You Will Be Saved

electronic assistant there has got us all ready to go. I want to start to use a passage from Romans chapter 10 and start at verse 5. But always in this book particularly, it's a sequence of events that are taking place and this helps us always to go back and see the issues that are raised and then see the way that Paul is identifying or dealing with these issues. And what he was talking about, what Paul was talking about was the way that Jewish people had come to think of salvation. So I'm going to start reading verse 1 to get that in our minds. Brothers, 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're zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God that sought to establish their own righteousness. They did not submit to God's righteousness. Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. In this passage, the phrase that keeps coming up, the word that keeps coming up is righteousness. And what Paul was talking about was that they didn't know the righteousness that comes from God. And he's talking about what he's already discussed a lot in this book previously, and that is that righteousness comes by faith, by trusting God, depending on God, yielding your life to God's control. So that the righteousness by faith, as he pointed out, came through Abraham and through all the people of the Old Testament. This righteousness was not the result of the works of the law. He went back to say that Abraham did not have the law, so he couldn't keep the law. He was trying to address the issue that the Jewish people thought, if they did everything in the Old Testament law, that they would become righteous people. That their righteousness was the result of their own human effort and what they did. And that idea is still around. You'll find a lot of people who say, well, I hope I'm good enough to go to heaven. You'll find a lot of people that say, well, I'm better than most people around, and so I should get to go to heaven. That's the idea the Jews had. They focused on the law of the Old Testament, but people today just focus on being good, as defined by themselves or the community around them. So he's saying, people who thought that if I did certain things, I would be able to establish the righteousness of God in my life. And he said that was a big mistake. The Jews could not do that. It never was what God intended. Since they didn't know or experience the righteousness that comes from God, that is, this righteousness by faith, they sought to establish their own righteousness by defining themselves what it meant to be a righteous person, doing what the Old Testament law says you should do. Now, he's describing people who try to make themselves righteous, and he contrasts with, they did not submit to God's righteousness. They did not do what God said they should do, which is to place their faith and trust in Christ. Now, there's another kind of fallacy that comes here, and that is that people who've decided, I'm not going to earn the righteousness by doing good things, think, well, now all I have to do is to say, I believe in Jesus Christ, go to the front of the church, pray a sinner's prayer, be baptized, join a church, and then I have that, and I can live any way I want to. We have that fallacy too. What Paul is trying to say is that this faith in Christ is different than just saying words. It is a lifestyle. Now, that's what he set up to talk about in chapter, in verse 5. Now, he's going to define what he sees, what he's earlier talked about, as submitting to God's righteousness. What is God's righteousness? Moses described in this way the righteousness that is by the law, and he quotes two verses of scripture. The first one is from Leviticus chapter 18, verse 5. This passage, Moses is talking about the law. The book of Leviticus is the book of the law, and Moses is talking about what they need to do. Here he's described, Moses in this one chapter has described many things, do not honor, dishonor your parents, all kinds of sexual laws. In chapter 18, verse 5, he starts it by saying, Keep my decrees and laws, for the man who obeys them will live by them. I am the Lord. Now, in this passage, it sounds like he's saying to the people, by keeping the law, you will find righteousness and you will live a righteous life. What is missing from this, borrowing this verse from the Old Testament, is the idea that every person who is a part of the community of faith has made a promise to God to say a pledge to live in obedience to him, a pledge of faith and trust. And just using this idea as a way of saying this is all that it takes, just obeying these rules, is a misunderstanding of that. Moses describes the righteousness that is by the law, the man who does these things will live by them. But the righteousness that is by faith says, Do not say in your heart who will ascend to heaven, that is, to bring Christ down. Now, that passage of scripture is found in Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 12. These two passages he's using out of the Old Testament for a very important reason. He's writing this letter to Jews and Gentiles. He wants to tell them, he's been talking about this throughout the book of Romans, that the ideas that come now in Christ are not new. They have deep roots in the Old Testament. And there's no differentiation between those. So he's using the Old Testament language to help them understand what he's talking about with righteousness. Chapter 30 of the book of Deuteronomy, verse 12. It is not up, it is, let me start back at 11. Now, what I'm commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. That's an important sentence to understand what he's talking about. He was talking about if they obeyed the Lord, they would find the life that God had given them. Now he says to them, the things I've told you to do are not difficult. They're not hard. It's not up in heaven so that you have to ask who will ascend to heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so that we might obey it. It's not a mystery, he said, as to what God requires of you. It's not like you have to say, oh, it's so far away, we have to climb up in heaven and find it, we have to get somebody to go up there and get it for us. It's not up there. Nor is it beyond the sea so that you have to ask who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so that we might obey it. It's not like you have to travel around the world to find God's wisdom. Moses is giving it to them right here. Then verse 14, now the Word is very near you, it is in your mouth and in your heart. Now that's all that Paul quotes. He doesn't end it by saying, so that you may obey it. Because he's using this verse to talk not about the Old Testament law, but he's using it to talk about Christ. Because he sees in Christ this message of God, the new law. And so he's using this Old Testament passage to describe what we can find in Christ. So that's what his language is. But the righteousness, this is by faith. So you do not say in your heart, and he means, and maybe a better translation of this, is to say you don't say to yourself. Now what Moses was talking about in Deuteronomy, he was saying to them, don't ever say that you yourself can do these things, nor that it's hard. Don't get the arrogance of saying we can handle this on our own. And that idea he carries to here. Don't say to yourself, well I can go up in heaven and get this, or I can go down in the earth to get this. Don't think that this is something that you yourself can achieve, the righteousness of God. He's talked about a lot in chapter 9, about the fact that the righteousness of God is a gift. It is something God gives to us, we don't earn it. So now he's saying, don't think inside of yourself that this is something you have to achieve, or that you could achieve if you even tried. Who will ascend to heaven? Now that's a quotation from the Old Testament, but he here introduces, the Old Testament they were saying, who can go up in heaven and get the Word from God? You remember how John described Jesus as the Word, the message from God? So Paul uses that idea. Who can ascend to heaven? That is to bring Christ down to us. Now he's using the quote from Deuteronomy about going up and coming down as sort of the pattern. He's not saying it's chronologically. Who can go up and get Christ and bring him down? Who will descend into the deep? That is to bring Christ up from the dead. Now he's talking now about events that took place in Jesus' life. The ascent, we know, into heaven was after Christ's death. Here he brings it, he talks about the ascent, who can go up into heaven and get him. He uses that first because that's what's in Deuteronomy. But what he's talking about here is simply saying, none of us could go down in the grave and bring Jesus to life, and none of us can make him go into heaven. All these things that happen in Jesus' life are above and beyond our control. We can't make the things of the Gospel come true. These are not something that we can do. This is all a gift from God. It's something he does. But what does it say? He's now going back to the passage in the Old Testament. The Word is near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart. That's the quote he wanted to get from Deuteronomy. The message of God is right before you. You don't have to worry about any Herculean effort to be able to find it. It's right here in front of you. It's made clear. It's presented to you. It is in your mouth. That is, you can speak the Word of faith and it's in your heart. You can have a faith and trust inside of yourself toward God. A Word that you speak and a Word that is inside of you. The Word that's in your heart. Faith is inside of you. It's an ability you have to profess your faith and an ability you have to exercise your faith. Now, he expounds on this to help us get the grip to the depth of it. That is the Word of faith that we're proclaiming. This message that we're preaching. That if you confess with your mouth. See, that's the part that says it's in your mouth. If you confess with your mouth. Now, this is an important word for us because it has significance. It's kind of a legal word. It's a word that you would use if you had somebody on the stand who was accused of a crime and they said, I admit that I did this. I own up to the responsibility of what I've done. It's a legal oath that you make. So, he's saying that what's in your mouth is the ability to make a declaration of faith in Christ. So that it can be spoken. It's in your mouth and in your heart. The Word of faith that we're proclaiming. That if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord. This is the oldest confession of faith that we know in the Scriptures. The phrase, Jesus is Lord, is maybe a difficult phrase for us to grasp. Because we don't have in our culture anything equivalent to this word for Lord. We don't have people who are slave owners here. We don't have people who are in control of the life of another person completely and totally. Like this word would express. Maybe the most likely illustration that our culture would have is the highest commanding officer in the military. A general. I don't know what all of them are in the Navy or in the Air Force, but the five-star general who's in charge of everything. Everyone is responsible to him. And the person who has the right to send you into battle that might cost you your life. The person who has the right to do everything so that you're completely under their authority and control. So to confess Jesus as Lord is an admission of the authority of Christ over you. The authority of Christ over your mind. The authority of Christ over your behavior. The authority of Christ over your lifestyle. It is the acknowledgement of giving yourself in submission to someone who's going to control your whole entire life. When we say Jesus is Lord, it is in our language not that powerful a confession because the word Lord is foreign to us. It's kind of a word that we just use it saying Jesus is God. Kind of a neutral word without much commitment or responsibility to it. But when Jesus when when Paul is talking about this, he's saying when you stand to confess that Jesus is Lord, this is a powerful confession. In fact, the Bible says that no one can say Jesus is Lord without the power of the Holy Spirit to prompt that. See, when we say no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the power of the Spirit. We think of that saying, well, I can say that. Anybody can say it. Anybody can talk and say those words. But it's not saying you can't repeat these words. It's saying you cannot say I surrender my whole life completely to the authority and power of God. Unless the Spirit of God has convinced you that God is reliable, that Jesus is reliable. No one can say those words and give this confession of their surrender to God until they believe he's reliable and until they believe that he has their best interest at heart. No one can do this until they believe that doing things the way Jesus tells them to do it is the right way to do. Even though their own human nature might not say that. Somebody told me the other day that there was someone talking about their Christian faith and they'd come on Wednesday nights and heard me talking about how the Bible talks about tithing and giving. And they just said, well, they could believe in God and they could believe in the Christian life, but they just couldn't believe in tithing. Well, you see, here's the issue that Paul is bringing to our attention. When you say to Jesus, you are in charge of my life and everything in it, you're saying you're in charge of all my money. When someone says I can believe in God, but there are certain things in the Bible that I just can't accept and I don't think I have to do those. It's like the person that gets in the army and says, well, yeah, I'm in the army and I'm willing to be a soldier, but I'm not going to get up and move out of my hometown. I'm not going to go over and live somewhere I have never been before. And if they tell me to go out there and start shooting at people and letting people shoot at me, I'm not going. I just tell you, you're not in the army. If that's your attitude, you cannot say Jesus Christ is in charge of anything, everything in my life and then pick and choose the things that you want to accept, take outside that promise. The Holy Spirit has to say to you, Jesus is so reliable that you can say to him, I will do anything and everything you tell me. There's a lot of discussion about the moral decline in our country and the moral decline in the churches. And it's right at this point. So many people have joined the church. They're baptized, but they have a whole list of things that they don't trust God with in their life. I let you be the Lord of my eternity. So when I die, you can take me to heaven. But there's a whole lot of things between now and then that are just too difficult for me. If I start giving my money away to you, I'll starve to death. I won't be able to buy the things I want. So I'm going to check that one off. That's not going to work. If I take time to read the Bible and pray every day, I won't be able to get all my work done and the things I enjoy doing. So I'm going to have to check that one off here too. If I am supposed to come to church regularly instead of sleeping in on Sunday morning, that's not going to work for me. I mean, I'll be tired all day long on Monday. So I'm going to have to check that one off. There's a lot of people who say Jesus is Lord, but they have all these things that the Bible clearly says you must do, and they've said, but I'm not going to do those. What Paul is talking about when he says, you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you're making a promise, a vow, like a legal vow. I yield authority of my life to Jesus. It's like a man in those days would say, I am going to become a slave of someone. I give up my freedom. I'll move to the house where he says I should live. I will let him tell me what to do with my time. I will let him tell me what to do with my money. I will let him tell me what to do with my family. He will now, from this moment on, be in charge of my whole life. See, many people think that you can profess Jesus is Lord, say I give my life to Jesus, and then begin to live making the choices you want to without regard to what God says. Paul, when he says that a person can confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, is not saying you can say the words Jesus is Lord and you become a follower of His. He's not saying that. Now, he makes that clear in his following discussion. And that is, if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Now, the two things that he's talking about are the mouth and the heart. What you say with your mouth, you must, inside of you, trust is true. The heart is an idea of the inner part of the human nature with all of your life. The heart is representative here of you as a person. So, I believe with my life that Jesus Christ is alive. It's not that He lived on the earth, but He's alive now. And He is the Lord of my life and the ruling authority. It's not that Jesus is dead, but He's alive. I'm giving myself to someone who's a living person now in this world, so that my relationship with Christ is one that is living and vital. So, if you say, I believe God raised Him from the dead and He's now alive and this allegiance that I'm pledging to Him is to a living being and I accept His authority over my life and allow Him to do it, then you live in that obedience and you live in that dependence and then you will be saved. It is with the mouth you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, everyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame. Now, what Paul is describing is a lifestyle of living as if Christ were controlling your behavior. You will never be put to shame or you'll never be disappointed. It's another way of saying the same thing. The person who makes this declaration of their life and this dependence of their life will come to find this salvation that God has presented. Now, Paul has been talking about the Jews and the Gentiles and how everyone has fallen away from God and resisted His authority. Everyone's rebelled against Him. He's talking about faith of Abraham and that faith is made available also for Gentiles. And now he begins to sum up what the depth and the breadth of this salvation experience is. Verse 10, For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified and with your mouth that you confess and are saved. With your heart you believe and with your mouth you confess. Those two dimensions. With all of your spiritual nature, you confess with your mouth and with all of your spiritual nature, you live in trust. The Scripture says, Everyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame for there is no difference between the Jew and the 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. Now, beginning with verse 11, I want you to look at this. Over and over again, he makes this emphasis. For the Scripture says, Everyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame. There's no difference between the Jew and the Gentile. He expounds on that everyone. The same Lord is Lord of all. That same word is used again. The word everyone and the word all are very same word in the Greek language from which this is translated. And richly blesses all the third time who call on Him. For everyone the fourth time who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. What Paul is saying to this Roman Church in which there were both Jews and Gentiles is that the same message of salvation is given to both. What Paul was pointing back to was in Deuteronomy where he was giving the instructions that the salvation message is given now in Christ and it's available to everyone. And to everyone who makes this profession, the same result comes. The presence of Christ in their life to change everything. Everyone who trusts in Him will never be disappointed. For the same Lord is Lord of every person, Jew and Gentile. And richly blesses everyone who makes this profession and confession and blesses all who call on Him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Now what he means when he talks about calling on the name of the Lord is a phrase that's sort of a little odd to us. But he means when you call on Christ for who He is. If I say Haley, does anybody here think I'm talking about them besides her? Just her. The name of the Lord is when you direct to Him everything that He is. What's unique about her? Well, it's what she looks like, it's the way she acts, where she was born, what she lives. All these things are unique to her. What is unique to Christ is His life. And the Bible describes the life of Christ in this phrase, the name of the Lord. Our name is identified with who we are. We and our name are the same. So when you call on the name of the Lord, you are calling on the Lord, who He is. And when you confess that He is the Lord of your life, you're confessing in Him that you trust Him that much. And you're trusting in Him and depending on Him completely. Now when you do that, it is available for everyone. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord to say, you are my authority, you are my power. Everyone who does that will be saved. Now, when Paul talks about this salvation experience, this faith that comes from our trust in Christ, he is not talking about a life in which there is no moral lifestyle. That's all connected to it. Because the Lord will teach you, encourage you, and demand of you the same moral lifestyle He has. The Lord will demand of you the same behavior He has. And He came and lived on this earth so we can see exactly what we should be living like. And when you say, you are my Lord, you're saying, I am pledging myself to live in obedience to you. It's not that you can say, I trust Jesus Christ and I'm going to be saved, and then you can go on living the way you've always done. That's not possible if Christ is in control of your life. Debbie is a nurse practitioner. And if somebody comes to you and they have a disease or an illness, and they ask you what they should do, and you give them a regimen of what they should eat, and medicine they should take, and the behavior they need to follow, and they call on you for that from your position as a nurse practitioner, and then they walk away and say, I went to the nurse, Debbie, and I haven't gotten any better whatsoever. She might ask, did you take the medicine I asked you to take? Did you do the exercise I asked you to do? Did you do the lifestyle I asked you to do? And if they said no, then they really haven't trusted her. When you trust Christ, he guarantees salvation based on the fact that he's the authority of your life. Now, when we come to church to worship, worship is simply saying to God, you are in charge. That's what worship is. We come there to acknowledge the supreme authority of God, and then we leave to live out the supreme authority of God. Wayne was telling a story about a menialist couple in the guy at Moses' yard. He's going to talk, he went interested in inviting them to come to church and getting their kids in Bible school. God says to Wayne and Joanne, now here's what I want you to do. And they say, well, I don't want to do that. I mean, if God said that's what I want you to do, that's an order. It's not a suggestion. It's not up to a vote for the two of you. It's God saying, here's what I want you to do. And whenever you leave the church, and you said Jesus Christ is the ruler of my life, and he says, I want you to write a letter, a note to these people, or call them on the phone, or go see them, or invite them to come to church, or enroll their kids in Bible school, and you say, I don't want to do that. He's not in charge of your life. When you say, yes, I'll do it, you have worshipped God. You have said, you are in charge of my behavior. And when you do what your commanding officer tells you to do, it's a verification that you're in the army. The commanding officer told me to do this, and I went out and did exactly what he told me. The act of obedience to your commanding officer is your way of saying, I am in the service, and that person is in charge of me. Every act of obedience that you do to God is an act of worship. God does not like it when we come to church, out of a whole week of disobedience, and start saying, oh, how I love Jesus. It's offensive to Him. Just like if you were in charge of a group of people who were soldiers under you, and you told them what they were supposed to do, and they said, you're the most wonderful officer we've ever had. You send them out to do something, and they don't do it. They come back and say, boy, we love you as an officer. You say, well, you don't do what I tell you. How can you love me as an officer? You don't have respect for me. You don't trust my position of authority. Worship is connected with faith, confessing Jesus as Lord. When you confess Him as Lord, and you live in obedience to that, your obedience confesses this. It is both the word of your life, and the action of your life, that is wrapped up in what he's saying here. With your mouth you confess, and with your life you live. Your trust in Christ. Now, he's going back now to address what he said before to these people about their Jewish past. It's not that you can say that the righteousness we've earned because we've done all these good deeds. It's not that you can say that now I've trusted God, and I believe in Him, and I don't have to do the good deeds. Here's the order it comes in. You say to Christ, I trust you with my life, and I confess you as my Lord and Savior. And then, you begin to do what he tells you. Your righteousness comes with faith. And your lifestyle then becomes a lifestyle of righteousness because it's an obedience to the one who's in charge. Should the believer in Christ have righteousness and righteous behavior? Yes. But they have it as a result of their submission to God. That's how you know salvation has come. There are so many people in evangelical churches who've made professions of faith and trust, and their lifestyle does not yield this life of obedience. What Paul is indicating is that the righteousness of Christ is the righteousness that has faith as its source. And the faith is the source of the righteous lifestyle. Both of those have to come before a person can claim to be a child of God. Would you bow your heads for a moment? I want to challenge you with this. If you have professed your faith in Christ, and we do that at baptism, when a person says, I give my complete life to Christ, we bury them in the water and say, your old life is over, you're no longer in charge of your life, and we raise them up to say, now Christ is in charge of your life because of the promise you've made. You live that promise. If Christ is in charge of your life, He will day by day direct you. I'd like you to think of one thing that you know this week God wants you to do. I've got mine. Now, knowing what God wants you to do is talking to Him and hearing Him. Doing that is your act of worship. So, Father, we leave here tonight to worship you. To not only say to the world, you're the Lord of our lives by our voice, but to say it by our heart. That is our nature, our character, our personality, our lifestyle. And we cannot do this apart from the power of your Spirit and the presence of your Spirit in us. Jesus is our Lord. Amen. Thank you.