SPEAKER_00: If you have a copy of God's Word, turn with me this morning, Romans chapter 10.
SPEAKER_00: If you have a Pew Bible and you need one in front of you, look at on page 962 in the Black Pew Bible in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: I would encourage you to look at that for context.
SPEAKER_00: We're continuing our study through the book of Romans.
SPEAKER_00: And if you were here last week, we watched Paul answer the how question.
SPEAKER_00: Again, and he saw Paul talk about how anyone gets right with God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not by building our own resume, it's not by building our own case, it's by receiving a gift by faith from God.
SPEAKER_00: And that is the righteousness of Christ that comes by faith.
SPEAKER_00: And then at the end of the passage, if you look in verse 13, Paul swings the door wide open.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: No exceptions, no footnotes, no fine print.
SPEAKER_00: But everyone who calls, that raises, you know, Paul, he's just working through objections in Romans, and we've been seeing that every single week.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone who calls raises an obvious question, and Paul knows it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, because you can't call on someone you've never heard of.
SPEAKER_00: And so starting in verse 14, Paul goes back and he answers the question underneath his own invitation.
SPEAKER_00: If the door is really open to everyone, then why isn't everyone walking through it?
SPEAKER_00: Especially the Israelites.
SPEAKER_00: Why aren't the Jews God's people of all the people, why aren't they walking through it and calling on the Lord Jesus Christ?
SPEAKER_00: That's where we're headed in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Paul answers it.
SPEAKER_00: Follow along with me as I read this very sobering passage in Romans 10, 14 through 21.
SPEAKER_00: How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?
SPEAKER_00: And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?
SPEAKER_00: And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
SPEAKER_00: And how are they to preach unless they are sent?
SPEAKER_00: As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.
SPEAKER_00: But they have not all obeyed the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?
SPEAKER_00: So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But I ask, have they not heard?
SPEAKER_00: Indeed they have.
SPEAKER_00: For their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.
SPEAKER_00: But I ask, did Israel not understand?
SPEAKER_00: For Moses says, I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation, with a foolish nation.
SPEAKER_00: I will make you angry.
SPEAKER_00: Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, I have been found by those who did not seek me.
SPEAKER_00: I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.
SPEAKER_00: But of Israel, he says, All day long I have held out my hands to disobedient and contrary people.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Almost all of us have had this experience at some point in our lives where you reach out to someone and you get nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a phone call.
SPEAKER_00: You call and you call and you call, and the phone rings and rings and goes straight to voicemail.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a text message, and you see that little word delivered, then you see that little word read in hours and days and months and no reply.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've actually gotten in the car and had the experience of going to someone's house, perhaps, a family member, a friend, a child, and you knock on the door rather loudly, and you know someone's home, lights are on, you can hear the TV through the door, but no one comes.
SPEAKER_00: Most of us can only, if you that's like if you're like me, most of us can only take so much of that before we put on the brakes and we stop.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we get frustrated, maybe even angry, and we do, and we're like, well, fine.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't want anything to do with me, then I don't want anything to do with you either.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's quieter than that, not because we stop loving them, but sometimes we just have to stop so that we can protect our own heart.
SPEAKER_00: Because there's only so many times a human heart can reach out and be denied and rejected until you eventually let go.
SPEAKER_00: And you see, we tend to think God is like us.
SPEAKER_00: We tend to think that God's eventually going to get tired, that his patients are going to run out, that he's quietly going to stop reaching for the people who want nothing to do with him and who refuse him.
SPEAKER_00: And friends, the good news of this passage, the really good news of this passage is that it tells us otherwise.
SPEAKER_00: You see, underneath this passage is did God's word fail?
SPEAKER_00: Did he just give up on his people?
SPEAKER_00: Or did he just turn and run out the other way when his people would not accept him like we would?
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're gonna find and see in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: So let's find out how God responds.
SPEAKER_00: Three things this morning.
SPEAKER_00: The chain, the excuses, and the ache.
SPEAKER_00: The chain, the excuses, the ache.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, the chain.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the context: everyone who calls on the name of the Lord, and I think this is important to follow his argument here, will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: He picks that word right back up in verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: And notice he starts working backwards from it one step at a time.
SPEAKER_00: And here's this reasoning: you can't call on someone you don't believe in.
SPEAKER_00: And so, how do you come to believe?
SPEAKER_00: Well, you can't believe in someone you've never heard of.
SPEAKER_00: And so, how do you come to hear then?
SPEAKER_00: Well, you cannot hear without someone telling you.
SPEAKER_00: And so, how does anyone end up preaching in the first place?
SPEAKER_00: Well, someone has to be sent.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Paul's saying there.
SPEAKER_00: Notice what's happening.
SPEAKER_00: Each question needs the one before it, it is like links in a chain.
SPEAKER_00: And if you pull one of those links out, the rest fall apart, and you follow it back far enough, and it lands on the one link that most of us miss entirely, and that is someone has to be sent.
SPEAKER_00: That's the focus.
SPEAKER_00: And the link here, that link is not about talent, it's about authorization.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is writing here, just to give you the context, is partly defending his own calling as an apostle.
SPEAKER_00: He's formally commissioned, sent to preach Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that kind of sending is real.
SPEAKER_00: That's why our church trains up ministers, it ordains and sends ministers to preach the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: It's why our church, we're gonna hear at uh in the kingdom community hour after this service, we're gonna hear about, and it's why we pray for and we give to and we send missionaries into the world.
SPEAKER_00: We send them to preach the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: But also here, God sends every believer into the world.
SPEAKER_00: Informally, ordinarily, us into the relationships that we already have to carry the gospel message.
SPEAKER_00: And so let me stop right here.
SPEAKER_00: And let's do what we did last week.
SPEAKER_00: Well, wait just a minute here.
SPEAKER_00: We've been in Romans 9, and we've got all this election, and God chooses and he has mercy on whom he's gonna have mercy, and he's gonna choose who he is going to choose.
SPEAKER_00: And so if God's sovereign, if he's sovereign over salvation, over the one he elects, then why does it depend on people at all?
SPEAKER_00: Why do we need to do anything?
SPEAKER_00: Why share our faith at all?
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting?
SPEAKER_00: Again, sovereignty and human responsibility, Paul puts them side by side.
SPEAKER_00: How do we answer that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, sovereignty isn't a reason to sit back.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody walks around with a sign around their neck saying, elect, chosen by God, or not elect.
SPEAKER_00: You and I don't get the list.
SPEAKER_00: And so it was never our job to sort out, and it is not our job to sort out who will respond to the gospel and to the call of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Our job, here it is in this passage, is to carry the message.
SPEAKER_00: It's to take the message.
SPEAKER_00: God controls the ends, and he chooses to work through the means, and his means, well, that's us.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why in this moment Paul lands on scent, he reaches here for a picture.
SPEAKER_00: You see it as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting?
SPEAKER_00: Feet.
SPEAKER_00: When's the last time you've called feet beautiful?
SPEAKER_00: No one calls feet beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: And yet that is the image that Paul picks.
SPEAKER_00: And Isaiah's image of beautiful feet is taken from a scene in 2 Samuel where the watchmen, and perhaps you've heard of this image, the watchmen are stationed on a city wall during wartime and they're scanning the horizon, and they're scanning for a messenger.
SPEAKER_00: Because back then word would travel by foot, and so if you were sending news to someone, someone had to take it.
SPEAKER_00: Someone had to run, and sometimes for many, many miles in order to get that message of good news to you.
SPEAKER_00: And so the picture here is that the watchman is waiting, and he finally spots the messenger on the horizon, running, not walking.
SPEAKER_00: And when the runner gets close, close enough to make out what's going on, he's nothing impressive.
SPEAKER_00: His feet are dusty.
SPEAKER_00: They're sweat-soaked and torn up from miles of travel.
SPEAKER_00: His feet are not the point.
SPEAKER_00: No one is looking at his feet.
SPEAKER_00: No one cares what the messenger looks like or sounds like.
SPEAKER_00: What do they care about?
SPEAKER_00: They care about the message.
SPEAKER_00: They care about what the messenger is actually carrying.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Paul is getting at in verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: The beauty's not in the runner, it is in what the runner has to say in the news that he was carrying.
SPEAKER_00: And that is how we should think about every spiritual conversation that we have been putting off.
SPEAKER_00: Because I know how hard it is to think otherwise.
SPEAKER_00: You're not being evaluated on your delivery.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about your credentials and how many, and this is the way we tend to think.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I've got to know all the answers to all the objections.
SPEAKER_00: And if I don't, then I'm going to be an utter failure.
SPEAKER_00: No, you're carrying something very specific, not vague spirituality.
SPEAKER_00: You're not carrying as a Christian inside of you something just good vibes about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We are carrying good news that God rescues sinners by grace, not by performance.
SPEAKER_00: The good news that Christ lived the life that we couldn't live, and he died the death we deserved, and he rose again so that anyone, anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: To say it another way, the point is not you.
SPEAKER_00: The point is not me.
SPEAKER_00: The point is the good news of the message that we are carrying.
SPEAKER_00: And so, as unpolished and unprepared as you feel, you have been sent, and what you are carrying with you is enough.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, the excuses.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: But they've not all obeyed the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That stuck out to me.
SPEAKER_00: It's easy to miss, but notice the word obeyed.
SPEAKER_00: To reject the gospel is not just intellectual disagreement in Paul's mind.
SPEAKER_00: What is it?
SPEAKER_00: It's disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: That's really interesting because in our culture, we treat unbelief as just a neutral or a thoughtful position or just another perspective that's as valid as any others.
SPEAKER_00: No, Paul will say, no way, I will not have that.
SPEAKER_00: He calls it what it is disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: And so then the question is: well, what determines whether someone obeys or disobeys the message?
SPEAKER_00: Now look at verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: He gives an answer directly.
SPEAKER_00: So faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the word of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Faith is not manufactured by a clever argument or by a gifted communicator.
SPEAKER_00: Faith comes from hearing the message itself, and the message itself carries the power.
SPEAKER_00: And it's very interesting.
SPEAKER_00: There's this great illustration that Jesus uses in the parables in Luke chapter 16, and it is so powerful.
SPEAKER_00: But it's a rich man, it's a parable about a rich man who's begging that someone would go back from the dead to tell his brother about Christ so that he can be saved.
SPEAKER_00: And Abraham responds and says, If they did not hear Moses and the prophets, so translation, if they did not hear the word, then neither will they be convinced if someone rises from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
SPEAKER_00: Not even a resurrection moves someone who will not hear the word.
SPEAKER_00: The word of God is so powerful and has so much weight that it is carrying more than a miracle.
SPEAKER_00: Which means that if Israel didn't believe, there are only two possible explanations.
SPEAKER_00: Either that the message never reached them, or it reached them and they refused it anyway.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where Paul goes next.
SPEAKER_00: He answers the obvious one first.
SPEAKER_00: Did they not hear?
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: But I ask, have they not heard?
SPEAKER_00: Indeed they have.
SPEAKER_00: And then he quotes look at he quotes from Psalm 19.
SPEAKER_00: And that psalm is actually about creation.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about preaching.
SPEAKER_00: The heavens declare the glory of God just by existing to anyone in the earth.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul isn't saying here that creation itself preached the gospel to Israel.
SPEAKER_00: He's borrowing the Psalm's language of reaching this idea to the ends of the earth and applying it to something more specific.
SPEAKER_00: Because you see, by the time Paul is writing, real preachers had carried Christ's message to the known world, so that every Jewish community in the Roman world had heard the gospel and heard Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so Israel cannot say, this is what Paul is saying, that it never reached them.
SPEAKER_00: It reached them plainly.
SPEAKER_00: You know the flag system at the beach?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've been to the beach recently.
SPEAKER_00: Green, you're good.
SPEAKER_00: Yellow, caution.
SPEAKER_00: Red, stay out.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing you can't miss it.
SPEAKER_00: It's on the top of a dune as everyone is walking, and everyone sees the red flag, walk, walks past it anyway, not because they missed it.
SPEAKER_00: It's they saw it and they didn't think it applied to them.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what everybody does.
SPEAKER_00: I've done it.
SPEAKER_00: It's I'm I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: Surely that's not true.
SPEAKER_00: Or I'm a really good swimmer.
SPEAKER_00: I'll be out just for a few minutes.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever riptide, it won't get me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: And some people aren't good.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the picture of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't confused.
SPEAKER_00: The flag was up.
SPEAKER_00: The warning was plain and real and clear.
SPEAKER_00: They just refused to hear it.
SPEAKER_00: And so what does that mean for us?
SPEAKER_00: What's the takeaway this morning in terms of application?
SPEAKER_00: Well, a couple of things.
SPEAKER_00: One of the simplest, most effective things that you can do in terms of evangelism.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we're about personal evangelism, but you know what we also ought to be about?
SPEAKER_00: Inviting people right here.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Think about the passage.
SPEAKER_00: Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from where?
SPEAKER_00: The word of God.
SPEAKER_00: So one of the best things you can do is find a friend or a neighbor or a co-worker or a family member and say, Hey, will you come hear the word with me?
SPEAKER_00: Will you come to the church with me?
SPEAKER_00: Who can you invite this week to come and to just simply invite them to come get in front of the freight train of the word of God and let God do His thing with them.
SPEAKER_00: Not a memorized presentation that you've rehearsed, not all your debate things all lined up so that you're ready to roll.
SPEAKER_00: Just come and let's go to lunch afterwards and talk about it.
SPEAKER_00: And then the other thing is if you're here this morning and you've not heard the gospel plainly, or you're someone who's not heard the gospel, uh maybe you're not confused by it at all.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you know exactly what the gospel has said, but you just haven't trusted Christ yet.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you need to stop waiting for a clearer argument, or a better time, or for it to be said in a different way.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps, think about Israel, this is what Paul's saying.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you have everything you already need.
SPEAKER_00: You have what you need.
SPEAKER_00: The only question is what are you going to do with what you have?
SPEAKER_00: Will you ignore the red flag or will you call upon the name of the Lord and be saved?
SPEAKER_00: The last thing is the ache.
SPEAKER_00: So he rules out two explanations.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't that the message never reached them.
SPEAKER_00: So the chain held, the preachers went, the gospel arrived, and it wasn't that they never heard.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, Paul's dealt with all those things.
SPEAKER_00: You see how this is how he's working this out.
SPEAKER_00: And so what's actually going on?
SPEAKER_00: Why didn't Israel believe?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Paul raises one more possibility.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verses 19 and 20.
SPEAKER_00: It's that they didn't understand.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, he answers with Moses first.
SPEAKER_00: And through Moses, God says, I'm going to bless people that you, Israel, call foolish outsiders.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to bless the Gentiles who have none of the advantages that you have, and I'm going to use their belief in order to provoke you.
SPEAKER_00: And then Isaiah says the same thing more clearly: I have been found by those who did not seek me, and I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.
SPEAKER_00: So the point, outsiders, I mean, think about this.
SPEAKER_00: Gentiles were not even looking.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't care.
SPEAKER_00: And he shows himself to them while Israel here is, they're in.
SPEAKER_00: They have all the advantages and still don't believe.
SPEAKER_00: End of story.
SPEAKER_00: That settles it.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't understand was never a real excuse for Israel.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul closes the door on that excuse as well.
SPEAKER_00: Israel is all out of excuses.
SPEAKER_00: There is none left.
SPEAKER_00: And here's where it starts to turn.
SPEAKER_00: The passage starts to turn in verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: Please don't miss this.
SPEAKER_00: This was with me all week.
SPEAKER_00: But of Israel, he says, all day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.
SPEAKER_00: Two words.
SPEAKER_00: Neither of those words are soft.
SPEAKER_00: Disobedient, okay, you know the word, dug in, refusing to submit.
SPEAKER_00: I will not budge, rebellion, no matter how long the invitation stays open.
SPEAKER_00: That word contrary means it's something sharper.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just people who won't come, it's people who talk back.
SPEAKER_00: And so Israel wasn't just quietly unmoved.
SPEAKER_00: They actually were pushing against and pushing back.
SPEAKER_00: But how about all day long?
SPEAKER_00: Continually without letting up.
SPEAKER_00: God's doing this number.
SPEAKER_00: No closed fist.
SPEAKER_00: No crossed arms.
SPEAKER_00: No pulling back.
SPEAKER_00: Hands out.
SPEAKER_00: As if to say, please take them.
SPEAKER_00: Please come.
SPEAKER_00: And the response after all that is still nothing.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to rush past this to a neat resolution because the text doesn't give us a neat resolution.
SPEAKER_00: Israel at this point doesn't turn around.
SPEAKER_00: The chapter ends with hands out and no one taking them.
SPEAKER_00: Do you feel the ache?
SPEAKER_00: Do you feel the ache of verse 21?
SPEAKER_00: It's not a cold verdict from a distant judge.
SPEAKER_00: It's a father who is holding out his hands to his people who keep walking past them year after year after year and won't stop.
SPEAKER_00: And he doesn't stop holding out his hands because of who he is and because of his heart.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's another place in the scriptures where we see a similar picture where God holds out his hands to people who reject him.
SPEAKER_00: And it's on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Hands spread as wide as they possibly can.
SPEAKER_00: God in the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Nails driven through his hands to keep them open, not clenched, not withdrawn, held out for every single person that is nailing them in to his hands and to his feet and to the people that are mocking him below, for people just like the ones who wouldn't answer.
SPEAKER_00: And for stubborn, disobedient, and rebellious people like us.
SPEAKER_00: And so this morning, if you have been refusing, if you're dug in, if you're refusing to submit, his hands are still out.
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying, Come.
SPEAKER_00: If you're here this morning and you spent years praying for someone who won't turn around, maybe a spouse or a child or a friend, well, this is your God too.
SPEAKER_00: And he knows exactly what it costs to keep reaching.
SPEAKER_00: He knows what it costs to keep his hands out to people who refuse.
SPEAKER_00: And so don't give up.
SPEAKER_00: Keep praying.
SPEAKER_00: Keep holding your arms out.
SPEAKER_00: God is not asking you to do anything that he has not already done himself for longer and all the way to a cross.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: The hands haven't come down.
SPEAKER_00: Will you call on him this morning?
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you that your hands never come down.
SPEAKER_00: That all day long you keep reaching for us even as we turn away.
SPEAKER_00: Would you forgive us for the times that we've been dug in, where we've refused, or we've been too afraid to open up our mouths and carry the news that you've given us to people who need it.
SPEAKER_00: And Holy Spirit, I pray that you'd give us courage to speak, to share, to invite.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you'd also soften hearts in this room.
SPEAKER_00: There are people that need to come.
SPEAKER_00: There are people that need to call.
SPEAKER_00: Would you give them courage?
SPEAKER_00: Would you give them faith?
SPEAKER_00: Ears to hear, and words to say, Lord, I believe.
SPEAKER_00: Save me.
SPEAKER_00: We ask these things in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.