Romans 9:30-10:21 | Against the Tide of Unbelief | Shaun McGregor

Everyone who believes in Christ will be saved. Will you swim against the tide of unbelief and false hope?

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Taken from Romans chapter 9, verse 30 to chapter 10, verse 21. This is found on page 1137 of the Pew Bibles. What then shall we say? That the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith. But the people of Israel, who pursued the law as a way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith, but as if it were by works. They stumble over the stumbling stone, as it is written. See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble, and a rock that makes them fall. And the one who believes in him will never be put to shame. Brothers and sisters, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. Christ is the culmination of the law, so that there may be a righteousness for everyone who believes. Moses writes this about the righteousness that is by the law. But the righteousness that is by faith says, Do not say in your heart, who will descend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down, or who will descend into the deep, that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you, it is in your mouth and in your heart. That is, a message concerning faith that we proclaim. If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As scripture says, Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame, for there is no difference between Jew and Gentile. The same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call in him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news? But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our message? Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ. But I ask, did they not hear? Of course they did. Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. Again I ask, Did Israel not understand? First, Moses says, I will make you envious by those who are not a nation. I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding. And Isaiah boldly says, I was found by those who did not seek me. I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me. But concerning Israel, he says, All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.

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As Christians, we know, don't we, that we are out of step. We go against the tide of our world. Christians live differently. Hence our series title this term, Against the Tide. We have different values, different ways of using our money. There are certain ethical issues that we are likely to think differently on. But underneath all of that, what really matters is that we go against a tide of unbelief. For it seems in our world that people are convinced that the Christian message, the message about Jesus, the things that are recorded in the Bible are not worth believing. That they are unbelievable. But the world will tell us that doesn't matter in the end. Because it doesn't matter what you believe. Can we live with that as Christians? No. Christians are convinced, aren't we, that the Bible speaks the truth? That it speaks to us of Jesus, who is the truth, and that it really matters whether you believe in him or not. We go against a tide of unbelief. And could it just be? Could it just be as we see this morning that everyone who believes in Jesus will be saved? And that means that good people will miss out on being saved. Could it just be that we need to go against the tide of our own unbelief? Firstly, everyone who believes in Christ will be saved. It's always been God's plan to gather his people together. And because that's his plan, ever since we turned against him, we sinned and were under his judgment. God has had a plan to save people. And so he gave his people, the Jewish people, a law. He gave them a law through his prophet Moses, a law full of commandments of things to do and sacrifices that would pay for when they failed to do them. I think I used to think, actually, that this law that God gave his people in the Old Testament, that if you followed the law, it would not work. And that's why the Jews weren't saved. And so God had to come up with a plan B. A plan B that somehow didn't involve the law. But look there in chapter 9, verse 30. Paul says, the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have obtained it. A righteousness that is by faith. But the people of Israel who pursued the law as the way of righteousness have not attained their goal. Why not? It wasn't a problem with the law, says Paul, because they pursued it not by faith, but as if it were by works. We'll see a little later what it means that they pursued it by works. But do you see there in verse 32 there was a way of using the law. There was a way of following the law. There was a way of believing the law that would mean you would be saved. You would pursue it by faith. How did that work? By doing the commandments. By believing that the sacrifices that God had given you would pay for when you failed, and when you failed, knowing that one day there would be someone who would do the commandments and do them perfectly. How could the Jews be right with God? God gave them a law that if they pursued it by faith, if they believed, they would be saved. What about the rest of humanity? Christ saves everyone who believes. Do you see the promise there in verse 11? As Scripture says, Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame. For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile. The same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. The law was the way to be saved. The Jews had the law, they just needed to pursue it by faith, by trusting. How then now can anyone be saved? Have a look back at verse four. Christ, that's Jesus, is the culmination of the law, so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. If you did the commandments and trusted in the sacrifices, and knew that one day someone would do the law perfectly, you would be saved. Christ did the commandments. And so now we have this very great promise. Verse 9. If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. Can you see what a tremendous, wonderful promise this is? Here is a promise that there is a way to be saved. You will be saved. A promise. And what is the way to be saved? Verse 9. If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Declare with your mouth. For what you what comes out of your mouth reveals what is in your heart. Believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, and declare with your mouth, therefore, that Jesus is Lord, and you will be saved. Sometimes people talk about believing in God as if that's what being a Christian is about. If someone asks you, what does it mean to be a Christian? Or they describe asked you, How did you become a Christian? Would you start with, I came to believe in God? Can you see here that a Christian is someone who does not just believe in God. No, it is not about God directly that he speaks. If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, that the man who walked the earth, the man who walked the earth and who died and who was raised from the dead is the Lord of all the universe. Jesus is Lord. God raised him from the dead, having paid for sin and now to rule the universe. Jesus is Lord. If you believe in your heart and declare with your mouth, you will be saved. Is it compulsory to declare with your mouth? It is. If you have the ability to speak. If someone is mute and cannot speak, God can see their heart. If someone used to be able to speak, but through their dementia can no longer speak. Indeed, if someone in their dementia can no longer, as I was talking with someone this week whose father had died of dementia, if someone can can no longer form the thoughts in their heart, but has been saved because they believed, they are still saved, clearly. But the message is clearly here, isn't it? The way to be saved is to believe in your heart and to declare with your mouth. Like when Paul was asked by the jailer in Philippi, what must I do to be saved? The answer was simple. Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved. It's a precious promise because it's for anyone. Verse 11. Jew or Gentile, you can have a high IQ or a low IQ. You don't need to know much, do you? Jesus is Lord and God raised him from the dead. You can be good or bad. A few years ago now, a number of people were on death row in Indonesia, some of them Australians. Do you remember the Bali 9? Some of you? They had been drug smugglers. And many people die as a result of drug smugglers, don't they? It is a terrible crime. These people were found guilty, they were not denying their guilt, as far as I know. And Andrew Chan, one of the members of the Bali Nine, on death row, having been convicted, he had come to believe that Jesus is Lord and that God had raised him from the dead. He said, Jesus was sent to the earth to die on the cross to redeem the world. Whoever believes in him will grasp a life that will be eternal. And as he stood before the firing squad, he sang of his confidence in the Lord Jesus. Should he have had such confidence? Or was Jesus hung on the cross? Do you remember? A man hung on the cross next to him, not a thief, but a terrorist, a rebel against the Roman Empire. He admitted. He admitted that he himself deserves to die, but Jesus did not. And he said to Jesus, When you come into your kingdom, Jesus, you are Lord. And I know that God will raise you from the dead. And Jesus said, Today you will be with me in paradise. Everyone who believes in Christ will be saved. So we must go against the tide of unbelief. There are so many people who say the Christian truth is unbelievable, but that it's okay, really, it doesn't matter. You may believe whatever you want to believe. Many people will object. Why would God care what we believe? As if the one thing that God cares about is whether you believe in him or not. I went to the public school down the road at Roseful. We had a motto at our school, it was in Latin, because in those days that was the impressive thing to do. The motto was factor non verba. Anyone know Latin? Can anyone work it out? Factor deeds. Verba words. What matters in life are deeds, not words. Why would God care what I think, what I believe, what I say about Jesus? But God does care what we say about Jesus. For Jesus is the one who has done the law for us. He has paid for us. And in any relationship, trust is key, isn't it? Believing is trusting. And if someone has saved you or offers to save you, whether you trust them or not is essential. If you will not trust them, then you will not be saved. So let me ask you: here is the promise. If you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Do you believe? And do you know that you are saved? Will you believe God's promise here? Some people will say you can never know that you are saved because you can never be good enough. There is no good enough in this verse, is there? The word good is not mentioned. It is simply believing. Last week we saw that God chooses those on whom he will have mercy. And so some of us were asking, well, then, what if he hasn't chosen me? How can I know then if I have eternal life? Well, Ephesians 2, we were dead. How would we come to believe in the Lord Jesus without God choosing us? If you believe in the Lord Jesus, then clearly he has chosen you. And here is the promise. If you believe in the Lord Jesus, that he is Lord, and that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved. The message really is that good. I love the image at the end of verse 15. How then can they call on the one they have not believed in? How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it's written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. Do you have beautiful feet? Have you ever looked down at your feet in the summertime? I know you don't see them in the wintertime, you're rugged up. But in the summertime, have you ever looked down at your feet and said, gee, they are beautiful feet, aren't they? At my last church, there was a man who wrote songs for us to sing. He wrote a song called Beautiful Feet. One of the lines was that I remember, we don't think they look neat, but we have beautiful feet. I gathered together with the scripture teachers this week after we'd gone into the classrooms and told the students about the Lord Jesus. I gathered together with my growth group this week, and both times I reflected, I should have asked us to take our shoes off, to take our socks off. For we have beautiful feet when we go to share the good news with people, because the good news is that good. How can they hear without someone sharing it with them? Just this week I was reading about a drug company that had put out a drug called Zolodex that would treat people who had had breast cancer. It was a life-saving drug. But as they negotiated with the government, with the PBS, to see whether it would be available to women here in Australia, the company decided that it just wasn't worth it. That the price that the government was offering wasn't enough for them to recoup their costs. It had cost them a lot to develop this drug and to produce it. They were a company trying to make money and they couldn't afford to offer it in Australia. So they withdrew it. As you can imagine, there was an uproar. How could a company act like this? As if they were there to make money. There was a petition. And this week the drug company, even a drug company, announced that they would offer the drug for free. Completely free. Because people needed it. God has given his son at great cost to save people. All the people need is to hear the message that they might be saved, that they might believe and be saved. How could we not share it with people? As we teach our children, and we teach our children all sorts of things, don't we? It'd be a terrible disaster if our children learnt from us that actually Christianity in the Bible was all about being good and responsible. Do you think your children are learning that from you? Or are they most learning that what is most precious is that when you believe in the Lord Jesus, your sins are forgiven and you know you are saved? Who is it that you could share this news with this week? Who could you invite to our international dinner? A first easy step for people to be invited to explore the Christian faith. How can they hear without someone speaking it to them? Christ saves everyone who believes. How is it then that if the message is so good and that if it's so simple to respond, how is it then Paul is asking that so many of his own people are not believing and will miss out? Everyone who believes in Christ will be saved, and so good people will miss out. In chapter 10, verse 1, Paul says, My heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites, the Jews, is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. If anyone should have known about Jesus, if anyone should have believed in Jesus, it was the Jewish people. They had the law, they knew that they should do the commandments, and when they failed, they could trust the sacrifices to save them, and that one day God would send someone who would do the commandments perfectly. The whole law was to lead them to Christ. They of all people should have been saved. And yet, instead of pursuing it by faith, chapter 9, verse 32, they pursued it not by faith, but as if it was by works. Imagine this, you've gone to see Ularu, the great rock in the centre of Australia, and you wake up early in the morning because the heat is so strong, and you are keen to walk there and get to the rock. You follow the signs, you are walking down the right path, and you are so eager to do it right so that you will not miss Uluru that you keep your head down looking at the path. Perhaps you have one of those step counters, or you're so keen on getting your steps for the day that you are looking down at your phone the whole time, and looking down at the way that you walk, getting your walking right. Imagine you do the walking so well. Your focus is so much on your steps that you walk straight into the rock, trip on it, and stumble over. Paul says that's exactly what the Jews have done. Verse 32 they pursued it not by faith, but as if it were by works, by the things they were doing. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it is written, see, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble, and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame. Like walking down a path to where you are going to see the rock. They have instead walked down the path, followed the law meticulously, as if it were by works, and it was meant to lead them to Jesus, and when they've come to Jesus, they have missed him completely. How could this happen? Did they not have the law? They did. Have they not had people tell them about Jesus? Verse 14. How can they believe in one of whom they have not heard? Of course they have heard in the law and through Paul's ministry. Was it too hard for them to understand? No, verse 19. Even the Gentiles without the law could understand. So how could this happen? How could so many of the Jewish people, good people, zealous to be right with God, not believe in Jesus? Paul has a damning diagnosis, verse 21. Concerning Israel, God says, All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people. The problem is not with their ears, the problem is not with their minds, but with their hearts. They do not want to believe. Last week Paul was answering the question: why is it that so many Jews have not been saved? Has God's word failed? No, God has chosen who he wants to choose, he said. In chapter 10, he's asking the question, how has that happened? And his answer this time is slightly different, isn't it? Verse 21. All day long I have held up my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people. Well, which one is it, Paul? Is it that God chose, and so not everyone has been saved? Or is it that people have rejected of their own will? Well, it's not all, is it? Clearly. Paul says both. God is both sovereign and we are responsible. And we must hold those two things together. Everyone who believes in Christ will be saved, but the Jews were missing out. And that shows us that good people will miss out too. Are the Jews alone in pursuing a law because they think that by their works of the law they will be saved? Of course not. The Muslim person prays five times a day because they think that by that way they will earn paradise. The Buddhist follows the fivefold path because they will reach enlightenment. And in the Catholic religion, you are given many works to do. They're answering the right question, how can you be right with God? And every religion pursues the answer in the same way by your works. My Muslim barber many years ago, as I said to him, that if you simply believed in Jesus, trusted in what Jesus had done, you would be forgiven and be certain of eternal life. He said, it can't be like that. It's like a wage. And you have to earn your way to God, and you can never know whether you have earned enough. In every religion, people are seeking to work and earn their way to God. And in the fastest growing religion in our community, the religion that now has 40% of people, and even more, I suspect, the religion called no religion on the census, our friends and family and neighbors who have turned away from religion but think that things will be okay because they are good. The Jews show us that even when you have God's law, if you pursue being right with God by being good, you will miss out. So we must go against the tide of false hope. Verse 9 is wonderful, isn't it? But it's also very stark. If you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. We need to be saved. Without being saved, everyone is in trouble. And the way to be saved is very clear. It's got nothing to do with what you do, but everything to do with what you believe. And we know so many people who do good things and yet do not believe in Jesus. Today is my father's birthday. He would have been 82 today. He died three years ago. And as far as I know, he never believed in his heart that Jesus is Lord. And so therefore, as far as I know, he never declared that Jesus is Lord. I am not the judge. But from what God has told me, I cannot have confidence that he is now with Jesus, can I? For the promise is clear. If you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. If that had happened on his deathbed, I would have complete confidence. It is a profound personal pain. Paul shows us that at the beginning of chapter 9. But we must live with that profound personal pain rather than entertain false hope. False hope that all will be well as long as our friends, family, and neighbors are nice people. Think for a moment of the nicest person you know. Someone so nice that you long you wish you could be as nice as them. They are genuinely nice. And they are sincere about whatever it is that they believe. Could it be that they will really miss out? Could it be that they really need saving? Now imagine that you have the medicine. That God has given you the medicine that could cure them if only they will believe. We long to share it, don't we? How could you share it with them this week? Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this wonderful promise. That you love to gather your people together. You long to do that, and you're working to do that, and you have given the Lord Jesus that he has died and risen again, and that now, now that he has done everything that needed to be done, you invite us to believe, to believe in our hearts and to profess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord. Father, then help us to believe, to come to him and receive this promise. Help us to rely upon this promise and know that we are saved. And Father, help us not to have false hope for nice people, but instead to have beautiful feet. Feet which bring good news to those who need to hear it. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. How is it that God can offer?