The God(ness) of God: The God of Gospel - Week 4
June 14, 2008 11:34 am Chapter 10, Romans, Sermon-Texts
This sermon is week 4 of The God of Gospel section of our “The God(ness) of God” sermon series. It is an exegetical treatment of Romans 10:14-15, addressing the theme of God’s means in people coming to believe in Jesus. This sermon was originally preached June 14th, 2008 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.
The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church
Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.
June 14th, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets
Series: The God(ness) of God | Romans 9-11
I. The God of Glory 9:1-29
II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
III. The God of Future 11:1-36
II. The God of Gospel 9:30-10:21
Week 4 - Romans 10:14-15
Introduction
Good morning Church family. Every week we gather together to worship God together in a varieties of ways. We worship in our love and care for each other, which happens in conversations and in working together to put on this service…we worship in joining our voices together in song…we worship in the receiving of communion together…and we worship each week in studying God’s Word.
Usually, maybe not every time, I begin my sermon, the time when we study God’s Word, with some introduction as to why the particular text we are studying for the day is important for you to listen to and learn from. Sometimes it is because it contains some deep and hard thing we need to think about. Sometimes it is because it addresses something so relevant to our normal everyday lives and the issues we deal with. And sometimes it is because it is truly worldview forming and attempts to really shape the way we see ourselves as individuals and also as a group and what we are doing together.
I think that third one, the identity forming and impelling one, is why today’s text is important. Words like the ones of our text today are the type of words that can really catch and grab hold of you and cause us to do amazing things with our lives.
Adoniram Judson, was a man who in 1813 made the decision to leave his home in New England and travel to Burma in order to share with them the gospel of Jesus Christ. Burma at that time was hard, hostile, war torn, disease stricken, difficult place. He went there when he was 25 years old and spent nearly the whole of next 38 years there until his death.
Burma was a difficult place for him to go. All other previous missionaries had either left or got sick and died. While Adoniram was there he was beaten and imprisoned. His wife Ann, partnered with him in loving the Burmese people…she learned the language of the people and befriended them. But after only a few years, she contracted a sickness and died. Eight years after he lost Ann, Adoniram married again to a woman named Sarah, but not long afterwards she too got sick and passed away. Burma was a hard place. It took two whole years of reaching out before one person embraced the love of Jesus in the gospel he shared.
Burma was hard. When I read something like that and a life like that, it makes me wonder what would compel someone to do something like that? No just to go initially, but to also stay and be so determined to reach them?
Here is what did it for him…this is an excerpt from a letter Adoniram Judson wrote three years before he left for Burma while he was still in college. In it he describes what changed things for him.
“…During a solitary walk in the woods, behind the college, while meditating and praying…and feeling half inclined to give it up, that the command of Christ, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature,’ was presented to my mind with such clearness and power, that I came to a full decision, and though great difficulties appeared in my way, [I] resolved to obey the command at all events.”
Our text for today is similar in it’s power, clarity and calling as the passage of Scripture which so impacted Adoniram Judson. We’re in the second half of chapter 10 in Romans and in the second main movement in our current sermon series, “The God(ness) of God.” In this movement the theme has been the gospel. That the gospel, or the good news is God’s and he cares about it a lot. So let’s read the text and pray over it.
Lord God I pray today that you would impact us today with these words. Would they grant us confidence and passion for the mission of the good news of the gospel to reach people here in San Diego. Would they provide a framework for understanding what it is that you call us to and the challenges involved in it. And God through our study of these words would you use them to expand our love for various peoples as we come to understand that you are a God who is determined to reach out your hand in love to unworthy and undeserving people. Work in us today through your Word. Amen.
The Means of the Gospel
So we are going to look at just verses 14 and 15. I had planned to finish the chapter today and go all the way to verse 21…but I just couldn’t do it. There is too much in these two verses that we need to talk about. Verses 14 and 15 outline the gospel mission, which is huge for us as a church plant. They outline the means and process that lead to someone calling on Jesus for salvation is outlined. Verse 13 left off saying, “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Two weeks ago when we dealt with that phrase we talked about what kind of call that is, that it is cry out to Jesus for help. Jesus is the name of the Lord and as Acts 4:12 says, “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Jesus is our only hope.
If that is true then the natural question is how does a person come to the point of calling upon Jesus name for their salvation. Verse 14-15 give us four steps. One, we must believe. Two, we must hear. Three, we must be preached to. And four, a preacher must be sent. Believing, hearing, preaching, sending. It might sound just mechanical or even pedantic at a first glance. Like, duh, of course. But I believe there is more to it then that.
As a whole, Scripture reveals here that God has committed himself to saving people in a certain way. Not just in that he only saves through his Son Jesus but also the way in which we come to see and know and love Jesus. Some make the dangerous and false conclusion after reading in the previous chapter, Romans 9, that since God has determined and chosen within himself to make sure and save particular people that because of that we, as individuals don’t need to do anything…like, “Well I guess since God is just going to save whoever he wants then we’re just robots and it doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do.”
That’s a misunderstand of means. God has not only determined the end of salvation but also the means and here in Romans 10:14-15 he tells us what his means are, the way he has determined that the people he is going to save will come to faith in Jesus. I pray you understand means today. What do I mean when I say means?
I means this, how did you get here to church this morning? I think I would be on pretty safe ground to say you all drove in a car or a truck or an SUV (my wife says an SUV is not a truck) to get here. Your vehicle was the means of getting to church service today. Now there were probably a few more steps involved in that process…like actually getting in your car, turning on the ignition, navigating the steering wheel to direct the car in a certain path, perhaps going to the gas station first and giving them your life savings, and then ultimately making it to your destination here. That’s means, the processes used in reaching the ultimate goal.
With Jesus there is means as well. There is a process: sending, preaching, hearing, believing, and then calling on him. The process begins with God’s determination to save individuals (Rom.9), then God sends his people to go tell other people about who he is and what he has done in Jesus, then those people hear, at some point in their hearing God grants faith and they believe, and when they believe then they call on Jesus. That is how it works, that the process, the means God has committed himself to working through.
But I think we would be missing some huge things if we just left it there. God wants us to know and understand that there’s a process but there are some things we need to think about which are involved in each of these steps. So let’s look at them a little closer.
Must Believe
First belief, belief is faith and it is a gift granted by God, it is not something that you use or conjure up in and of yourself, it is trust and confidence that God gives. In previous sermons we have talked much about how it is a sort of discovery within a person, where they see Jesus and see Jesus as someone we desperately need and that sight of Jesus is one where we see him as truly sufficient to actually meet the greatest need and desire of your soul. So I’m going to leave it at that and not spend any more time on we must believe today.
Must Hear
Verse 14 says is that God has determined not to grant belief except through hearing, that’s the second step, “How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?” Now here is what I mean by a deeper level at work here. Does God just mean audibly then here? I don’t think so, otherwise people with no ears or people who are deaf would have no hope of salvation. Hearing here is more than just hearing.
We’ll talk more about hearing next week in verse 18…but for right now I want to mention a couple potential obstacles to hearing, associated not so much with the one doing the hearing but with the one giving something for people to hear.
In this last week’s journal entry, I wrote about San Diego views of the word “gospel” and the word “Jesus.” If you are signed up on our email list you received this, although I’m not sure anyone actually reads it. But if you did read my Pastoral devotion for all of us this last week you’ll remember part of what I wrote. I provided a YouTube link to a CNN interview with an Acts 29 pastor and the interview was titled, “Do Christians Get on Your Nerves?” It was titled that way because a recent study showed that several people are very interested in Jesus and would like to learn and know more about him but are reluctant because of the way that Christians are toward them.
So wrote this in my entry, I said, “Often people are turned off to Christianity, not because of the message, or even because they are not one day destined to embrace it, but often they are turned off by of the messenger. Sometimes we ourselves are the biggest barriers to the gospel for people because we do not first listen and learn how to contextualize the gospel in hopes that it will get the best possible hearing.”
You see far too often we can slip into being self-righteous and arrogant thinking we are so much smarter or better because we are Christians and everyone else is just stupid because they not and so we conclude they just must not be elect.
If we want people to hear the good news, we must be concerned about who the people we are talking to, what their presuppositions are, and where they are at spiritually so that we can share the great and good and unchanging truths of the gospel in a way that will not give people any false reason to reject it. We want them to truly hear about Jesus and not hear something else. If they want to reject him because they understand what who we are saying he is and what he is done, then fine, we will love them and be okay with that. But I don’t want anyone to hear something different and be turned away.
Do you guys realize that most of the time you do not come across how you think you come across? Whatever our self-perceptions are, it is usually radically different then how we really are. Just ask people, how you sound? Ask them what the gospel is that they hear you sharing? I did that this last week. I sat down with my wife and asked her, what is the gospel that you see me living and hear me preaching?
Must Preach
Well let’s move on to the third step as we follow the text and work backward. We’ve got believing, hearing, and now preaching. It’s in verse 14, “And how will they hear without someone preaching?”
Now before we can even talk about the message in preaching, I know right away most of you probably think of this, what I am doing right now, as preaching. When you read or hear the word preaching, you think of the guy up front, in church, on Sunday, who gets really loud at times, tells you you are a sinner and need to repent. Right? Here’s the deal. Yes that is preaching, it is one form of it. But that is not what preaching primarily means here, in this text.
Preaching here in this text, number one, is not something that only pastors and public speakers do. It is something that everyone who is a Christian is and does. Christians are people who believe in the gospel, the good news. We are bearers of news. Now I know most people don’t actually get a paper anymore, because we can read it for free online and newspapers cost money and make your hands black when you read them. But I have a newspaper here today.
How does a news-paper work? You read news. Then you talk to other people about the news. Here is an article on the right side of the front page, “Keep Your Seats - If You Can - On Airlines.” This is something people talk about. There a problem. Something bad. Airline prices are going up and some people are even losing their previously bought tickets. This is news, it’s bad news. So you read this article and then you’re talking to your friend and you say, “Dude, did you hear about the airlines?” And he’s like “Yeah, that sucks, I’m supposed to go to Colorado in a few weeks I hope my tickets are still good.”
You see how that works? News. Here’s the thing. Christianity is not new anymore. Most people kind of know at least something about it, although their ideas are usually pretty skewed, and often because of screwy Christians. So what we have to do is contextualize the gospel, the good news. We have to create a platform for it’s hearing and not just assume that everyone should listen to us.
Foreign missionaries have understood this for years…that in order to share the gospel with a people group they need to learn and understand the language and the culture so that they can share the gospel in a way that they are going to get it. But for some reason here in America we tend to just assume, maybe because we’re from here, that everyone sees the world we the way we do and has had the same experiences that we have. But they haven’t.
We must look at our context here in San Diego and realize that the person who lives on the right side of us and the person who lives on the left side of us most likely has a completely different worldview and culture that we must understand figure out how to speak into it.
I’ll give you a couple examples. My next door neighbor I’ve learned is a single mom with three kids. She has two teenagers, a boy and girl, and one boy in his early twenties. Several times I’ve seen her out mowing her lawn and I’ve asked her before why she doesn’t have her boys don’t mow the lawn for her, and she says something like, “Oh, I can’t get them to do anything.” Last Sunday I was about to leave for church and I saw her mowing her lawn and I was just provoked in my Spirit…so I walked over to her and I said good morning and such and asked her if I could start mowing her lawn for her. She was like “really?” I said, “Yes, please let me do it for you, I really want to and will be offended if you don’t let me.” So she said okay. And then you know what was the next thing she said? I’ve never said anything to her in a year of living next to her about being a Christian or a pastor. But the next words out of her mouth were, “Duane, what church is it you go to? I see you leaving every Sunday morning with your Bible? What church is it you go to?” And I ended up talking to her about the gospel and she is interested and wanted to know if we had some materials so I took home one of our church pamphlets last week.
This is what I am talking about…earning a right to speak. Creating a platform for the gospel. I am afraid that Christian leaders and pastors have too often taught that sharing gospel or evangelizing is being all bold and going up to strangers and giving them a speech. Very few people are going to actually do that and the truth is that it is pretty ineffective in our day now.
I’ll give you another example. In our Theo 101 - membership class, we begin each session with a group brainstorm on what the ideas of San Diego’s various cultures are about the topic for the week. I structure the class that way to emphasize the importance contextualizing the gospel by recognizing the presupposition and ideas of the land we live in, the city we want to reach.
Only 6% of San Diego actually claims to be Bible believing, Jesus loving, church going, Christians. San Diego has a population of 1.3 million people, it is the 8th largest city in the United States, and San Diego has the second most diverse population in the country, second only to New York.
I am convinced that one of the main reasons that over, 1.29 million people (that’s 6% less) of San Diego is not being reached is because we don’t understand culture. What is culture? Here’s a definition: “The common behaviors, arts, beliefs and institutions of a people group.” It’s things like language, art, architecture, music, dress, worldview, tradition, rituals, lifestyle, and many many other things. Everyone is in a culture and has a cultural background. A cultural element may be moral, amoral, or immoral depending of how it is used (i.e. to worship God or not).
Too many Christians have demonized culture and thought that evangelism means we need to go to war with culture rather than entering into it. So what I am saying, what are we supposed to do. Well, first you got to make some friends who are not Christians and invite them into your life and get mixed up in theirs. If they are not your friend first then you are going to have very little chance of ever getting to hear their story so that you can tell the story of the gospel and how it connects to their story.
So here’s an example. I used to work at record store in Pacific Beach named Second Spin, and I met a guy who worked there named Seth. As I got to know Seth I found out that there are two things that Seth loved. He loved hardcore screamo music and he loved smoking.
Now anybody knows that when you are working sometimes it’s hard to get a chance to really talk about serious things. But me in my mind, I’m always praying Col 4:3 that God would “open a door for the world, to declare the mystery of Christ.” So one evening Seth asks me if I want to go outside and smoke a cigarette with him.
Now I didn’t smoke at the time, I hadn’t yet found out about J. Gresham Machen who started the Presbyterian denomination and said that “tobacco was God’s greatest gift given unto men for the contemplation of divine things.” But knowing that Seth loved smoking and that people usually talk while we’re smoking I went outside and smoked with him.
Now next door to Second Spin at the time was a bar/club called the Tavern, some of you might go there. While we were standing there, a line was beginning to form of people waiting to get in. I’m standing there smoking, trying not to inhale because Bill Clinton says, then you are okay, and I’m a good Christian right? And we see this guy going to each person in line and giving them a little flyer.
I just figured it was for porn or something…but then the guy comes up to me and my friend and hands us a flyer and it turns out to be a flyer for one of the churches in town to come to their Easter service. Right there it was such a vivid picture of the problem with evangelism within much of Christianity today. They don’t understand mission. Evangelism is something you do, but not something you live.
Let me explain what I mean. There I was doing my best to be like Jesus who came into the world to love sinners and make friends with them so that I could share the gospel with him…and this guy shoves a flyer in my face and just wanting me to come to church. I asked him if he was planning to go inside the club with some friends. Here was his answer, “No. That place is so full of sin and I can’t go in there because I am a Christian.”
I about punched him I was so angry. You see the thing is the world is a place full of sin and Jesus came into it and he calls us to follow him into it and get our hands dirty a little bit. Yeah, sometimes it’s messy and you might need to smoke a cigarette! But that’s Jesus. He drank and he never sinned by getting drunk but Luke 7:34 says, he drank enough to be accused of being “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” You see the flyer guy thought he was fulfilling the Romans 10 call to share his faith and he was missing the whole heart and mission of Jesus.
We must see ourselves as missionaries because missionaries understand this. Adoniram Judson. He spent four years learning the language and culture of the Burmese before he even held his first public meeting. When he first started, he wore Buddhist monk-like robe because that is what respected teachers in that culture wore. And then when he held his first service he constructed a zayat, a customary Burmese bamboo and thatch reception shelter, where he first had 15 men over to come and eat and talk.
You and I are missionaries in this city. As your pastor I am not interested in trying to figure out how to get some of the 6% of Christians in San Diego who already go to another church to start coming to ours because we are better. I want to reach the 94%. And it must begin with things like meals, and hospitality, and getting to know and understand the language and the lives of those people who are not yet Christians but are destined to become Christians one day.
Once that happens then you earn a hearing, a right to speak, you create a platform for the gospel. Once that happens then we share. That’s the second part, that’s the actual preaching. Everything up until that point is preparation for the preaching. Then you share and what do you share? You share verse 17, “the word of Christ.” “Faith comes through hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.”
The word of Jesus Christ is the gospel. What is that word, it is the story of God who made us in his image but because of sin, that image has been effaced and marred and ruined, so God came into the world in Jesus, who lived the life we know we ought to but fail at and then died a death in our place to satisfy justice for sin and evil, and then rose again to make all things new beginning with our hearts.
The word of Christ is the message of the gospel. When I asked my wife the other day what gospel I preach, this was her response. She quoted Jesus words in Mark 2:17 “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” I’ve just been meditating on that verse the last 4 days ever since she said that. The word of Christ is that we are all sick and Jesus is the great physician. On one hand I feel as though I’m always trying to convince you all that we’re all sick because we don’t want to think that. And on the other hand I am always trying to convince us all that Jesus is real and what he did is real and it can really save us and heal us.
Some of you I’m afraid you are real good at making friends with non-Christians, building a platform for the gospel…but you never get to sharing the word of Christ. So on one hand I say, we need to contextualize, yes. But on the other hand I say, contextualizing is meaningless if you never get to the gospel. Saint Francis of Assisi is famous and often quoted for saying, “Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary use words.” I don’t like that. I understand what he is getting at, that our lives and deeds, contextualization, needs to precede the gospel. But here is the plain truth, you have not preached the gospel until you use words. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.
How you preach the gospel is getting to know people and finding out where and how their lives are broken because everyone’s is and then you apply the medicine of the good news message of Jesus. We are all those who must preach the gospel so that people can hear the gospel, because if we do not, no one would ever come to Christ, you preaching is the means God has chosen.
Well, we’ve spent a lot of time on that today, but I felt that it is important. We finally have a small but strong real core here at The Resolved Church and I want us to understand that we are missionaries in this city and I want us to be good missionaries.
Must Sent
Okay let’s move on and talk about the last point for today, being sent. Verse 15, “And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!’”
Being sent. First this builds on the idea of a herald. A gospeler or good newsist in Bible times was someone commissioned, sometimes hired by the government to go out into the street and declare either a victory of war, or a new edict/law, to announce a birth. That’s what they did. Paul picks up that cultural thing and applies it here because he recognizes the theological significance of us as Christians being sent by God and how important that is for us in sharing the gospel.
Let me explain. Jesus says in John 20:21 “As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” Jesus was sent into this world to seek and save the lost. And now he has commissioned us to go out and he has sent and entrusted us with his message, Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.
Here is the layer beneath the layer, the layer I hope makes its way into your heart today…the feeling, the holy weight and privilege that God has entrusted to us, the most precious thing in all of history and existence, his one and only Son Jesus. There is nothing more important than Jesus and God has entrusted the message of Jesus to us! That ought to put a burden in you, a conviction.
Paul, the human author of Romans, said this in another one of his letters, “Our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction (1 Thess 1:5).” Do you have conviction today that you are a sent one into San Diego, even if you were born here, but sent here by God? Oh I hope you catch that today.
I feel that. If you know me I am leery of hearing voices in my head and calling them God. I don’t recommend that as the normal way a Christian hears God’s voice, he speaks in His Word. But though I’ve never heard a voice I can say with all honesty in my heart, I believe God called me to San Diego, to love the people here for their sake of knowing Jesus.
You see being sent, provides this confidence and authenticity behind your life and your words. Sometimes one of the ailments of our age is there is so much out there with the worldwide web, information highway, so many ideas…that we get afraid and don’t have any confidence or assurance because we fear what we put our stake might turn out to be wrong. Not with the gospel. The gospel reads us and is more true than anything.
Look for a second at the phrase here, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the news.” This is a really interesting verse. It’s a quote from Isaiah in the Old Testament. It has the idea of being sent in it because, the feet reference is the idea of traveling. They didn’t have telephones, or email, or text messaging…so if news or a message was to be delivered it had to be in person. People didn’t wear shoes like we do, but dirty open toed sandals, and they walked around in dirt. And these feet are beautiful.
The word beautiful in the Greek here is an interesting word, there’s really no good English word to translate it to. Oraios, it is the idea of the ripe, flourishing time or season, when a piece of fruit turns, it’s colors come out and it’s taste and flavor is sweet and good. Such a picture…you put that together with the bearer of the good news, shared at the right time, when a platform has been built and a door for the gospel opens up…and to the person it is the most beautiful and sweet and right thing they have ever heard.
This is a different way of mission and evangelism than I was taught. I was taught that it means you have a speech you share and that it is it. Some taught me that it’s the Romans road, the four spiritual laws you share and if you don’t do that you didn’t share the gospel. I just don’t think so. I think some of the most powerful and awesome times I have shared about Jesus is when I didn’t have some preplanned speech but spoke out of the honesty of my soul about what I really believed. And you tell someone that you believe that is the reason you believe God put you in your life, because he sent and entrusted this thing with you, the story of Jesus which means everyone’s story. That’s powerful.
For most, the world and their lives are spinning out of control. If this text can grip you so that you’re individual identity and our identity as a church as a whole is to say, God has destined us to be here and has sent us here for this reason, that will turn this city upside-down.
Conclusion
Well, let’s conclude. You may have noticed that throughout this sermon I have really only been addressing these points as though all of us are on the inside and this is our commission from Jesus for those on the outside. That is true. But let me turn it around on us and make us the recipients as though each of us is on the outside.
Has someone ever told you God sent them to you? Let me tell you today, God sent me to you because the God I know sent his son Jesus out of the heavens into this world to seek out and save me and now Jesus has sent me to you because God cares about you and your life.
Have you ever had someone really preach the gospel to you? Let me preach the gospel to you today and say, “I know your life is messed up, and what you need is Jesus.” God sent me to you to tell you that you are a sinner and I know deep inside you are not the way you want to be and not the way God intends for you to be as his image bearer that he created. God sent me to tell you about Jesus. Because he is the exact image of God, and his life never got messed up in sin like your life and mine and he died for you and for me in our place for the justice against sin and evil and he rose again in new life so that our lives might be changed and renewed into the love and goodness of God.
Have you ever really heard the gospel? I know you may have heard someone say similar things, maybe even from me before, but have you ever really heard the gospel? Let me implore you today to open your heart and hear and listen to the voice of Jesus saying, “Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest for your soul.” The weight of sin on your own is too heavy, give it up to Jesus and let him carry it for you.
Do you believe? Maybe you’ve accepted some things intellectually, or grown up Christian, or had some experience long in the past now…are you believing now? Plead with God in this moment to open up your eyes to see the wonder and beauty and glory of Jesus. Plead with him to help you see your deficiencies and how dependant you upon him as your savior.
Have you called? The bitter joyous call of the thief on the cross, “Lord save me…only you can.” Call out to him today from your gut. Ask him to change you and renew you and make you more like him. Give your life away today and seek out the savior while he may be found.
Let’s pray.