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Romans 10:5-8 - "An Easy Choice"
Last week I showed you, from a selection of verses in Romans 10, that saving faith must be faith that knows the right things, that's "according to knowledge" (verse 2). And I showed you that this knowledge only comes through the Bible. I also showed you that preaching is the ordinary way God has chosen to make biblical, saving knowledge known. When preachers do this, people who hear them are then able to believe and be saved. All of this is the work of the Holy Spirit, without whom none of this would happen. So when I come to Romans 10, then, I see that my task as a preacher is not an easy one. But it is a Spirit-empowered one. Somehow I need to help you know what this chapter is saying. Romans 10 is part of the Bible and knowledge of the Bible's message is necessary for saving faith to exist in you and me (to be "according to knowledge"). But here I feel the difficulty of my task because Romans 10 is complicated. It's hard to understand. So I'm praying the Spirit will give me helpful words and give you ears to hear and minds to understand.
What should I do, since God has called me to preach His Word, when I come to a passage like this that's hard to understand? Should I skip it? If we skipped the hard parts, first of all, we would be skipping a lot of the Bible and would then miss some truths that are necessary for our faith to be "according to knowledge". In other words, for our faith to be "biblical", means we have to come to understand some hard parts of the Bible. Secondly, if I skip the hard parts I will be held accountable by God for failing to obey His call to preach the Bible: your blood would be on my hands. As Paul himself said to the Ephesians when he was saying goodbye to them, "I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:26-27). So no, I cannot skip this or any hard-to-understand passage; I dare not. But then I think I'm going to have to take this passage in bite-sized pieces, help you chew on it with me, for the strengthening of our saving faith.
So what is Romans 10 about? This morning I'll give you a very brief bird's eye view of what this section of Romans (chas. 9-11) is about, then we'll take verses 5-8 and look at them from more of a worm's eye view to understand exactly what they have to say. Next week we'll look at how salvation happens.
Romans 1-3 talks about our human problem that we all deserve God's wrath because of our unrighteousness. Chapters 3-6 talk about how God freely counts us righteous through faith in Jesus Christ. Chapters 7-8 talk about how God's Spirit helps us grow in righteousness as we obey God. (Unrighteous, counted righteous, growing in righteousness-Romans 1-8 is about righteousness.) Now chapters 9-11 change direction a bit and show us that God is righteous and that His righteousness is proved by how He has and will rule over every detail to save the people He has chosen to save. Now that's a hard bit of Scripture isn't it? The idea that God chooses whom to save and whom not to save. If you have any doubts about whether the Bible really teaches this, then I ask you to read carefully through Romans 9 when you get home. And if it's any help to you, my sermons on chapter 9 are available on the church website and on CD from the church library.
Now at the end of chapter 9, in verses 24-29, Paul explains that although God has chosen Israel generally for a special purpose (i.e., the people we call the Jews), He has also chosen specific people for salvation from among the Jews and from the other nations, called, "the Gentiles." The question that comes up in verse 30 is this: "Is it fair of God to save Gentiles who didn't even know Him, but to not save Jews who knew Him and wanted to please Him by being righteous enough?" In other words, God has saved a lot of Gentiles who weren't even looking for it, but He has left unsaved a lot of Jews who were. And for many of us who have grappled with this biblical truth that God chooses whom to save, we have also had to grapple with this question of whether God is fair-whether God is righteous.
Paul answers this question in two parts. First, in chapter 10, he shows that God holds people responsible (surprisingly, not for whether they've been bad or good, but) for how they respond to Jesus Christ. Second, when we get to chapter 11, we will see that God isn't finished yet with Israel and still plans to save a great number specifically from the Jews in the future. According to the Bible then, yes, God is both righteous (fair and just) and absolutely sovereign (in control) of who is saved. But what about those who don't ever get saved? Is God fair to them? Paul answers this question beginning in the verses we will look at now (9:5-8), by showing that according to the whole Bible, we humans are held responsible for how we choose. So the Jews are held responsible for their choice when they try, and fail, to obey God's Law.
In about 5 days, 9 hours and 50 minutes, the Olympics are due to begin in Vancouver and Whistler. I went skiing one time with a youth group at Whistler when my cousin Stephen came along for his first time ever skiing. Now Whistler is a big mountain. Stephen misunderstood where he was supposed to show up for ski lessons and instead got on the chairlift that took him right to the top of the mountain. And there were no bunny hills at the top of the mountain. Down the mountain was the only way to go and Stephen didn't know how to ski, so he shouldered his useless skis and walked, in ski boots, all the way back down. I think he got to the bottom of the mountain in time to catch the bus loading up for home. What he did that day was very hard work. And if he was judged for how well he skied, he would have failed. Not for lack of trying-but for going the wrong way.
When Paul quotes, in Rom. 9:33, from the Old Testament book of Isaiah, he shows that the Jews who failed in their goal failed because they went the wrong way. [read Rom 9:30-33]Trying to do it the hard way, they stumbled over Jesus Christ. Ultimately, salvation is not about whether you are a bad person or a good person. Paul already showed that nobody can be good enough [read Rom. 3:23]. Salvation is about how you and I, how Gentiles and Jews, respond to Jesus. When we go to Him, receive from Him, and learn from Him, He even makes us able to obey God. But if we try and go around Him, we are like Stephen, missing his skiing lesson and going it the hard way.
Jesus is everything. That's why Paul says in 10:4 that the goal of the Old Testament Law was to point people to faith in Christ [read]. He's the whole point: To believe in Him or not to believe. And therefore, since even the Old Testament pointed to Christ (that's what it means when it says that "Christ is the end of the Law..."), the main difference between people saved in the Old Testament and people saved since the New Testament, is that we now know the name of the One in whom we believe: Jesus Christ. In the OT they only knew that they were called to trust in God.
In verses 5-6 Paul lays this out very plainly: There are two ways, in the Old Testament, to be righteous (at least in theory-and righteousness is necessary for eternal life). The first way, which Paul explains in verse 5, is quoted from Leviticus 18:5 [read 5b]. That's the hard way, skipping the ski lesson, guaranteed failure, and only Christ ever succeeded in being righteous this way. Because if you try to be righteous this way, you have to keep all the commandments all the time. Not most; not even all of them most of the time: All of them all of the time. When Moses gave that promise from God (that if "a person does them, he shall live..."), he was telling the truth, but it was a truth meant to drive people to instead put their hope and trust in God. It was like saying "Take lessons, try the bunny hill, this way is impossible."
Paul tells us next that Moses later taught a righteousness based not on works but on faith-a righteousness that come through trusting God. In verse 6, Paul quotes Moses again, not from Leviticus this time but from Deuteronomy-from the instructions Moses gave to the children of those he was talking to in Leviticus 18. Look how Paul quotes from Deut 30:12-13 in verses 6-7 [read quote only]. Paul says that to think like this would amount to ignoring the call to trust in God; to ignore what Christ did and try to do it yourself. It's like skipping your skiing lessons and trying to walk down a mountain in ski boots. (Except walking in ski boots won't get you condemned to Hell.) Let me show you that this is exactly what Moses was saying-though he was saying it to a new generation of Jews whose parents had all failed. He gave them two choices: 1 hard, 1 easy; 1 meant death, 1 meant life (Deu 30:15).
[read Deut 30:11-15] The passage starts with "This commandment... is not too hard for you..." and ends with, "...so that you can do it." Moses is saying that God's commandment does not require super-human effort; it does not require perfect obedience to God's Law. No, this commandment rests on something other than works. What does it rest on? Look again at Deuteronomy 30:11-"this commandment". Which commandment? To find out what commandment he's talking about we have to look at the verses before verse 11. What are verses 3-10 in particular all about? Verses 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 all repeat the One Subject: "the LORD your God." These verses talk about what God would do for His people, not what they must do for Him. Anything God was commanding His people to do depended on and was made possible ("not too hard" v 11; "you can do it" v 14) by what God would do for them [read Deut 30:6].
So Paul again quotes from this Deuteronomy chapter when he comes to Romans 10:8 [read]. He says this is the "word of faith" that he was preaching about. Moses' message was about trusting in what "the LORD your God" would do. Paul's message was about what God did through Jesus Christ. Moses and Paul were preaching the same message. Jesus Christ is "the LORD your God."
As you and I go out from this place into the world this week, some of you are called to do some hard things. Your task seems impossible. What God has placed before you might seem like a very tall mountain. Maybe you are afraid to step out and even try to obey God's call because you know for sure that you'll fail?Brothers and sisters, you need to hear this "word of faith" preached by both Moses and by the apostle Paul: All that god requires of you rests on what Jesus Christ, "the LORD your God," has already done. He has made you a new person when you believed in Him (if you have). He lives in your heart by His Spirit. He goes before you and will always be with you, even "to the end of the age". The sovereign and gracious Son of God is "very near you". The Word He has called you to believe "is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it" (Deut 30:14). It's an easy choice.
