Faith That Saves, Faith That Spreads (Romans Week 22) by Michael Williams

What does saving faith actually look like, and how does it come to us? In this message from Romans 10, we discover that salvation is not earned through religious effort but received by trusting in the finished work of Christ and confessing that Jesus is Lord. Paul reminds us that the gospel must be proclaimed so others can believe, calling every follower of Jesus to embrace both the privilege and responsibility of sharing the good news with a world that desperately needs to hear it.

Transcript

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I actually want to begin though by sharing a story that actually was relayed to me by a close pastor friend of mine. He was recently with a person in hospice and he was sort of with this person as as they're dying. And this person was incredibly successful. Ran his own construction company. If you looked at his life, you would think this is an incredible, successful businessman. He had a big family, I think he had 14 grandkids, and they all seemed at least to like each other, which is quite the feat. Big family got along. And I think from the outside, if you just look, like big family, successful business, like this guy, they had he has it all. He has what we all like secretly think like this is what would bring a good life. Like if I was rich in family and rich in money, I would be good. What was interesting, though, the pastor he told me, like, at the bedside, he's he's meeting with this guy who's been a member of the church for 30 years. Um and and this guy leans over him, this is days before he dies, and he says, I just don't know if I spent my life well. Like if I did enough. Am I going to heaven, Pastor? And it was gnawing away, like the realization had sunk in, like, I'm going to die. And and from the outside, we would say, like, dude, you had it all. Of all the humans that have ever lived, you're like in the 0.001% of what we would think is like a good life. And and yet what was gnawing at his soul were were these questions, like, Am I saved? He told my pastor this the story of Billy Graham coming to Central Ohio, how he walked down the aisle in the rain. And here he is on his deathbed wondering, like, did I mean those words when I said the sinner's prayer? Like, are God and I good? Like, are God and I really good? Like, what does it take to be saved? And of course, immediately following that question is what about the people we love? What does it take for them to be saved? What is saving faith? As many of you know, and I've talked about it a lot, and I'll probably continue to talk about it. I'm a new dad, and I've gotten to hold my kid now for six weeks, and of course, I daydream about him becoming a successful doctor and marrying a beautiful woman and all the things, but but one thing I have found myself just staring at him and pondering over and over is will he know Jesus? Well, we have an experience of God like I did. I was just living my life pretty normal, good grades, good kid. But I didn't know anything of God, even though I grew up in church until I was 17, and then I had an encounter with God and everything changed, and and now it's like I've been compelled into this new kind of life. The best I can describe it is like God reached down and got me by the collar, and I realized about 15 years later, like he's really not letting go. Like I'm I'm bound to this. And I just I sit there and I wonder with my son, like, is God gonna grab him like that? Is he gonna know God like I know God? And and what's my part? Like, I can't save him. I can't I can't rescue him, I can't make him have those experiences, I can't manufacture a history with God for him. And it raises these questions about faith. What is faith? How is it passed on? What do we what do we do? How do we receive it? How do we give it? How do we share it? And in today's passage, Paul's gonna wrestle with these ideas. And so let's pray together and then we'll do a brief review, because last week was pretty dense, and then we'll get into Romans 10 together. Lord, we welcome you in this place. We acknowledge that salvation belongs to you. That we are at your mercy. We are you thank you that you're generous in here. We thank you that your kingdom is here. We ask that you would break in. We ask that you would break through. Mostly, Lord, we ask that you would break through the resistance and the stubbornness in our hearts. May your word be planted and may it bear fruit this morning in Jesus' name. Amen. So we're gonna be in Romans 10. Um, just a brief review. Last week we talked in Romans 9 about the topic of election and predestination, everybody's favorites. Um, I just want to remind you, we are recording all of these, and they are up anywhere you listen to podcasts. So if you go to Spotify or Apple Music, Overcast, wherever you get your podcast, just search New Albany Fellowship. And usually on a good week, it's up by Tuesday. On a bad week, it's up by like Friday. But it'll get up. It'll get up. This is a small operation we have going at New Albany Fellowship, but it'll get up there. You can listen to the messages. And the other thing you can do, believe it or not, your Bibles work and can be open during the week. Um, you can read what we have talked about and what we're going to talk about to keep this in front of you. We live in a culture that that struggles with attention. We clearly uh have an attention economy where everybody's vying for our attention, and it can be tough for us to sit with big ideas. And no matter how good I explain it, we're talking about big ideas that are going to require way more than 30 minutes. And you're gonna have to wrestle with these. And so we talked about how in Romans 1 through 8, Paul builds this case. It's a magnificent argument. You might think of it like climbing a mountain. He hits the peak at the end of Romans chapter 8, and for many of us, that's sort of where the book of Romans stops. We might skip ahead to chapter 12, to the application, but but we oftentimes neglect Romans 9 through 11. And it and it feels, if you just follow the flow of Romans, it feels like 9 through 11 is almost like an insert. In fact, I mentioned that every sentence in Romans, from I'm not ashamed of the gospel to Romans, the end of chapter 8, is connected by a connecting word, like but or therefore, like it's one flow. A brilliant, magnificent flow of thought. And then Romans 9, it's just like this clear break. And for three chapters, 9, 10, and 11, Paul talks about Israel. And he talks about the people of God. And I want to remind you that this was not an academic exercise. Paul's not lecturing in a university about the modern state of Israel. He's not wrestling with political boundaries. He's talking personally. He's speaking into a room of Jews who have come to Christ, who want their family members to come to Christ. He's speaking into a room of Jewish believers and Gentile believers wrestling with what do we do with the Old Testament? And he's not coming at it from a neutral perspective. If you remember two weeks ago in verses 1 through 5 of chapter 9, he shows us the desperation of his heart. He says, I want these people to be so saved, so bad, that I would almost be cut off if they might know Jesus. So his heart is beating for these people. And then last week he takes up the question: Has God been faithful to Israel? How could Jesus really be the Messiah if Israel has rejected him? And he goes to show that God has sovereignly appointed to use even Israel's hardness to bring about his glory. He talks about the process of election and he uses election to talk about the vocation that Israel had. And he gave us some hard ideas, but at the end of the day, we we walk away from Romans 9 knowing a couple really important things. One, God is sovereign over all. He is sovereign over all. Even the hardening of hearts is used for his glory in the salvation story. Two, we we realize that salvation belongs to the Lord. That he is the author of salvation, and he is the completer of our salvation. That any salvation that occurs in us, any of God's saving activity that occurs to us, is not credited to us, but is his work. Three, we learned that we cannot be angry at who God shows mercy to, because we are guilty. Paul makes the case in chapters 2, 3, and yeah, 1, 2, and 3 that we're all guilty. Use the analogy of five friends are going to rob a bank. And one person runs and tackles one of the people who are going to rob the bank. And because he gets tackled and taken out, he doesn't get to go rob the bank with his friends. His friends all get caught. And before the judge, the four guilty friends can't say, I shouldn't be guilty because my one friend over there didn't participate. Because he got tackled. God, why didn't you tackle me and stop me? No. We are guilty. He's not speaking to morally neutral people. We all have hardness of heart. We've all chosen to disobey God. And yet, God has used even that. He's used even the hardness of heart to bring about his purposes in the world. We talked about how chapter 9 is not about some sort of double predestination where God's just picked and choose who's going to heaven and hell, and that some people just have no choice. No, Paul has this theology that we are culpable, we're responsible, that we have enough agency. We're not totally free. God is not contingent upon us. We are limited, but we have enough freedom to be culpable for our own choices, and nobody can stand before God and say, I deserved better from you. In fact, we should marvel that anybody has received mercy at all. But now, Paul in chapter 10, he's going to pivot again. If chapter 9 was all about sovereignty and God's role, then chapter 10 is this pivot to be about us and receiving faith and what is our part. And he begins in chapter 10, verse 1. He begins in the same place really as chapter 9. He says, Brothers and sisters, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. He begins with, guys, my heart is for my people. I want them to be saved. This is just a small note, but whatever Paul's views of sovereignty are, it clearly doesn't stop them from praying for their salvation. He's not just giving lip service, like, in my head, I really believe that God's chosen every third one of you, but I'm going to pray for you all just out of a nicety. He's not living duplicitly like that. He believes that his prayers accomplish something. God is sovereign, but our world is not a blueprint. Everything that happens is not God's will. God has sovereignly ordained for us in our agency to participate with him in the outcomes in our world. We have a place in the story of God. And so he's praying, and then he begins to talk about why Israel missed it. What did they miss? What did they get wrong? Why are they culpable? Yes, God used them to bring about the Messiah story, but what did they get wrong? And he begins with in verse 2. I can testify that they have a zeal for God, but it's not enlightened. For being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law, so that there might be righteousness for everyone who believes. The first thing that they got wrong is they they tried to establish a righteousness of their own. They tried to earn it, they tried to live up to the Torah, and because of that, they're ignorant of God's righteousness. Paul said that God revealed his righteousness in Jesus Christ. And the revelation was that he has done what we could not do, that we receive his righteousness based on what he has done, not on what we do. Now, right away, I think it's important to say this flies in the face of our culture. One, he says they have a zeal for God, and in our culture, being sincere and having a zeal for whatever you believe is often considered enough. That's good. Whatever you believe, as long as you believe it wholeheartedly, then you're right. And we we believe in sincerity really deeply in our culture, but but the truth is we can be sincerely wrong. That we can have lots of faith, but it can be in the wrong thing. We're not saved by the strength of our faith, but by the object of our faith. That we can't just have sincerity. He's saying the Jews, they had sincerity, and he's probably speaking a bit autobiographically because Paul was one of the most zealous Jews that there were. And he's saying, look, look, we wanted the righteousness of God, we wanted the rule of God over Israel, we wanted the kingdom of God to come, but we were ignorant to how it came. We thought that we could earn it. We thought that there was this path, that if we walked this path, we would get God's blessing. We thought that we could actually live up to this standard, and if we lived up to this standard, then we would get all of the promises of the Old Testament. And Paul's remarks is you're ignorant of God's righteousness. And for many of us, the reason why we resist saving faith like Israel did is because we secretly believe that we have to earn it. We believe that if we go to church, that if we give, that if we do the right things, that if we just say the right prayers, if we go to a small group, if we obey the big laws, if we don't break the big ten, then God will bless us, then God will take care of us, that will walk in favor. And we have these arrangements with God. And they always get exposed when our life falls apart. Because righteousness is not an arrangement where I live a certain way, and God gives me a certain life. It's a righteousness that's revealed in Christ, and it is alien to us. Martin Luther used the phrase an alien righteousness. The idea is that it's given to us, but it's not ours. I don't earn favor with God, but I receive it. I have been given a righteousness. The second thing he says is we don't find it. In verses six through eight, he says, But the righteousness that comes from faith says, Do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down, or who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near to you, on your lips and in your heart. That is the word of faith that we proclaim. He's saying we don't go on a journey or we seek to find the righteousness of God. We don't take a trip to heaven to bring God down. We don't descend into hell to bring God up. But instead, God has closed cloth or yeah, he's closed the distance between us and him. That God is near. He's quoting Deuteronomy here, and he's actually saying when Moses gave these words, it was a prophecy about Jesus, that the only way the law would be obeyed is because it's close to us, and that it came to us, the word of faith came to us in the person of Jesus. Now many of us, we live in a radically individual culture. We can't help but think of the world as subjects and everything else as objects. And for many of us, faith and Christianity is never more than an object. It's a thing on the menu of my life. And sometimes I think I'm doing well when I prioritize it, and sometimes I think I'm doing poorly when I don't prioritize it, but fundamentally I am the subject, and it is the object, and I am the one doing whatever verb you want to use, seeking, finding, fighting for it, contending, whatever verb you want to use, I'm the subject, and I have to do something to acquire it. In fact, all of the world's religions follow the basic formula. Walk some path. And along that path, if you walk it, there is goodness. Walk some path, and along that path, there is life. If you are a Muslim, there's a path laid out for you. If you are a Buddhist, there is a path laid out for you. Paul is saying the righteousness from God is not something we walk on a path for, but it's something that has to be brought near to us. That we don't actually seek it out to find it, but it seeks us out and finds us. That we don't live a certain way to receive favor from God, but we receive favor from God, and that causes us to walk out life in a certain way. It might sound subtle, but it's all the difference in the world. So many of us are our Christian faith. We've heard it and we like the metaphor. It's like my walk, my faith walk, my journey. And there is a walking out to Christian faith. But we are not walking out our faith to find God. God has found us, and we walk out our faith with God. We're not attempting to attain something from heaven or bring up something from hell, but rather something has come to us and is near. Paul continues, and he says, What has come near to us? In verse 8, he says again, I'll read it again, he says, The word is near you, and your lips, and in your heart, that is the word of faith that we proclaim. Because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and is so justified, and one confesses with the mouth and is so saved. The scripture says, No one who believes in him will be put to shame, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, the same Lord is Lord of all, and is generous to all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. How do we receive this saving faith? It's just that we receive it. The word has come near to us, and we receive it. Now he's not talking about two distinct acts here. This isn't like double authentication on your phone, where it's like believe in your heart and confess, and if you have the two-part authentication, you get into heaven. No, this is parallelism. He's saying these things are the same, but two different ways of doing the same thing. Whatever you confess with your mouth is what you're believing in your heart. Out of the heart, the mouth speaks. And he's saying that we receive the word that is near to us and we believe it. We put our trust in it. We count on it. You might think of a chair. What's important when asking the question whether you've trusted in a chair is not if you've said the right words to the chair. It's not if you've been baptized with the chair. It's not if you've walked around the chair your whole life. The question is, have you sat in the chair? Have you sat? Is it holding all of the weight of your life? He's saying we receive faith with this confession and this belief that the instrument of receiving the salvation of God is trusting in our heart and confessing with our mouth. That we don't receive it through walking down an aisle, that we don't receive it through saying a particular prayer, that we don't receive it through going through a Billy Graham crusade and walking down the aisle in the rain. We don't receive it through having a card that reminds us of the date, that we receive it by putting the full weight of our life in the chair. And if you put all of the weight of your life in this seat, he's saying it won't put you to shame. It really will save you. That this faith, it really will apprehend you. And so listen again to the progression. The word of faith is near to you. It has to come close to you. You have to hear it. He's going to get into that in a minute. It comes close to you. But then we, we, Have to receive it by trusting. And this trusting is not another work. The confession is not another work that we're adding to his righteousness. It's the way that it's apprehended. It's the way that it's received. And that this is how we are saved. And notice what he says. He says immediately, this is why there is no distinction. This is the one thing all humans have in common. That this is how they are all going to be righteous before God. That they have received this word of faith. They've confessed it. That whether you are Jew or Greek, black or white, whether you're Asian or Hispanic, that the thing that eliminates all distinctions is that we all receive the righteousness of God in the same way. The last time he talked about there being no distinctions, by the way, he was saying there's no distinctions in the sense that we're all sinners. That's another thing we all have in common. But now he's saying the solution is what we all have in common. The righteousness of God is given to all, and it becomes our primary identity. Notice the content of the confession. Jesus is Lord, and God has raised him from the dead. Jesus is Lord is a loaded political statement. Paul is writing to Christians in Rome, where Nero would have called himself the Son of God and forced people to refer to him as Lord. And he's telling people, no, no, no, if you want to receive faith, it's a counter confession. It's a confession that says, Nero is not Lord, Jesus is Lord. Jesus is the ultimate authority. That God raised him from the dead. That's the content of the faith. God raised them from the dead means that in Christ Jesus, God has broken in and started a new creation. A new thing is underway, the first fruits of a new creation. So what is the content? The content is Jesus is Lord and God is bringing in a new age. He's saying, put all of your trust, all of your hope, all of your faith in that. That is where righteousness comes from. Righteousness does not come from whether you are still on track in your Bible reading plan this year. Righteousness does not come from whether you attended small group every week. Righteousness does not come from how much you've given to charity. It comes from putting your entire life, all the weight of your life, on this reality, that God in Christ Jesus, he is Lord. That God in Christ Jesus is ushered in a new age. That he's the first fruits of a new creation. Paul's saying, count on that, and you are counted righteous. You are belonging to the Lord. His saving activity is at work in your life. When you believe this, when you count on this, his saving activity is at work in your life. And as we know from chapter 8 and chapter 9, once God gets started with you, he's going to finish it. He's going to finish it. You belong to Him. He then pivots from how we receive it to how we must share it. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. But how are they to call on the one whom they've not believed? And how are they to believe in the one to whom they've never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. But not all who have obeyed the good news, for Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our message? So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ. But I have asked, have they not heard? And indeed they have, their voice has gone out over all the earth, in the words to the ends of the world. Again I asked, Did Israel not understand? First Moses says, I'll make you jealous of those who are not a nation. With a foolish nation I'll make you angry. Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, I have been found by those who did not seek me. I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me. But of Israel, he says, All day long I've held up my hands to a disobedient and contrary people. Those last verses will lead into next week where we talk about the fate of Israel, but but notice the progression. It's very logical, isn't it? How are they to hear if somebody doesn't proclaim? How are they to believe if they've never heard? There's this entrusting of the message of the word to us. Now this is this is tough for us. I think, and I've wrestled with this myself, but I think in a culture like ours, which is incredibly tolerant, we're constantly sort of eroding on the outside in our certainty that we have a message that is necessary. It's super easy to think Christianity's working for me, so I'm going to be a Christian, but I'm not that kind of Christian that feels like I have to push it on other people or share it with other people. Like they can find their path, I'll find my path. In a tolerant culture, exclusive claims are forbidden, they're taboo. We we kind of get a I don't know, right? Like sometimes I feel that way. Like I listen to somebody like sharing the gospel and I just have like a little twitch, like you're making it awfully exclusive, like you're you're really in sometimes it's tone and posture, but but we struggle, and I think we have to acknowledge that, we struggle in our culture to say anything is an absolute truth for everybody. We're kind of like, you might think of it like an allergy. We're a bit allergic to saying, I have truth for you, that you have to submit to. I mean, we're fine with I have my truth, you have your truth, as long as we don't bother each other, life is good. But the idea that I have a message that if you don't receive it is disastrous for you, I'm guessing most people at Starbucks would tell you, like, that's boring and like bigoted and crazy, right? And and we live in a cultural moment like that where we're not often aware of how much that affects us. But one of the premises of Paul's logic is simply this that other people need the message that we have. Other people need the message that we have. That there's something about what God has done in Christ that is truly for everybody. He says everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Everyone. It's a global message, it's an expansive message, and and somehow we have to wrestle with is this truly the truth for everyone? Is it truly exclusive? One way that I like to think about the exclusive claims of Christianity versus like, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and nobody comes to the Father but for me. Like that, one of the ways I like to think about that is to kind of flip it. We talked earlier about how Christianity is not us pursuing God, but first God pursuing us. And I think one way to think of the exclusive claims of Christianity is to think like this. Is anybody else coming for people? When you say Jesus is the only way, what I'm saying is nobody else is coming to save you. There is no other rescuer. It's not a philosophical debate where you have to believe like me, but it is a message saying, I don't think there's anybody else coming for you. I don't think there's anybody else that will meet you where you are. I don't think there's anybody else ascending from their heaven, becoming powerless for you. I don't think there's any other God who will be crucified for you. I don't think there's any other God who will suffer for you. When Jesus says He's the way, the truth, and the life, he's saying, nobody else is coming for you. Nobody else is rescuing you. Zeus is not on some distant hill. The universe actually doesn't care about you. It doesn't even know you. It won't be there on the darkest day of your life. Nobody else will be there in the fire. It's not exclusive in the sense that we're going to argue about who has the rights to believe what and can I prove it. It's a claim that there's only one rescuer. There's only one rescuer. The reason we have to share the word of faith is because nobody else is rescuing people. This leads, though, to a second big problem in our culture. We don't usually believe that people need rescued. We think if on the outside they have their life together, if they have a good family, if they make good money, then why do they need God? Why do they need religion? If they're doing okay. Yeah, maybe it's helpful to have that stuff if your life falls apart. But we have to really wrestle with do I believe other people need this? That they need rescued? That the only way that they'll ever be fully alive is if they are fully known and fully loved, and that can only happen through the person of Jesus. Do I believe that my neighbor needs that? See, many of us we we get wrapped up in our life and we don't actually think my neighbor desperately needs this message that I've been entrusted. There's this disconnect between what we see and how we live and this word that we're supposed to take to people. But Paul, he he believes deep down in his gut, that people need this word of faith and that we've been entrusted to it, to give it away, that we've received it, but we also are to share it. Some of us we might be thinking, but but what about good people? Why do they need this? What about good people? People that are sensitive towards God, it seems like, people that are compassionate. I remember when I lived in Jordan, I became friends with the sheikh, who's like a leader in northern Amman, and I ate at his house numerous times. We'd have these massive feasts. It was really cool. There'd be mounds of like rice, and there'd be whole lambs on top. We'd have these feasts, and he's honestly one of the most generous people I've ever met. And all I can say is he seemed to have like a God-fearing heart, a soft heart. He seemed so honorable and full of peace. We had endless conversations about the kingdom of God and how the kingdom of God would come. We both yearned for justice. Both had a sensitivity to all the Palestinians living in Jordan at the time, and they're applied. We both had so much in common. And what about good people? What about God-fearing people? I think it's interesting we actually have a story about somebody like that. If you want to flip in your Bibles real quick, in Acts 10, there's somebody just like this. In Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian cohort, as it was called, and he was a devout man who feared God. So somehow there's this category. There's people that are devout. God is a missionary God, he's at work far before we do any missionary efforts, and he's at work, and of course we would say that any devout man we find in the world, any really good person is that way, but for the grace of God, right? Because of God's grace already at work in their life. But he's a devout man who fears God with all his household, and he gave generously to the people, and he prayed constantly to God. So already he's like top 10% of the church, right? Prayed devoutly, gave generously. Like he's elite, he's probably on track to be an elder, right? And then one afternoon, about three o'clock, he had a vision in which he clearly saw an angel of God coming in and saying to him, Cornelius. He stared at the angel in terror and said, What is it, Lord? And he answered, Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. Now send men to Jobah for a certain Simon who's called Peter. What's fascinating is this devout man sees an angel. I wonder if any of us in here have seen an angel before. I'm sure some of us have. It's a miraculous experience. He sees an angel. What's fascinating is at a similar time, an angel's also given a vision to Peter, and it's going to be this divine coming together. But what always is fascinating to me about this story is one, there's this devout man. That I don't know why. That just really helps me. There are Romans and charians that are good people. I'm not crazy to see that in people. But then two, Cornelius needed the gospel. Then, even crazier, three, the angel told Cornelius he needed the gospel, but he didn't tell Cornelius the gospel. He told Cornelius, I need a person to tell you the gospel. And then he gets Peter to come and tell him the gospel. And Peter gets there. He knows he's devout, he knows his reputation. But what does Peter do? Oh, you need to hear the good news of Jesus. It's not enough that you're good, it's not enough that you pray daily, it's not enough that your prayers are a memorial to God. You need to hear about the resurrection. I've met dozens and dozens of Muslims who have had visions and dreams of Jesus. I've never met a single Muslim who, in a vision or dream, had an angel preach the gospel to them. They've seen men in white. It's made them interested in Christianity, it's caused them to seek out copies of the New Testament. It's caused them to go on spiritual journeys. But what almost has never happened is an angel has come down to preach to them. In fact, when I lived in Yemen, we had a list of people that we knew who had dreams, and one of our tasks as a missionary team was to go to people who had had dreams. But why did we go? Because we knew an angel wasn't going to deliver the message that we were entrusted. That we are called to bear this message. And it is a great honor. He says, Blessed are the feet of those who bear good news. This is a privilege. The reason, one of the reasons why you don't go to heaven right when you accept Jesus, is because you would then miss out on one of the greatest privileges of partnering with God and getting to carry the message. You might think of a parent with two kids, and they've planned a surprise. They're going to go to King's Island. And they tell the older, go tell your brother. We're going on vacation, and the joy of getting to be the one who tells the other one. It's the joy of being entrusted with good news, being entrusted with a message. We have been entrusted with a message. How does faith come? It has to be heard. How's it heard? It must be proclaimed. Of course, this includes preaching. This text is one of the main passages that is used to show that we need preaching in church, but it's not limited to preachers. The only way that you can carry out your task, which you've been entrusted with, is if you learn to proclaim the gospel. I want to challenge you. If you have been in church for years, have you learned to proclaim the gospel? Can you share it? It is not okay if the answer to that question is no. How can you fulfill your task if you don't know how to say the words? And it's not as hard as you think. When we shared our faith in the Middle East, it takes about two days of training before they would go share with people. Some of us, we've been in church 20 years and we've never shared with people. We don't know how to say the words. We aren't gospel fluent. And if that's you, I want to encourage you to learn how to talk about God. Learn how to tell your story in a short, compelling way. Learn how to tell rumors about what God's been doing in your life, rumors of grace. Learn how to brag upon God. Learn how to be winsome and not obnoxious. Learn how to be disruptive witnesses but not destructive witnesses. Learn how to example the gospel and how you act, but never think that how we act exempts us from proclaiming the gospel because faith comes by hearing. We can model it, we can demonstrate it through good deeds, but there has to be a proclamation. We have to share it. We have been trusted with a message. Notice the tension between chapter 9 and chapter 10. In chapter 9, it's about God sovereignly electing Israel, and it's about God's purposes and salvation. And now we've gotten all the way down, and Paul's saying actually, if you want your neighbor to have faith, they probably need to hear the word. They probably need to have the opportunity. The word has to be near to them. And that doesn't eliminate the mystery. God is still sovereignly over it all. Look with me real briefly in Acts 17. I love this line that Paul uses. Speaking to the Athenians at the Areopagus. He's talking about God. And he says, From one ancestry he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence in the boundaries of the places where they would live. God chose before the foundations of the earth where you would live. Some of us, we don't have this view of sovereignty, but God picked the time and the place, the boundaries of where you would live. You ever thought about that? Like I'm a free agent, but somehow there's like a fence around me. The time I live, the boundaries of where I live, and it's for a purpose. The people in your life are there for a purpose. Your coworkers, they're there for a purpose. You have been entrusted with this word of faith that you have received, this confession that you have made, and we are called to give it away. And we give it away right where God has put us. Trusting in his sovereignty that he's put us there on purpose. You're alive right now where you are for this reason. You're in the family you're in for this reason. You have the coworkers you have for this reason. None of it is accidental. You have been entrusted with the word of faith to give them. You've been entrusted with a message to give them. Paul is saying that there's a righteousness. We can't be ignorant of it. It's not a righteousness that we earn. It's not a righteousness that we attain. We don't ascend to heaven to get it. We don't descend and pull Jesus up. But God has done it. And we receive it by believing, putting our trust and confessing that Jesus is Lord, that God has raised him from the dead. In this word of faith we share it. How can others believe if they do not hear? How can they hear if it's not proclaimed? How can it be proclaimed if they're not sent? I love that. Not if we don't go, but if we're not sent. We have to have the whole church involved. We have to feel and know that we are sent. And in this way, we participate in the spread of the gospel. I want to end by just offering a few, we'll call them tips or practical steps. I think one, we all have to figure out how are we going? For some, it's there's three L's sometimes we use in mission training, leverage, lead and leave. Leverage. Some of us are called to use our jobs, our influence, our position to leverage it for the kingdom. To ask questions like how do I use this position, this influence, as a place for the kingdom to come, for the gospel to come, for the word to be near to people. Others, it's leading, like, am I called to lead? Is God inviting me to start or participate? And by leading, we make space for others to step into their calling. Some are called to leave, that is, to actually go across cultural borders, to actually go and to serve. So we have to figure out how are we going to go? How are we gonna be involved? This isn't a question for my wife. This isn't a question. Question for my neighbor. This isn't a question of what I'm going to do when I retire. It's my everyday calling as a Christian to figure out how am I sent? Where am I sent to? How am I going to do this? What tools do I need? I think a second piece is we have to help give and support. We have to help give and support people who are sent. One of the questions that we have to wrestle with is am I going to go down in the well on the end of the rope, or am I going to hold the rope for somebody else who went down into the well? But what I'm not going to do is watch people do a rescue operation down in the well while I clap and sing songs to Jesus. I'm going to either hold the rope or be on the end of the rope. And some of us, we have been entrusted with resources, and the reason you have those resources is you are meant to hold the rope for many. You've been entrusted with treasures of the earth so that there can be greater treasures in heaven. Who are you holding the rope for? Who are you holding the rope for? What are you doing with your resources? So often in life it comes down to these choices with what we do, with what we've been entrusted. And one of the primary reasons we've been entrusted things is so that we can hold the rope for others or we can go ourselves. And then third, we have to pray. We have to pray. Paul begins this passage with prayer. My prayer is that all of them would be saved. This is a bookend, 9, 1, and here in 10, he's talking about his heart for his people. And we talked about this two weeks ago, but we have to have a burning heart for people. We have to have a burning heart for our people, whoever our kinsmen are, whoever it is, maybe it's our coworkers, maybe it's our generation, maybe it's our classmates, but if we don't have Paul's heart, we won't have the fire, the fuel to fill out the task. Many, many people rush into missions and burn out pretty quickly. They hear a message like this and they think about how they're going to share the gospel with that family member, and it's all good. And it lasts about two weeks. You have to have a hotter fire than that. And the only way to stay stoked, the only way to stay on fire is this prayer life that Paul keeps demonstrating. He's yearning, he says, for the salvation of his people. He's praying earnestly that they all might be saved. Paul is, he's on fire. This is not just head knowledge, this is not just abstract, it's not just logical progression. Of course, somebody has to talk if they're gonna hear. It's not just that. It's coming from a burning heart. I want to suggest to you this morning that if you don't have a burning heart for people yet, that the Lord wants to give you that. He wants to give you that. And I want to suggest something else. That the sovereign God has allotted your time and your place, and that who you ought to have a burning heart for is already around you. It's not a flip through Wikipedia and pick out which country has the coolest flag. They're already around you. They're already woven into parts of your story. They're probably connected with your pain and what you've had to overcome. But they are there. And if you want your heart to catch on fire, you have to connect that thread. You have to marinate in it, you have to pray. I don't know if it's possible to pray like Paul and to stay silent. I mean, can you imagine praying for your neighbor to the point where you said, Lord, even if I'm cut off, that they come to know Christ? Praying for your neighbor daily, like Paul is talking about here. I bet if you prayed like that, you would feel a new compulsion to proclaim the gospel. You would. It would well up in you until, like Jeremiah, you might say, There's like a fire in my bones that I can't get out. And I think God wants that for us. Let's pray.