NO REGRETS

God’s Invitation to Grace ❧ Part 47

Romans 10:1-21 ❧ Pastor, Dr. John Denney

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was the famous chemist and bacteriologist who discovered the vaccine for rabies. At the time, thousands of people were dying each year from animals infected with rabies.  After years of working on a vaccine, Pasteur decided it was time to put his vaccine to the test.  About this same time, a panicked young mother heard about Pasteur’s discovery and begged him to give the vaccine to her 10-year-old son Joseph Meister that had been bitten by a rabid dog.  Pasteur injected Joseph for ten days – and the boy lived.  Decades later, of all the things Pasteur could have put on his tombstone, he asked for three words: Joseph Meister Lived. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is about changed lives.  The Bible tells us God sent His Son Jesus Christ to be the Savior of the world.  He is the only Savior.  There is no other.  There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12, NLT).  

I’ve entitled our message today: No Regrets. It seems none of us can get out of this life without some measure of regret.  We regret a broken relationship, words we cannot take back, words we should have said instead, time we didn’t spend with loved ones.  The list is endless.  But there is one regret that eclipses them all – the regret of rejecting God’s forgiveness and new life in Christ.  Most of us understand that. We don’t want to pay the eternal price of rejecting God.  

Turn with me to Romans 10.  We’ve already seen the three chapters of Romans 9-11 are like three bristling porcupines – they have a lot of fine points, but no one wants to get too close to them! They’re difficult chapters that address some sharply pointed teachings such as God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility.  Did God choose me, or did God I choose God?  Paul’s decisive answer is – Yes! Though God is sovereign – He is the potter, and we are clay; He decides how to mold the clay.  Nonetheless, man is still responsible for the choice either to choose or reject God.  How do we reconcile these two great truths – God’s sovereignty and man’s free will?  Someone once put this question to the great preacher Charles Spurgeon.  “I wouldn’t try,” He replied, “I never reconcile friends.”  In Romans 10 Paul is going to answer another thorny question: Why did the Jews rejected their Messiah?  After all, they are God’s privileged people.  It was through the Jews that God gave the world His Word the Bible.  It was through the Jews God gave the Savior of the world the Lord Jesus Christ.  They were the most informed and most prepared, yet they still rejected their Messiah.  Why? Paul is going to answer this question for us in chapter 10.  Paul is using the nation of Israel to demonstrate the fairness of the character of God. Read Romans 10 (New Living Translation). 

Paul gives us what I would call four precautions so that we don’t make the same mistake the Jews made who’ve rejected Christ.  Four safeguards to protect us from stepping over the cliff of ultimate regret. Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?(2 Corinthians 13:5, NLT).  

1. Resist substituting zeal for knowledge.   Refusing to accept God’s way, they cling to their own way of getting right with God by trying to keep the law. For Christ has already accomplished the purpose for which the law was given. As a result, all who believe in him are made right with God(Romans 10:3-4, NLT).  Religious Jews are some of the most zealous people there are.  Even in their unbelief they have a zealous respect for God.  One of my professors, Dr. Allen, a renowned Hebrew scholar and one whom I took Hebrew from in grad school told of a time he was reading his OT in Hebrew while riding a bus in Israel.  Setting next to him was a self-proclaimed Jewish atheist.  When Dr. Allen came to the proper name of God – Yahweh, which a believing Jew would never speak, he read it out loud. The man setting next to him was instantly filled with fear telling the professor he should never say God’s name out loud.  When the professor asked him why, since he had just said he was a self-proclaimed atheist.  The man’s response was classic: “You should never say it just in case it is true!”   

The problem the Jews had, Paul says, is that it wasn’t that they did not know about God, or even that they didn’t know His Law.  Their problem was they saw the Law as a way to lift themselves up to God like climbing the rungs of a ladder.  I read a letter of a Rabbi to a young man who’d trusted Christ revealing the Rabbi did not understand the purpose of God’s Law at all.  The basic question about religion is how to elevate man and bring him into a closer relationship with God. We believe God revealed to us in the Torah (the Law of Moses) how he wants us to live, so that we can be in harmony with his divine purpose. Our role and religious purpose is to obey God’s laws – to love him and to obey him.  We exercise our free will by proper intention and, through having done good deeds, are elevated so that it becomes progressively easier and more natural to continue to do good and resist evil(Hughes, Romans, pp. 179-180).

The Bible says God’s Law is perfect; it reflects His flawless character.  We, on the other hand, are as far from flawless as the east is from the west! The purpose of the Law was never to serve as the rungs of ladder to bring us up to God.  One author noted: Salvation by works is a theoretical possibility.  However like leaping high enough to enter Heaven, it is a practical impossibility (Swindoll, Romans, p. 227).  Paul tells us in Galatians 3:24 that the purpose of the Law was to show us our need for a Savior and guide us to Him.  Jesus is the end of the Law in that He fulfilled the Law for us lifting us to God through our faith in Him.  

The warning is both practical and clear.  Beware of substituting your own well intended but mislead zeal for God for true knowledge.  True knowledge doesn’t mean you have all the right doctrine, read the right Bible translation, go to the right church, or live by Christian morals.  When we rest our faith on these things, we’re substituting our own zeal for what God tells us in the Bible.  Only your faith in Christ alone saves you.  

1. Rest in your faith in Christ alone. Paul asks in verse 8, what does God say in His word regarding salvation?  He’s quoting from a passage in Deuteronomy when God put two choices before the people of Israel shortly before they entered the Promise Land.  God told them He set before them life and death, good and evil, then challenged them to choose (Deut. 30:15-20). He was saying salvation is before you and it is attained by the choice of faith.  This is what he means in vv. 6-7. You don’t have to go to Heaven or into the place of the dead (abyss) to find salvation.  God’s salvation is right in front of you through faith.  Just as Abraham was saved by faith (Genesis 15:6) as well as every other saint in the OT (Heb. 11:2, 39 for by it men of old gained [God’s] approval).  So, Paul says what was true then is still true now:  If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved. As the Scriptures tell us, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced(Romans 10:9-11). 

Paul lists two conditions for being a Christian: Agree that Jesus is Lord (Paul’s meaning of Lord here is God. It is the name most used for God in the OT; over 6,000 times), and that God raised Jesus from the dead.  Notice, he does not say if you confess with your mouth, believe in your heart and don’t wear make-up.  Or confess and believe and promise never to sin.  No.  He says we’re to confess with our mouth and believe with our heart Jesus is Lord and God raised Him from the dead.  That’s it.  This is not easy believism.  Far from it!  True belief may be simple but it is not easy!   

A lot of people confess they believe in God, but their lives don’t show it.  They are professors but not possessors.  You have to have belief as well.  The word belief means to “trust in, cling to, rely on, commit to.”  A lot of people are going to miss heaven by about 18 inches.  There is one key difference between someone who says they believe and someone who really does – commitment.  Find out what a person is committed to in their life and you’ll find out what they really believe.  Paul says that a true believer believes that God raised Jesus from the dead.  The resurrection is the one truth that Christianity rises or falls by.  Paul says if Jesus was not raised from the dead, then our faith is in vain and we our sins are not really forgiven.  God’s salvation means resting our faith in Christ alone. 

1. Reach out to others with God’s love. How can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent? That is why the Scriptures say, “How beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news!(Romans 10:14-15). This is one of the great missionary texts in the Bible.  Why do we have missionaries?  Reach out?  Why do we have evangelism?  He says here, they’re not going to be saved if we don’t tell them. When Christ changes your life, you become the most convincing message people will listen to.

Years ago while I was meeting with a small group, someone asked for prayer for a man who was dying of terminal brain cancer.  Since he lived nearby, I asked if they would ask the man if I could visit him.  The person sharing said, “Oh, no! He wouldn’t want a visit from a pastor. He doesn’t go to church, nor does he want anything to do with Christianity.”  “Well, could you ask him?” I responded.  “The worst he can say is, ‘No’”.  This went on for several weeks and each time I asked if they would ask the man if I could visit.  I always got the same answer.  Finally, she worked up the nerve to ask the man if I could visit him.  To her surprise, he said, yes.  

Soon afterward I went to the man’s house.  As soon as I stepped in the door, he cooly informed me he was not going to be one my death-bed-confessions.  I told him I was there because I cared and whatever else happened was between the man and God.  During our conversation I was able to share the Gospel with him and his wife.  They both trusted Christ and soon began attending church. 

One morning after the service, with a huge smile on his face, the man came walking up to me and said, “If I’d have known coming to church was like this, I’d have been here years ago!” God changed his life because he heard the Gospel.  Reach out to others with God’s love.  

1. Rely on God’s faithfulness to work in the hearts of others.  I was found by people who were not looking for me. I showed myself to those who were not asking for me.” But regarding Israel, God said, “All day long I opened my arms to them, but they were disobedient and rebellious (Romans 10:20-21). Even though Israel refuses to believe and is obstinate about it, God says, “I’m still available to you.  I have never let my arms down from reaching for you.  I will always be here for you.”  That’s the attitude God wants us to have towards others as well.  Even though you reject me, I am still here.  I still waiting.  Israel’s rejection broke Paul’s heart (10:1).  But he didn’t give up on them because he knew God hadn’t. Paul’s continued prayer for them is evidence God is not finished with the nation of Israel.  Nor is He finished with our world.  

A number of years ago I went to New Deli India, to visit one of our missions – India National Inland Mission (INIM). Over fifty years ago a young believer from southern India fresh out of law school went to the train depot because God had told him to go to Norther India and share Christ.  His name was Paul Pauli. He had no money to purchase a ticket.  So he told the train agent his story.  It so happened the agent was a believer and bought a ticket for him.  Paul Pauli boarded a train with no money, no resources, only a passion to share Christ in Northern India, a place known as the “graveyard of missions.”  More than fifty years later, God used him to start an orphanage that eventually became the home for more than 1,200 children, a thriving Bible college and seminary and plant more than 14,500 churches!  He went because he was convinced of God’s faithfulness to change the hearts of others through the Gospel.  

What’s God saying in all this? God is sovereign, but in His sovereignty, there is still human responsibility.  Israel rejected the message of the Gospel not because they didn’t know it, but because they tried to reach God through their own zealous efforts.  Salvation from the very beginning has always been by faith, never by works.  And God is still waiting, with arms open wide for Israel and the world to turn to Him.  The only hope for our world is Jesus Christ.  Paul says anyone who trusts in Christ will not be disappointed (Romans 10:11).  When all is said and done, the greatest regret will been to have rejected Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.  Right now God stands with His hands stretched out waiting for anyone who will come to Him.  But there will come a time when God’s invitation to grace will end.  His hands will lower to His sides, and He will close to door of time as we know it.  His grace will come to an end and His judgement will begin.