A couple of weeks ago as we studied chapter 9 we learned about the sovereignty of God in salvation.  That God has the sovereign right to be merciful to whom He will be merciful and to harden those whom He hardens.  It is the doctrine of the election and predestination of God in salvation.  Then in the first section of chapter 10 which we looked at last week Paul shows us the other side of the coin of salvation; that being the responsibility of man.  Man must believe in HIs heart, he must confess with his mouth the Lord Jesus.  And the great summary statement of that side of the coin is found in vs 13, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Now this week we are continuing to look at this matter of salvation, and man’s responsibility joined with God’s sovereignty  in bringing it about.  And Paul is writing to the Romans in the context of his day and age, in which the Israelites had rejected their own Messiah and consequently had forfeited their salvation which had been offered to them.

But I believe the Holy Spirit who inspired Paul’s writing has a bigger audience in mind than just the Israelites.  I think that the application of this last chapter is particularly apropos to our age and our nation as well.  For like the Israelites of old, America has had every advantage from the standpoint of the gospel.  Our nation was founded on the principle of religious freedom.  Our nation is governed on the principles of God’s law. Our nation has seen some of the world’s greatest revivals and given birth to some of the world’s greatest Bible preachers. Our nation has had every advantage, every blessing that God could bestow on a nation in terms of having the gospel presented and the word of God available and being taught that surpasses that of any other nation.  And yet I believe that today we are witnessing in our society a wholesale departure and rejection of the word of God that is unparalleled in history, except in the case of Israel.

So as we go through this text today, I don’t want to just focus on how much Israel has failed to respond to the grace extended to it.  But as much as it is possible, I wish to show how our nation and our culture has committed the same sin of rebellion.

Now the emphasis is in this section is on man’s response to the gospel. The statement immediately preceding this section, vs 13 which says, “whosoever will call on the name of the Lord shall be saved”  should elicit an obvious question.  How do you do that?  How does calling upon the Lord for salvation actually work?  

And Paul answers that question with a series of questions  showing a chain of events, going backwards from the effect to the cause, and from that effect to it’s cause and so forth all the way back to the origin of our salvation.  We read of that chain of salvation in vs 14 and 15. “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?  How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, ‘HOW BEAUTIFUL ARE THE FEET OF THOSE WHO BRING GOOD NEWS OF GOOD THINGS!’”

So Paul begins tracing back the cause of salvation, by starting with the call upon the Lord.  Each person is responsible to call on the name of the Lord to be saved. It’s kind of like receiving an invitation in the mail to an important event and it has on the bottom of the invitation RSVP.  You must respond to the invitation. It’s not enough to just read it, but you have to respond. And in the case of your salvation, there must come a time when you recognize the fact that you are lost, when you recognize your need for a Savior, and you recognize that Jesus is Lord, that He is God in flesh, that He has the authority to save, and is able to save because He is above all power on earth and in heaven and call upon the Lord to save you.

This essential response of calling on the Lord is what Paul describes in vs 9 as confessing with your mouth.  “That if you confess with your mouth Jesus [as] Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”  You personally, individually, must confess Jesus as Lord over your life.

Now as indicated in that verse,  behind that call, is another link in the chain, and that is belief. “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed?” Belief is faith.  There must be faith in Jesus as Lord in order to make that confession. Jesus as Lord encompasses the belief “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”  That statement is a summary of the gospel found in 1 Corinthians 15:3,4.  We studied that text last Wednesday night in our Bible study in 1 Corinthians.  And what we learned was that was an early creed of the church which was regularly publicly confessed in the church.

As I said last Wednesday evening, saving faith is not just believing that Jesus lived and died 2000 years ago.  Our faith is founded in the facts of history, but it goes beyond what can be seen. Hebrews 11:1 says that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Saving faith is believing that Jesus is the Son of God, and that He came to earth to pay the penalty for our sin by dying on the cross.  That He was buried, and that He rose again and He ever lives to make intercession for us in Heaven, and that one day He is coming back for His people to live with them in a new heaven and new earth.  His work of salvation is the invisible part of our faith – that He is able to reconcile us to God by virtue of HIs sacrifice of His righteous life on our behalf.  That is what you must believe if you are to call upon Jesus as Lord.

The next link in the chain which must come before belief is the message.  “How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?” A message has to be proclaimed.  The word of Christ, or the gospel of Christ must be heard.  Paul says in vs17, that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” That is the predominate way that God has ordained that men come to a saving knowledge of the truth.  Someone must tell them the gospel.

And, of course, behind the message is a person who proclaims it. And the primary person God has chosen to proclaim the gospel is a preacher.  “How can they hear without a preacher.”

1Cor. 1:21 says, “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not [come to] know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.”  From the perspective of the world watching us today, it must seem utter foolishness to come to a church service and listen to someone preaching.  But notice this verse says that you cannot come to know God through the wisdom of the world.  But we come to know God through the preaching of His word.  Lot’s of churches out there claim that you can meet God in their building, that you can experience God in their services and they offer up a variety of things in their services designed  to make you feel something.  But our faith is not founded on emotional experiences, but on the word of God which we are preaching.

And to that end, it’s very important that a pastor has been called of God to do the ministry of preaching. In Jeremiah 23:21 God says, “I did not send [these] prophets, But they ran. I did not speak to them, But they prophesied. But if they had stood in My council, Then they would have announced My words to My people, And would have turned them back from their evil way And from the evil of their deeds.”  There are a lot of men out there in pulpits today that are called by a denomination, they are commissioned by men, but it’s not evident that they are called by God.  And the evidence that they are not is that they do not faithfully preach the word of the Lord.  They proclaim philosophy, they teach moralistic stories that play on your emotions.  They tickle your ears by telling you what you want to hear.

Paul gave Timothy instruction to pastors and a warning to the congregation in 2 Timothy 4.  Verse 2 is the verse I have claimed as my commission to the ministry.  And vs 3 and 4 is the warning.  It says in vs 2 “preach the word; be ready in season [and] out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.” And then the warning to the congregation in vs3 “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but [wanting] to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires,  and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.”  

So it is imperative that the preacher has been commissioned by Jesus Christ and speaks the word of Christ. And behind the preacher is the One who sends him.  “How will they preach unless they are sent?” It is God who sends preachers. The great initiative in the process of redeeming men and women, healing them and restoring them, restoring their lives, is the gracious heart of God that sends men out.  God sends preachers to proclaim the gospel to the lost because it is God’s desire to reconcile men to Himself.

In relation to that call of God upon preachers, Paul quotes Isaiah 52:7 which says ““HOW BEAUTIFUL ARE THE FEET OF THOSE WHO BRING GOOD NEWS OF GOOD THINGS!”  My Dad who was a preacher in North Carolina for many years used to really get a kick out of that verse.  He liked to say that according to the Bible he had pretty feet.  I would show you my feet this morning as evidence that I don’t think that is really the point of this verse, but if I did that I would probably lose half of my audience, especially those up front. My feet are not my best feature by a long shot.

When I was a kid, I had exceptionally large feet.  I wear a size 13 and I think my feet grew first.  I remember some smart aleck kid saying to me, “you’re a poet and don’t know it, but your feet show it, they are Longfellows.”  I don’t know why, but my ears and my feet grew faster than the other parts of my body.  I used to be called “Dumbo” when I was in elementary school by my classmates because of my big ears. And my Dad would cut my hair down to the skin on the sides, which made my ears look even bigger.  It’s not wonder that I have all these hangups as an adult, considering all the abuse I took as a child.

But maybe what Isaiah means here is kind of like a backhanded compliment.  The feet are not usually considered the most attractive features of a person.  And in Isaiah’s culture, the feet were always in need of washing, as they wore open sandals and walked dusty, sometimes muddy roads.  But the news that such a traveler brings can be so good, that even the dirty feet of the preacher looks beautiful.  So I think what he is saying is the news is so beautiful, that even the dirty feet that carried the news gets some of the glory.

Now what this chain of events helps us to realize, is that behind the call of the person upon the Lord, is a complex process that was originated and brought to it’s culmination by God.  He is the author and finisher of our salvation.  He foreknows them, He predestines them, He calls them, He justifies them, He sanctifies them and He glorifies them.  From beginning to end, God is sovereign over our salvation.  And yet man is responsible to respond.

And Paul acknowledges that not all respond, as in the case of Israel.  He says in vs 16, “However, they did not all heed the good news; for Isaiah says, ‘LORD, WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR REPORT?’”There is a natural reaction to the gospel that is one of rejection and rebellion. Perhaps pride gets in the way of accepting the truth.  Before you can receive the good news you must first believe the bad news, that you are lost and condemned and in need of a Savior. But a lot of people get offended by that and consequently disregard the good news.

As vs 16 indicates,  the prophet Isaiah discovered this when he came to the people of Israel at a time in their history when they were surrounded by enemies. They were about to be overrun by the nations around them, they had turned to the idols of the nations about them, degrading practices had come into the national life, and peace and joy had fled from the land. Isaiah the prophet came and preached to this people good news about the Messiah who would be their Savior. And on the basis of the Messiah’s life and death, God would work on their behalf.  But Isaiah says that they would not believe his message. 

Isaiah 53 speaks of this rejection of the truth about Christ. “Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?  For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no [stately] form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.  He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.  Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted.  But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being [fell] upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed.  All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.”

That chapter is one of the most explicit prophecies concerning the Messiah’s ministry on earth written 725 years before Jesus was born.  And yet the Israelites for the most part rejected Jesus as the Messiah because He did not fit their expectations of a military and political leader who would make Israel a prominent nation of the world again as it had been under David and Solomon’s reign.

Saving faith requires that we must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as He has revealed Himself in His word.  Faith is not believing in our own version of who we want God to be. vs17, “So faith [comes] from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”  We must believe in who He is, and what He has done, and we must believe His word that He has given us.  Faith comes by hearing the word of Christ, accepting it, receiving it, and believing it.  

Faith precipitates obedience. Faith produces action.  Faith is not a static, purely cerebral thing that does not affect your actions. It’s as if I were to knock on your door and announce to you some great news, that you had won a million dollars and all you had to do was to follow me to some location and I would give it to you.  You could say you believe and yet do nothing, but that would reveal that you really didn’t believe me.  But if you really believed me, you would drop everything and follow me. We proclaim the gospel, the good news, the word of Christ, and if you really believe it you would immediately call upon the name of the Lord so that you might be saved.  But unfortunately, a lot of people just hear the message but their hearing is never joined by faith which produces a response.  They don’t mind hearing about the possibility, but it doesn’t move them to respond in faith.

So the next question might be to those people, “Didn’t you hear what I told you?”  Paul rephrases that question and answers it  in vs 18, “But I say, surely they have never heard, have they? Indeed they have; ‘THEIR VOICE HAS GONE OUT INTO ALL THE EARTH, AND THEIR WORDS TO THE ENDS OF THE WORLD.’”   So Paul is saying that “they”, whoever “they” may be, have heard.  The message has gone out into all the earth.  

Now what exactly is he talking about?  Is he talking about missionaries going to all the four corners of the world?  Was that already a reality in 57AD?  No, I think that the means of the message going out into the world is described for us in Psalm 19, which is what Paul quotes from in vs18.  Let’s look at Psalm 19, which was an inspired song of David,  and see how this is accomplished.

Psalm 19:1-4 “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.  Day to day pours forth speech, And night to night reveals knowledge.  There is no speech, nor are there words; Their voice is not heard.  Their line has gone out through all the earth, And their utterances to the end of the world.”

In other words, what Paul is talking about is that there has been a universal proclamation of the gospel through nature. Nature is not a lot of light about God, but the Bible says it is enough light.  In fact, in the first chapter of Romans, vs 19-20 Paul mentions that very thing saying “what might be known about God is plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

The answer to the question “What about those who have never heard about God?” is: “There aren’t any people who have never heard about God.” Everywhere men and women have been told enough about God to cause them to turn to Him. God has been revealed in creation. There is a universal proclamation that has gone out. And if it is heard, if it is believed and responded to, more light will be given. This is why Hebrews 11, that great faith chapter, gives us the simplest declaration of how men come to God (Verse 6) “Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” So God gives all men enough light to believe and then if they believe He will give them more light so that they can come all the way to Him by faith.

There is another stage of the revelation of God. God, in His grace often gives more light even when people refuse the light of nature. No one deserves more light, but God gives it nevertheless. I think the United States of America, above all nations, ought to be grateful for the grace of God that has poured light out upon us when we did not deserve it anymore than anyone else. God has given us much light. But we must remember that more light does not necessarily mean more belief.

Israel had a tremendous, unparalleled exposure to the light.  God sent many, many prophets to preach, to warn, to teach them to turn to the Lord. And yet they continually hardened their heart, and their rebellion culminated with crucifying their Messiah, the Son of God that had been sent to give them the message.  

So Paul asks, “did they not understand the message?”  Vs 19, “But I say, surely Israel did not know, did they? First Moses says, “I WILL MAKE YOU JEALOUS BY THAT WHICH IS NOT A NATION, BY A NATION WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING WILL I ANGER YOU.”  And Isaiah is very bold and says, “I WAS FOUND BY THOSE WHO DID NOT SEEK ME, I BECAME MANIFEST TO THOSE WHO DID NOT ASK FOR ME.”

Paul says that God used jealousy to make the Israelites to turn back to Him.  God turned to the Gentiles after the Jews rejected and crucified their Messiah.  Israel had understanding, it had knowledge about God.  God had revealed Himself to them in so many ways, through the pillar of fire and smoke that hovered above the nation and led them through the wilderness.  Through the thunder and lighting from Mt. Sinai.  Through the Law which Moses brought down from the mountain.  Through all the miracles and wonders that God performed for the Israelites.  They had more knowledge of God than anyone. And yet they rebelled against Him and rejected Him.

And so God said He would make them jealous by going to the Gentiles who did not have the advantages that they had.  They had none of the advantages of the Jews in regards to the knowledge of God.  But when the gospel was preached to them, they came to the Lord willingly and gratefully.  And we stand here today on the basis of that act of grace by God to offer the gospel to those who were not seeking Him, who did not have any knowledge of God as their heritage in the intimate way that Israel had.

But what is also being said in this verse is that God continues to pursue Israel, His first love. And it shows us much concerning the love of God that He arranges, He plans, He provides for, He calls us, He woos us, and He continues to pursue us until we finally either call upon Him, or we take our rebellion to the grave. 

Notice vs 21, which is a quote from Isa.65:2,  “But concerning Israel he says, ‘All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.’” God continued to pursue Israel, and I believe the scriptures teach that He continues to pursue Israel to this day.  And there is a sense portrayed in chapter 11 vs 26 that one day “all Israel will be saved.”  

But what a beautiful picture though of the love and patience of God towards us who are in rebellion against Him.  All day long He is holding out His arms, welcoming those who would come to Him, calling to them to come to Him, pleading “Come unto Me all you who are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  

God has been holding out His hands to some of you here today for a long, long time.  He is calling you to come to Him.  But up until now you have wanted to be lord of your own life.  You thought you can do better for yourself than what He has for you.  But even so, He continues to call, He continues to hold out His hands.  Come to Jesus today.  I urge you, come to Jesus.  He alone can save you, He can help you, He can give you life more abundantly, even life everlasting.  Come to Jesus today and call upon the name of the Lord so that you might be saved.