How Will You Respond to Jesus Christ?
The Book of Romans
Romans 10:1-15
Sermon by Rick Crandall
Grayson Baptist Church - February 11, 2018
(Revised March 30, 2021)
BACKGROUND
*Please open your Bibles to Romans chapter 10. Most of you know that in Romans 9-11, Paul was led by the Holy Spirit to discuss the Jewish nation. Warren Wiersbe explained that "It seems strange that Paul would interrupt his discussion of salvation and devote a long section of three chapters to the nation of Israel, but a careful study of Romans 9-11 reveals that this section is not an interruption at all. It is a necessary part of Paul's argument for justification by faith." (1)
*All three of these chapters connect back to the crucial truth Paul stated in Romans 1:16-17. There the Apostle wrote, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, 'The just shall live by faith.'
*Salvation can only be found by faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! We will see this truth confirmed in tonight's Scripture. The only question is: How will we respond to Jesus? Please think about this as we read Romans 10:1-15.
MESSAGE:
*Christians are like other people in a whole lot of ways. We go to school and work. Hopefully, we love our families. We like the same foods, sports and hobbies. Like non-Christians, we also go through problems with our families, our finances, and our health. We certainly don't look different from non-Christians.
*But tonight's Scripture reminds us that Christians are different in the most important ways. That's because we have given the right answer to life's most important question. It's the question the Roman Governor Pilate asked the bloodthirsty mob at the Lord's trial. In Matthew 27:22 Pilate asked, "What then shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?"
*How will you respond to Jesus Christ? Tonight's Scripture shows us some of the best ways, and the worst way to respond to Jesus.
1. CHRISTIANS: ONE OF THE BEST THINGS WE CAN DO IS SPEAK TO GOD FOR LOST PEOPLE.
*We must speak to God for people who haven't been saved. God wants us to pray for lost people the same way Paul talked about in vs. 1. Here Paul said, "Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved."
*God wants us to pray for lost people, and pray with genuine concern for them.
*In Romans 9, Paul already showed us how much he cared for his lost Jewish countrymen. He cared so much he was even willing to give up his own salvation, if that would have made a difference.
*As Paul said in Romans 9:1-3, "I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh."
*No one can give up their salvation for other people. But everyone can speak to God for other people, and that's what the Lord wants us to do. God wants us to urgently care for the lost and dying people all around us.
*William (Bill) Fay has the kind of compassion we need for others to be saved. One example was on a flight just days before the terrorist attacks of 9-11-2001. Bill had a conversation with a flight attendant, and he felt deeply impressed to share Christ with her.
*As an evangelist, Bill often witnesses to people, but there was a strong urgency about this lady. And Bill gave her a tract about Cassie Bernall. He did that because he was a chaplain at the Denver Police Department when the Columbine shootings took place, and Cassie's story was close to his heart.
*The flight attendant said, "You know this is weird. You are the sixth person to hand me one of these in the last two weeks. Why did you give this to me?"
*That opened the door for Bill to tell her about the love of Jesus Christ, and she committed her life to the Lord. Just a few days later, she died in one of the hijacked planes on 9-11. (2)
*The Lord wants us to be like the Apostle Paul and Bill Fay. God wants us to urgently care for lost people. And there may some things we aren't able to do. But there is one thing all of us can do, and that is pray to God for the lost. We must pray like Paul that they might be saved!
2. NEXT IS THE WORST WAY TO RESPOND TO JESUS, AND THAT IS BY STUMBLING OVER THE LORD.
*Tragically, many people do stumble over the Lord. Their minds have been blinded by the devil, and they refuse to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
*Paul wrote about people like this in 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, and there he said, "If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them."
*Here in Romans 10, Paul focused on his Jewish kinsmen who had rejected Jesus Christ. Paul had been praying for them in vs. 1. Then in vs. 2-3, Paul described their determination to depend on their own righteousness:
2. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.
3. For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.
*We also saw the stubborn self-reliance of unbelieving Jews in Romans 9:30-33. There Paul began with this question:
30. What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith;
31. but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness.
32. Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone.
33. As it is written: "Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense, and whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.''
*For these Jews, the only Savior of the world was a stumbling stone. Why? Because they refused to believe in Jesus Christ. And many people stumble the same way today.
[1] NOTICE THAT THEIR GOOD INTENTIONS DID NOT HELP THEM.
*We see this truth in vs. 2 where Paul said, "I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge." These unbelieving Jews had "zeal for God," but your passion, your desire, and your feelings cannot save you.
*In vs. 3, the unbelieving Jews were also dedicated. "For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God."
*These people were diligently "seeking" to establish their own righteousness. They craved their own righteousness, and were striving to have it by working as hard as they could. But they were like some people Zig Ziglar described. They spent their whole life struggling to get to the top of the tree, only to find that they were in the wrong forest. They were very sincere, but they were sincerely wrong because Jesus Christ is the only way to Heaven! Good intentions are never enough to save people who reject the Lord. (3)
[2] ANOTHER HUGE PROBLEM WAS THEIR SPIRITUAL IGNORANCE.
*Paul also made this truth clear in 2-3. And again, he said, "I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God."
*We usually try to be a little careful about calling people "ignorant," because for us, it is an insult. But Paul wasn't trying to insult these people. His heart-felt prayer for their salvation in vs. 1 makes this clear.
*In fact, the original word for "ignorant" here is "ag-no-eh'-o." This is where we get our word "agnostic," for someone who thinks it is impossible to know if God really exists. The original word can also include the idea of willful ignorance. And after all the miracles Jesus worked in their midst, these self-righteous Jews had a deadly case of willful ignorance.
*But don't think this kind of spiritual ignorance is limited to the Jews of the first century. There are millions of people in the world today with basically the same outlook on life. They believe God is real. They also basically agree with the Ten Commandments, or most of them anyway. And they think of themselves as pretty good people, -- maybe not the best, but certainly not the worst. I mean, they have never robbed a bank, and they have never killed anyone.
*They have this idea that God's judgment works like a balance scale. After you die, God puts your good deeds on one side and your bad deeds on the other. If your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds, then you get to go to Heaven. And as far as they know, that's where they are headed.
*But anybody trying to get into Heaven by their own goodness has a deadly case of spiritual ignorance. Their ignorance is deadly because it leads them to reject Jesus Christ.
*Paul explained in vs. 3-5, and said:
3. For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.
4. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
5. For Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law, "The man who does those things shall live by them.''
*When Moses talked about doing those things, he was talking about keeping all of God's laws all of the time, never doing anything wrong, never even thinking anything wrong, and always doing everything right. The only way to live by the law is to do it all! God's standard for good works is perfection.
*But even if we know that the Bible is the best place to find the right rules for living, the problem is that we can't keep all of God's rules, no matter how hard we try. And sometimes we don't try.
*That's why nobody can earn their way into Heaven. Nobody is good enough because God's standard is total perfection. We all need help getting to Heaven, and the only person who can help us is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! If we reject the mercy and forgiveness of Christ, then we are guaranteed to stumble and fall into the everlasting punishment of hell.
*We must not stumble over the Lord. That is the worst way to respond to Jesus Christ.
3. INSTEAD, WE MUST BE SAVED BY THE LORD.
*Anybody can be saved by believing in Jesus Christ! In Ephesians 2:8-9 Paul tells Christians that "by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast."
*Anybody can be saved by God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
[1] AND IN THIS SCRIPTURE, GOD'S WORD EXPLAINS FAITH TO US.
*First, Paul basically adapted verses from Deuteronomy 30:11-14 to explain what faith is not. And here in vs. 6-7 Paul wrote:
6. But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?' '' (that is, to bring Christ down from above)
7. or, "'Who will descend into the abyss?''' (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).
*In other words: We cannot go up into Heaven to bring Jesus down here. But we don't have to! God loves us so much, that He already sent His only begotten Son into the world to die on the cross for our sins! And we can't go down into the depths of hades to bring Jesus back from the dead. But we don't have to! Jesus already rose again from the dead, because He is God, and because He is stronger than death!
*The bottom line is that biblical faith doesn't center on what we can do. Biblical faith centers on what Jesus has already done! And what He can do in my life!
[2] THAT'S HOW PAUL EXPLAINED FAITH TO US. BUT FAITH ALSO HAS TO BE EXPERIENCED.
*And this is what Paul talked about in vs. 8-10:
8. But what does it say? [or What does the righteousness of faith say to us?] "The word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart'' (that is, the word of faith which we preach):
9. that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
10. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation.
*We must personally believe in our hearts that God the Father raised His Son Jesus Christ from the dead. And why did the Father do that? Because Jesus never deserved to die in the first place. The only reason Jesus died on the cross was to pay the price for our sins. Out of His infinite love, Jesus sacrificed His life for us. Then He rose again from the dead forever.
*We must personally believe this truth in our hearts. But this belief is not some pie-in-the-sky fantasy people dream up. It is a personal encounter with God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit of God. Believing in Jesus is a real experience, and it is a saving experience. That's why vs. 11 says, "Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.''
[3] FAITH MUST BE EXPERIENCED. AND TRUE FAITH WILL ALSO BE EXPRESSED.
*This is another crucial truth for us in vs. 9-10: True faith will be expressed.
*Again, Paul said "that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation."
*We also see this truth in vs. 12-13, where Paul said, "There is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For 'whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.'"
*"Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.'' Real, biblical, saving faith will always be expressed with our lips and with our lives. And real faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to be saved.
*We must trust in the Savior who conquered death by rising again from the dead. We must trust in the God who is bigger than death! We must trust in the Lord, and we can!
*Dot Van was one of those misguided people who thought you had to earn your way into Heaven. And she felt like she was good enough to go. I witnessed to Dot several times back in the 1990s. Her son went to church with us at Emmanuel Baptist. She had some good qualities, but had also made some very bad choices in life. And she was always very hard-hearted when we talked about the Lord. She didn't want anything to do with Jesus Christ.
*But the last time I saw Dot, she had completely changed. It was an astounding, glorious change! Dot was very sick with cancer at the time, but she did not complain.
*Instead, she took the time to tell me how she had been saved. God had started working on her heart 6 months earlier. The Lord showed her that she wasn't good enough to get into Heaven on her own. So, around Christmas in 1998, she asked Jesus to save her, and Dot told me, "I know that He has."
*You could hear it in her voice, and you could see it in her eyes. It was an amazing transformation! And I walked out of that hospital room a foot off the ground!
*That day, Dot also told me that when she got her cancer, God told her that it was going to be bad, but that was okay because He was going to be with her. And He was! As her son bent down to rub her forehead, Dot's last words were, "Jesus is with me son. -- Jesus is with me." And then she went home to be with the Lord.
*Dot had real faith in Jesus Christ. That is the only way to be saved, and the most important response we can ever have to the Lord.
4. BUT THEN WE MUST GO WHERE THE LORD SENDS US.
*Yes, God wants us to be saved. But that's not all! God also wants us to help other people get saved. That's why Paul asked 4 key questions in vs. 13-15.
13. For "whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.''
14. 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?
15. And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!''
*God doesn't want all Christians to preach. But He does want all of us to help "bring glad tidings of good things!" God wants all Christians to help spread the good news about Jesus Christ!
*John Sung was a brilliant Chinese student who came to the Unites States to study science. But in spite of all his academic success, John felt something was missing in his life. He was hungry for spiritual knowledge, and he explored a variety of religions.
*Then one day, John saw an ad for a famous Christian lecturer coming to town. John went to the lecture with much anticipation. But the lecturer had to cancel at the last minute.
*As the audience was about to leave, the organizers approached a teenage girl, and asked if she would give her testimony. Imagine how frightened and nervous she must have been. These people had been expecting a brilliant message. But this young girl swallowed her fear, went to the podium, and began talking about her faith in the Lord.
*At the end of her testimony, John Sung gave his life to Jesus Christ! He was saved, because she was sent. And God wants to send us too! (4)
CONCLUSION:
*"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved!" (Acts 16:31)
*Then start speaking to God for other people to be saved, and do everything else you can to help more people receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
(1) Adapted from "Wiersbe Bible Commentary: New Testament" by - Warren W. Wiersbe - Published by David C. Cook - Colorado Springs, CO - Romans 9:1-33
(2) BE STILL AMERICA by Amy Bartlett, 2002, p.79 - Source: "In Other Words" - September 2011 - #1 by Dr. Raymond McHenry - www.iows.net
(3) Original source unknown for Zig Ziglar quotation
(4) Lee Strobel, "God's Outrageous Claims" - Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997 - pp. 210-211 - Source: "Dynamic Illustrations" Jan. Feb. Mar. 2002
