Romans Ch 10

This is Stu Epperson from the Truth Talk Podcast, connecting current events, pop culture, and theology, and we're so grateful for you that you've chosen the Truth Podcast Network.

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We appreciate High Point Financial Design and their special focus on intentional planning and abundant living. Continued blessings both from and to to High Point Financial Design and If Not For God with Mike Zwick. Mike Zwick with If Not For God today, and we are doing Romans Chapter 10. Romans Chapter 10. Before I get into this, one of the things that I think about when I think of Romans Chapter 10 is there's a story of a guy who had passed away, and he told his wife that he wanted to be buried with all of his money. Wife said, yeah, I'll do it. And so the guy passed away, and the pastor had actually come up to this lady and said, well, I heard that your husband, he wanted to be buried with all of his money. He said, did you actually do that? And the lady said, yeah, I did. And the pastor's like, no, you didn't do that. And she says, yes, I did. And the pastor said, I can't believe that you took all of his savings, all of his money. You put it in there with him.

You buried him with his money. And she says, yeah, I wrote a check. And so one of the things that I think about is with Romans Chapter 10 is that when you read Romans 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, everything, when it kind of comes together, it comes together as Romans Chapter 10 about what the gospel is and what we're supposed to do and how we're supposed to share the gospel, why we're supposed to share the gospel, and it all makes sense. I heard a story not too long ago, and it said that when Constantine, in the early centuries, when he said that everybody in this country has to be a Christian, that the soldiers who in Constantine's army said, we will be baptized just like you tell us to be baptized. But they said that we are not going to baptize our sword.

So our sword, we're going to hold our sword above the water, and so our sword will not go under with us. And so what they were essentially saying is that, yes, I'll give my whole life to Christ except for the part of my sword, the part where I still want to go into battle and I still want to do it my way, the way that I want to do it. And when you read the Bible, and when you especially read Romans Chapter 10, I really feel if you look at it, you say, man, that's just not the way that it goes. So here we are, Romans 10, and I'm going to be using the New King James Version, and it says, Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

For Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law. The man who does these things shall live by them, but the righteousness of faith speaks in this way. Do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down from above, or who will descend into the abyss, that is, to bring Christ up from the dead.

But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith which we preach. That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, that you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, whoever believes on him will not be put to shame.

For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon him. Verse 13, For whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe on him who they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things, but they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report? So then faith comes by hearing, in hearing by the word of God. But I say, have they not heard?

Yes, indeed. Their sound has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. But I say, did Israel not know? Moses says, I will provoke you to jealousy by those who are not a nation.

I will move you to anger by a foolish nation. But Isaiah is very bold and says, I was found by those who did not seek me. I was made manifest to those who did not ask for me. But to Israel, he says, all day long I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and to a contrary people. And thanks be to God for the reading of his word. You know, when I think about that, and I think about, you know, really what is the gospel? You know, one of the stories that I've told before, and I've heard it many times, is that there was a guy who really his whole life wanted to always hear John Wesley speak and hear him preach, and so one day he finally got to hear John Wesley preach, and John Wesley preached on John chapter 3, you must be born again. So a few months later, the businessman went ahead and he saw that John Wesley was preaching again, and he said, I'm going to see him again. And John Wesley preached on John chapter 3, you must be born again. So one more time, this guy, same guy, he wanted to go hear John Wesley, and he said, I'm going to hear him for a third time, and he says, he goes to hear him preach, and what he preaches on is John chapter 3, you must be born again. So afterwards, the man was excited to meet Wesley, he came up to Wesley, he said, John Wesley, he said, I love your preaching. He said, but I'm curious as to why you're always preaching on John chapter 3, you must be born again. And John Wesley kind of looked at him with a twinkle in his eye, and he said, because you must be born again. And friends, there is no other way to get to heaven other than by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. So what does it mean to be born again? What does it mean to be a Christian?

I'll tell you what it doesn't mean. The one thing that it doesn't mean is that somehow we work hard enough, and at the end of our lives, since we've worked hard enough, we're going to be able to enter into the kingdom of God. As a matter of fact, when you read Romans 9 through Romans 11, and we're going to be in Romans 11 next, but Romans 9 through Romans 11, and really the whole book of Romans, really the whole New Testament, it says that, and I think it was Romans 9, that many of the Jews had tried to make it, they had tried to be saved by their own righteousness. And it says that is not how it works. You do not get in by your own righteousness.

As we all know that it says in Romans chapter 5 that God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us. I love a story that I've heard years ago. It was from Matt Chandler's book, The Explicit Gospel.

And Matt Chandler and his friends had been really working on a girl. They were sharing the gospel with this girl, and they wanted her to know about Jesus. And they said, okay, this is, we're going to talk to her about Jesus, talk to her about Jesus. Finally, there was a rally. It was a Christian rally, and they said, okay, great.

We are going to go to this rally, and we are going to make sure that this girl gets saved. And so when they went to the rally, the preacher took the stage, and they said, and disaster ensued. I don't know how else to describe the sermon.

There was very little Bible in it. He gave us a lot of statistics about STDs. And by the way, this girl that they were sharing the gospel with might have been, you know, a little bit wild or whatever it was. And he said that there was a lot of, you don't want syphilis, do you?

And it's all fun and games until you have herpes on your lip. And in the middle of all this moralistic fear mongering, his big illustration was to take out a single red rose. He smelled the rose dramatically on stage, caressed its petals, and talked about how beautiful this rose was and how it had been freshly cut that day. In fact, he said it was such a beautiful rose that he wanted all of us to see and to smell it. So he threw the rose out into the crowd, and he encouraged everyone to pass out, pass the rose around. At the end of his message, he asked for the rose back, and of course, when he got it back in his hands, it was broken and drooping.

And the petals were falling off. He held up this now ugly rose for all of the world to see, and his big finish was this. Now, who in the world would want a rose like this? Who would want this rose now? Would you be proud of this rose?

Is this rose lovely? His words and his tone were merciless. I was such an idiot because during all of that, I had been praying that our friend Kim, who we were sharing the gospel with, was listening. I was praying that Kim would really hear what the preacher was saying about this dirty rose. But there was no real climax to the message. His essential message, which was supposedly to represent Jesus' message to a world of sinners, was this. Hey, don't be a dirty rose.

He then explains, this approach was dramatically effective in producing shame, but not really effective in producing hope. On the way home, Kim, our friend, was quiet, even though we talked about the concert and what had gone on. I asked her on multiple occasions if everything was okay, if she was alright, and what she thought of the message.

Throughout our drive, she was quiet, which was not like her because I just thought, naively, that maybe the Holy Spirit was convicting her, and that we'd talk about it later, and that she would tell me that she was a new creation. Kim continued to act strangely around me for a while. About a week or two later, Kim didn't show up for class. She didn't show up for class for a week. I called and left several messages, but I couldn't get hold of her.

After about three weeks, I began to get nervous. I wondered if she had dropped out of school. She had a dark past, and I was wondering if she'd fallen back into some of her old habits. Then I got a phone call from a woman who claimed to be Kim's mom. Kim had been in an accident and had been in the hospital right across the street from the university. So I hung up the phone with her mom, and I walked over to the hospital. She was all bandaged up, and her face was still swollen. She had fallen out of a car that was going 70 miles an hour and had struck her head on the concrete and fractured her skull.

The swelling wasn't so extensive as to cause long-term damage, but it did enough damage to keep her hospitalized for several weeks. In the middle of our conversation, seemingly out of nowhere, she asked me, Do you think that I'm a dirty rose? My heart sank inside of me, and I began to explain to her that the whole weight of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that Jesus wants that rose. Jesus' desire to save, redeem, and to restore, he wants to restore the dirty rose. He said, when I was alone by myself, he said, when that preacher had passed around that dirty rose, and he asked, Who would want a dirty rose like this?

He said that I would have said Jesus. Jesus wants that dirty rose, because he came to die for us. He came to die for sinners who, we did nothing for him. We did nothing to deserve his grace. We did nothing to deserve his love. But it says in Scripture that while Jesus came to save sinners, that while he died for those who committed sin, it says that we love him because he first loved us.

And friends, I believe that's the truth, 100% the truth. When I go back, I think about John West, you know, one of the things that I think about is that, you know, John chapter 3, that you must be born again. One of the things that he did not say is that you don't work hard enough until you get into the kingdom.

You don't somehow become such a good person that you're deemed worthy. Now, as we've all said before, we're not saved by our works. But, you know, because Jesus saved us and because of what Jesus did for us, we want to live a life that's worthy of him. You know, but the truth is that when I really realize this and when I really realize what is going on in this world and what is going on in this chapter of Romans chapter 10, is that we forsake all. We forsake all, everything, family, mother, father, daughters, friends, everybody else.

It doesn't matter what anybody else says, Jesus comes first. Rick Warren, who wrote The Purpose Driven Life, his father, it tells a story about his father when his father was dying and his father had dementia. And at the very end, his father kept on getting out of the bed and Rick and his siblings were trying to put him back in the bed and his father said, no, no, no, no, no, I need to get out, I need to get out. And finally, Rick asked his father, he said, why do you want to get out of this bed and go? And he said, I just want to tell one more person about Jesus.

I just want to tell one more person about Jesus. And so when his father was dying, one of his last dying words to Rick was, Rick, just continue to tell one more person about Jesus. I know sometimes we talk about spiritual warfare and that we want to help overcome and we want to overcome spiritual attack and we talk about doing good works and we talk about helping the poor and doing all these other things and that is awesome. But one of the things that I'm reminded of, and I believe it was John Piper, he says that I think it is great that you all want to do all of these great health initiatives to help the poor, to help the down and out and so on and so forth. He said, but let me remind you that the greatest hunger that we could ever feed is eternal hunger.

To lead people to a loving and a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ so that when they die, they will be in heaven and that they won't be in hell forever. I was actually reminded of a story of Louie Giglio and what Louie had talked about, no, it wasn't Louie Giglio, it was Luis Palau and what Luis had talked about was this, is he said that he went to go speak to many of the medical missionaries and he spoke to many people who were in the missionary field with medicine or with doctors or whatever it was and he said, I thank God for good Christian medical doctors. He said, I thank God for people that will go and share clothing with people who need it.

We thank God for dentists who go into these other countries and they fix people's teeth. He said, that is awesome. He said, but if we just go into these other countries, he said and if we fix people's teeth and he says if we fix their health and we give them flashy clothes, he said we do that without sharing the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ with them.

He said that we will send them to hell with white teeth and flashy clothes. I encourage anybody who's listening right now that if you're doing good works, that is awesome. Continue to do those good works, but the greatest work that we can do is to share Jesus Christ, the Son of God, with those with a lost and dying world who is going to hell. You know, and so it's interesting.

I think about this. Many people, we will do anything that we can to try to do good works for God other than sharing Jesus because we may think that it's socially awkward or we may think that it makes the other person feel uncomfortable or it makes us feel uncomfortable. But one of the best explanations that I've ever heard to this is it was actually an atheist, Penn Jillette, and he said that after one of his shows, he said there was a guy, he said it was a big guy, who came up to him after his show and he said, hey, Penn, I just wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed your show. And he said the guy looked him right in the eye and he said this. He said, hey, I just wanted to let you know I wanted to give you this Bible. It's a New Testament Bible and Penn said that in the Bible there were these names and numbers of people that he could call. This guy said to Penn, he said, I guess I'm sort of proselytizing to you right now. He said, I just wanted to let you know this and I felt like it was important. And so Penn Jillette actually shared this on his YouTube page the next day and you can look it up.

It's called The Gift of a Bible with Penn Jillette. But Penn Jillette said, you know, there's many atheists or many agnostics. I'm going to be honest with you, there's even Christians who say you don't talk about religion and you don't talk about politics, so you don't share your faith. And he said, but I never believed that. He said what this guy did by trying to proselytize to me, by trying to share Jesus with me, he said it was a beautiful thing. He actually went on to say, he says, if you're standing in the middle of a road and he says there is a semi truck coming down the road at you at 90 miles an hour, and he says, even if you don't believe this semi is coming to hit you, he said, at some point I push you away.

And he says, this is so much more important. He said, if you really believe that I could go to hell and burn there eternally, or if you believe that there's this place called heaven that I can go to and you don't want to share that with me because it's socially awkward, he says, how much do you have to hate someone? How much do you have to hate someone? If we really believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and we really believe that people are dying and going to hell without trusting in Jesus Christ as their savior and we don't want to tell them about that because we think it's socially awkward, or we say, well, there's other stuff in ministry that I want to do. How much do we have to hate that person?

It is so, so important. As a matter of fact, I love another story that I heard about John Wesley. John Wesley was actually being, he was being robbed by a guy. And this guy who was robbing John Wesley realized that Wesley had very little to offer. And so he got a little bit of money from John Wesley. And he also got, I think John Wesley, there was some Christian literature that this guy had taken from John Wesley and John Wesley gave it to him and the guy took it. And before the guy goes, the guy's walking off after he had robbed John Wesley and he said, and John Wesley yelled to him, he said, hold on just a second. He said, I've got one more thing for you.

And the guy's like, okay, I'm just, I'm robbing you. But John Wesley said, it's first John one seven. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light that we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin. So many years later, when John Wesley actually had seen this guy, now the guy was a successful businessman and he had given his life to Jesus.

And it was partially because of what he said, what John Wesley had said to him when he left. So if you think that, well, people don't want to hear about this right now, people are hungry for something. People are living in fear. They're fearful of COVID. They're fearful of death.

They're thinking about it. You know, Jesus actually put it this way. He says that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. And I wonder if he's saying that to you today, if you're listening to this today and you say, well, there's so much stuff that I need to do and I want to share Jesus. I want to share Jesus, but I'm just not doing it. Let me tell you something. If you wait until you have all of the answers and you wait until you know exactly what you're saying to everybody, you're never going to do it.

There is something that is called paralysis from analysis. The best thing that you can just start doing is sharing Jesus with people. And you'll be surprised at what happens. I mean, as many years ago, I went to a Bible study with Ruth Graham Lotz, her husband. I think his name is Danny Lotz.

He was a dentist over in Raleigh. And I went to the Bible study in one day as we were finishing up the Bible study. There was this guy who got up and he was, I think he was the leader of Fellowship of Christian Athletes. And so what he said was there was this one guy who would always come and he wasn't a Christian. He said, but there was this other cheerleader, this young lady who this guy really likes. So whenever this guy went to Fellowship of Christian Athletes and whenever this cheerleader was there, this guy was there too.

And so I guess after a while, what the preaching and everything that they were doing started to sink into this guy. And so one day at the end of this, the guy who was leading the preacher for fellowship of FCA, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, this young man came up to the guy who was speaking and he said, hey, listen, man, he said, I just need to ask you this. He said, why do you believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God? And so the guy, he didn't know what to say. He just said, he said, I don't know. I just do. Let me tell you something. If you're listening right now, that's not what you that's not the best thing to say.

That's not what you need to do. But many years later, this guy who had told this guy this, the young man of the young man who was going after the cheerleader who was not a Christian yet, he saw this guy and he the guy who was not a Christian was now a Christian and he was speaking at a rally. And he saw this other guy and he said, I want to thank this guy over here for leading me to Jesus.

All he said was, I don't know. I just do. So you never know. You never know what's going to lead somebody to Jesus.

I mean, you never know. You never know what you could say that would lead somebody to Jesus. But we our job is just to open our mouths. Our job is just to share the good news of Jesus Christ and we'll let the Holy Spirit do the rest.

There was there's another story, Charles Spurgeon. He was preaching in the late eighteen hundreds. And all of a sudden there was a day where they said that we need to we need to check the acoustics in this in this room. And so they had some guys who were working on the ceiling and they said, well, Charles said, what do you want me to say? And they said, just just say something out of the bottom. And he said, OK, I'm going to quote John 129. He says, behold, the Lamb of God who who who takes away the sins of the world. He said all of a sudden there was a guy who was working on the ceiling in that room and the guy started crying. And right then and there he gave his life to Christ.

So you never know why why people are going to come to Jesus. And I've said this before on my show, you know, you know, some of you, you may not be able to get out and see people or you're not able to do it. Do you realize that we have tools at our dispensal right now that we're literally I send out hundreds of my shows each week to people.

I send out hundreds of the shows. And I've had I've had people who have said, don't send me this garbage. I'm not going to lie to you. People say stop sending this to me.

I've also had people tell me things like this. Thank you so much for sending me your shows, Mike. I was doubting my faith. And now that I've been listening to your shows now, I've found my faith again. I've had people who've said thank you so much for sending this to me.

I needed to hear this. You never know why somebody is going to come to Jesus, but people will do it if you are just obedient in sharing your faith. I like what Sammy Ballard said. He was he's from the Baptist Church, First Baptist Church of Mebane. He said there was a time where if I wanted to tell you that Jesus was good, he said, I would actually have to I would actually have to go up to you and say, hey, Jesus is good. He says nowadays, immediately I can put Jesus is good and put it on Facebook and hundreds, if not thousands of people can see that. But the best way is to share Jesus face to face.

That is the best way to do it. So there's that, you know, and when you're going out and when you're wanting to share the gospel, I'm reminded of a story about Charles Spurgeon, where there was a guy who was following Charles Spurgeon around and he said, well, I want to follow you and see what you're doing. So at the end of end of two days, this guy was exhausted. And he said to Charles Spurgeon, he said, man, he said, I don't know how you do it. He said, he said, you're doing the work of two men.

And Charles said to him, he says, because I have two men living inside of me. When we have the power of the Holy Spirit, we do not have to do this thing all on our own. And I'm glad that you're listening today. If you've never given your life to Jesus, I want to encourage you today just to say, yes, Lord, I surrender my life to you right now. Jesus, forgive me of all of my sins. Thank you, Jesus, for giving me of my sins. I follow you now for the rest of my life in Jesus name. And if you said that prayer and if you've surrendered your life to Jesus, just as it says in Romans Chapter 10, please, please, please share your faith with others. People are dying and going to hell. Please tell them the good news about Jesus that he saves, if not for God. We love to have him on. If you want to feel welcomed, made to feel like you're at home, go visit Greater Love World Outreach Center over in Burlington.