E. B. Cranfield, Commentary on Romans IX-XVI and Essays: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Vol. 2 (Intl Critical Commentary)Nov 3, 2000, p 529 Confessing that Jesus is Lord is to confess that we are submitted to Jesus and that we belong to Him as our Master. This is the same kind of confession we saw last week. In baptism we publicly profess what we have already believed and confessed with our lips beforehand and so baptism is the pledge of a good conscience towards God as 1 Peter 3:21 puts it. Look at verse 10, Paul says this is what we experience in reality. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. Paul is using the Hebrew literary device of parallelism he isn t talking about belief and confession as two different things. First we believe and then we confess. Confession without belief is hypocrisy. Belief without confession is not having the required faith. Belief and confession can t be separated. We believe and if we truly believe, we confess with our mouths and we are both justified and saved from God s wrath by this faith. 4

5 5 Saving faith is belief that confesses we belong to Jesus, that He is in charge of us now and we will submit to Him. It doesn t take any great act of righteousness on our behalf there is nothing we can do to bring Jesus down or raise Him from the dead. When we trust in Jesus Christ with our hearts at the very core of who we are we are made righteous or justified before God. The only response we have is to confess our salvation with our mouths and we can be bold in doing so, because our confidence is in Him. Look at verse 11. Paul quotes from Isaiah 28:6 and to show that this has always been the testimony of Scripture. 11 For the Scripture says, "Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame." Jews reading this would have known what Paul was quoting. The full quote has even more beautiful meaning for us because we can see that it refers to Jesus Himself prophetically. Isaiah 28:16 So this is what the Sovereign LORD says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who trusts will never be dismayed. Jesus is the cornerstone, He is our foundation and if we trust in Him we will never be dismayed, or as Paul puts it in Romans we will not be put to shame. Why is it significant that Paul reminds us here of the fact that Scripture says that everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame? Because ultimately, all human beings will one day experience shame before God if they do not believe in Him placing their faith in Jesus Christ to be justified and saved by God. You see, everyone who does not believe in Jesus will be put to shame. In the day of judgment, if we come before God on our own merit, we will stand ashamed before God. ashamed for every known act of disobedience ashamed for every time we did not love God with all of our heart, soul and mind ashamed for every time we loved ourselves more than God ashamed for every time we did not love our neighbor as ourselves ashamed for every failure to give thanks to God or acknowledge God ashamed for not responding to God s conviction and His call ashamed for hardening our hearts to God ashamed for not responding to the free gift of His grace through the good news about Jesus Christ Ever since Adam and Eve sinned, mankind has been naked and ashamed before the presence of God. But Jesus Christ, went to the Cross to bear our shame and sin, so that all of our cause for shame would be paid for and so that all of His righteousness could be ours. So, the good news for Everyone who believes in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, is that we are now clothed. Or as Scripture says, robed, in His righteousness, so that we will not be put to shame. On the final day, when our sins are revealed, we will not be ashamed because we will gladly present ourselves before God as spotless, with the very righteousness of Christ no longer naked and no longer ashamed. Now, maybe some of you here are wallowing under the mire of shame if you have not believed in Jesus, come out from the pit of your sin, confess your need for Him, confess your sins, and in faith believe in Jesus and receive His righteousness by faith. Then, you can be free 5

6 6 from shame. For others, you may be struggling under the burden of shame but you have placed your faith in Jesus and yet, you still struggle. It could be a symptom that you are being tempted to put your trust in your ability to establish or keep or maintain your own righteousness before God. If so, that is pride even though it is a depressing sort of pride. So, remind yourself of the fact that Scripture says there is no grounds for righteousness in ourselves and that we can t keep ourselves righteous before God. We must own this truth for ourselves. We must submit to this very humbling truth. And then we must submit to God and accept His righteousness that comes from Christ s perfect merit. Then we must strive to rest in His righteousness alone. Everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame. That is great cause for rejoicing indeed. But maybe you are doubting that you deserve such righteousness and that it certainly cannot apply to you, because you are too disobedient, too unlovely, too dumb, too fickle, too proud, too whatever. 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. Listen to the Great Apostle s words in verse 12, when he says, there is no distinction. First and foremost, in context, he is saying that even God s most prized possession - His people Israel are no better and no more deserving than anyone else when it comes to receiving His righteousness. It is not that the Gentiles are somehow superior to the Jews in any way, but that the Jews zeal for God, based on their own understanding doesn t result in the righteousness of God. Just like anyone who comes from a religious background today is not any better or more deserving of God s riches than those outside the church. Even those who grew up with all the right knowledge and who worshipped in church and tried to keep God s commandments and laws they are not distinct from the Gentiles - those who have not done these things. The Jews, the apparently sanctified, are not distinct from the unsanctified when it comes to the ability to receive the righteousness of God and have all their shame taken away. What this means is that whether you are aware of all of your sins somehow, or you are clueless about the depth of your depravity because you ve never done what you consider truly detestable, you are equally deserving shame. But more importantly, you are equally deserving recipients of His grace if you call on Jesus Christ in faith. You may have many things you are ashamed of, that you don t want anyone to know about but God bestows His riches His glory, His righteousness, His forgiveness, His adoption, His reconciliation, His joy on you if you call on Him no matter your past. Look at verse 13, Paul makes another subtle point. Not only is there no distinction in merit between the Jew and Gentile religious and irreligious, the free offer of salvation is available to everyone. I want you to read aloud the second word in verse 13 with me 13 For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." For EVERYONE. The Lord is available to save everyone who calls on His name. The important thing to note is that Paul is quoting the prophet Joel in the Old Testament where he says that everyone who calls on the name of YAHWEH God, will be saved. And by quoting this, Paul is saying, Jesus is YAHWEH and He is the one who saves. 6

7 7 Remember the context of this passage it is explaining why it is that not all the Jews are saved not all believe in Jesus. Paul told us in chapter 9 that it doesn t mean that God s Word and promises have failed just that people didn t understand that salvation was always based on the promise of God and not ethnic heritage. Not only that, we saw from the Old Testament that God always planned to save a remnant of His people. And that besides all this, whomever is saved is saved because God mercifully draws them, mercifully calls them and mercifully elects them, not based on anything we ever do or desire. Salvation has always been by God s grace and His merciful election of those whom He has prepared beforehand as vessels of His mercy. That is meant to be the most reassuring truth for believers. If you believe, you can be certain God has chosen you in His mercy to be His child. But don t stop at chapter 9, because we must preach the gospel like God offers it. He says, EVERYONE who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Scripture doesn t try to explain away the apparent paradox, and we tread on thin ice when we try to reconcile the two just like it is impossible to fully resolve the mystery of the Trinity how can three be one? We know both are true, even if we can t quite see fully how. But it doesn t minimize the fact that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Let us not try to reconcile the two but let us submit to our great God who offers salvation to everyone who appeals to God to save them by faith. Now, next week, we will look at the rest of the verses that talk about our responsibility and great privilege to share the good news. But this week, let us revel in throwing off any attempt to seek our own righteousness. Let us revel in the fact that we will not be put to shame and that we are no longer naked, but we are completely covered over, clothed, with the right thoughts, right motives, and right acts of Jesus Christ. And He is available to us freely if we simply will believe and call on His name. Amen Redeeming Grace Church. This transcribed message has been lightly edited and formatted for the Website. No attempt has been made, however, to alter the basic extemporaneous delivery style, or to produce a grammatically accurate, publication-ready manuscript conforming to an established style template. 7