Expound: Romans 10-11:18 - Part A

Now Paul has made his case that God's righteousness is a gift. It's not something you earn. It's something you get.

It's something you receive. But they're ignorant of that. They don't get. They don't understand that righteousness is something you receive. A right standing is something you get. It's done for you, not by you.

They don't get that. It's in his heart for his people, the Jews. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shares about the gift of righteousness that you and anyone can receive today. But first, did you know that Skip has important updates and biblical encouragement on social media? Just follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to get the latest from him and this ministry. That's at Skip Heitzig, at Skip, H-E-I-T-Z-I-G. Now, we're in Romans chapter 10 as we dive into today's teaching with Skip.

Skip Heitzig. Or AD 58. That is when and from where Paul wrote the book of Romans during those three months while he was in Greece. He would leave Greece after collecting money from Macedonian churches to help the church in Jerusalem. He had taken up an offering for those believers in Jerusalem to help them. And no doubt, while he was writing the book of Romans under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he was thinking about Jerusalem. He was thinking about his people. He was thinking about what he was going to say to them and what he was going to do in Jerusalem. And probably out of that prayerful cogitation before the Lord in the Spirit, he wrote chapter 9, 10, and 11 of the book of Romans, a great section of scripture. I've told you before, Romans is divided up into four parts. And this is the third part where he talks about the plan of God for Gentiles and Jews, but he has the Jewish nation in mind.

And if you recall, if you don't, you can look at it. The very first verse in chapter 9 where he says, I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Spirit, that I have a great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. And he says who it's for, his kinsmen, according to the flesh. That's the Jewish people. He begins chapter 10 with a similar kind of a sentiment where he says, brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. I am not Jewish.

In fact, I am by birth, the polar opposite. I am a German Gentile, born and raised in America. But I did spend time in Israel. I've been there 41 times and the first couple of times I lived there on a kibbutz. And I remember the feeling, my first visit on a Passover evening, when I was looking out from the kibbutz toward the Mediterranean Sea, looking over that beautiful farmland of northern Israel, up by the border with Lebanon. And the contacts, the people I had met on that kibbutz, the love I already had for them, considering the blindness that I came up against when I tried to share Yeshua, Jesus, with them. And I had a very similar kind of a sentiment that Paul had, even though I certainly can't relate to it like Paul could or like a Jewish person can, but as close as a German born, a background Gentile American can feel, I felt the weight of this verse. My heart's cry, my deep anguish and prayer is that Israel might be saved. And he says, for I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God.

They have great enthusiasm. But it's not according to knowledge. It's not a zeal that is according to knowledge. Zeal characterized Paul the Apostle when he was Saul of Tarsus. He was a very zealous Jewish man. He was so zealous, he thought, I'm just going to go find those people who call on the name of Jesus in synagogues up in Damascus. I'm just going to arrest them and kill them. He was so zealous that when they stoned Stephen in Jerusalem, Saul was cheering them on.

Kill him, kill him. That's how zealous he was. And when he writes his own testimony to the church at Philippi in Philippians chapter 3, he gives his background, his pedigree. He says, I was circumcised on the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews concerning zeal, I persecuted the church. You want to talk about enthusiasm?

Paul said. You want to talk about zeal? I was so enthusiastically zealous for Judaism that anybody who defected and called upon Jesus as the Messiah, I persecuted. I went after.

They were on my blacklist. He had a zeal for God. So Paul says, I can relate.

I can relate because I was one of them. A zeal for God, an enthusiasm for God, but it was not according to knowledge. That is, it wasn't based on a correct understanding of the scriptures, the Old Testament, the Torah, the Tanakh. They read it. They read it, Paul said, but they don't get it. They don't understand it. They don't understand the predictions it's making and the fulfillment in Christ. You know, zeal is good, but zeal is dangerous if it's not channeled by knowledge. If you're just enthusiastic, oh, we love people with passion.

I don't. I don't want somebody who's passionate for some dumb idea, some stupid idea, some errant idea. It has to be based on truth. Jesus said you are ignorant. He said that to the religious Pharisees. You err not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God. Oh, you have a zeal, but it's not according to knowledge.

So I bear them witness. They have a zeal for God, but it is not according to knowledge. I was reading about an incident that took place not long ago in Israel. There is a town in northern Israel.

If you've been on our tours, you have either been through it or you've seen it. It's close to the Lebanese border called Kiryat Shmona, and it has received a shelling, bombing from Hezbollah over the years. And if that isn't enough, there were some very orthodox, enthusiastic, zealous orthodox Jews who broke in and beat up Jewish people in that town because they had given their lives to Yeshua as the Messiah. They believed in Jesus as the Messiah. So it's already a hard town to live in, but then they went into the house of a Jewish believer in Jesus, stole their stuff, ruined their house, vandalized their house, and roughed them up. Zeal for God, not according to knowledge.

Very, very dangerous. Verse three, four, they being ignorant of God's righteousness. Now, Paul has made his case that God's righteousness is a gift. It's not something you earn. It's something you get. It's something you receive. But they're ignorant of that. They don't get, they don't understand that righteousness is something you receive. A right standing is something you get. It's done for you, not by you.

They don't get that. So he says they being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness. So whenever you have a righteousness that you are producing by yourself, you're earning it, you're working at it, you're being religious, you're going here, you're going there, you're doing all the things right, and thus you think it is owed you, you are producing it by yourself, it is by definition self-righteousness.

You are a self-righteous individual. So 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.

Please mark that. Please understand that verse. Jesus Christ is the end, the termination of, the fulfillment of the law to everyone who believes. Here is the difficulty that the Jewish person faced and faces. They have a whole system of works, a whole religious system like any religion has. Even people in the so-called Christian religions can have a system of works. In Judaism, they had sacrifices.

They brought an animal. The animal was sacrificed on an altar, the blood was shed, they would go through their ritualistic prayers, the pious Jew prayed three times a day, they would tithe, they would fast, and they would brag about it, or at least they would acknowledge that they have done something whereby they have earned a right standing before God. This is why they didn't like Jesus so much. Because he would walk up to like a prostitute and say, your sins are forgiven. And they thought, he can't say that. Only God can say that. Or the man who was paralyzed and his friends let him down through that roof and he said, man be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven.

That didn't make sense. You can't just confer right standing on somebody and Paul says, oh yes you can. Christ is the end, the fulfillment of the law for everyone who believes. He's going to flesh that out in the book of Galatians, chapter 3 of Galatians, where he will say the law of Moses was a tutor, a schoolmaster. Very different from the educational system of today, but the schoolmaster is going to lead you to Christ, point you to Christ. But once you come to Christ, you don't need the tutor any longer, you don't need the schoolmaster any longer. The schoolmaster, the tutor, the law, has fulfilled its purpose.

It's done, it's over. So you're not right before God by keeping a code, a system, or a bunch of laws. Christ is the end of the law. But this didn't set well with the Jewish people, especially the Jewish leadership. They even had a saying among the Jews, and the saying was, if there are only two people who go to heaven, out of anyone who's ever lived on the earth, if only two people go to heaven, one will be a scribe and the other will be a Pharisee.

That was their saying. If only two people are saved, one will be a scribe, the other will be a Pharisee. Jesus comes along and says to the crowd, unless your righteousness exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you won't by any means get into heaven. And they went, what? They couldn't figure that one out.

That's because they're used to earning it. Jesus came to produce it, provide it, and give them a right standing with Him. Christ is the end of the law to everyone who believes. Now, what I didn't tell you is in Philippians chapter 3, when Paul does give his testimony, Hebrew of the Hebrews, concerning zeal, persecuting the church, concerning righteousness, which comes by the law, perfect.

You know, he goes through all that he used to be. But he said, but all those things I count but dung. A pile of poop in the NSV, the new Skip version, that I might find Christ and be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is from the law, but the righteousness which comes through faith in Jesus Christ. Very powerful words from this ex-rabbi convert to Christ. 4, verse 5, Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law. The man who does those things shall live by them. That's Leviticus chapter 18. Paul is quoting Leviticus 18, where basically the text is saying that if you want to live, you have to do all the things that the law prescribes. If you do all the things the law prescribes, you'll live.

Problem is, you can't do the things the law prescribes. We've made that point time and time again. Jesus made that point. There was a lawyer in the Gospel of Luke who came to Jesus one time and said, Good Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said, Well, you've read the Scriptures.

What is your take on it? The guy said, Well, you need to love the Lord your God with all your mind, all your soul, all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said, Yep, that's right. You read it rightly. Do that and you will live, Jesus said. Do those things and you will live.

Problem is, no one ever had been able to do those things. Because right after that, the man said, after he said, Love the Lord your God with all your mind, heart, soul, strength, and love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus said, Yep, do that and live. Then the man said, And who is my neighbor? That's when Jesus gave the parable of the good Samaritan to show the man who thought, I am earning my way, that he really wasn't keeping the law anyway. He said, Go and do likewise. Go find people like that Samaritan who is non-Jewish and have compassion on him.

Go out of your way to show that kind of love. But you're not doing that. So Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law, the man who does those 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? Now he's going to quote Deuteronomy 30, another saying of Moses.

What does it say? The word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith which we preach. He is showing that even Moses taught salvation by faith.

The word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart. A good question to ask is how close are you to righteousness? What does a person have to do? Does a person have to make a pilgrimage, ascend somewhere or descend somewhere? Do you have to get on your knees and crawl up some crazy stairs in Rome until your knees are bloody? Or do you have to make a pilgrimage to a hill out by Santa Fe and get holy dirt? Because then you'll be closer to God. Do you have to make some kind of a long trip and save up your money and do some kind of a ritual in order to be right with the Lord?

I remember the first time I went to Israel, and the answer of course is no, you don't. The first time I ever went to Israel and lived on that kibbutz, and I went to Jerusalem while I was living there, and I remember hearing stories of people saying, man, when I was in Israel, when I was in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Lord was never more real to me. It was like I could touch him and it was like I got lifted.

I'd heard these stories. So I remember going there having high expectations of, oh, and that never really happened to me. In fact, I remember sitting in the Garden of Gethsemane and going, okay, it's going to happen any moment.

Here it comes. That feeling that, oh, it's going to happen. And I was sorely disappointed. I thought, man, I saved up a lot of money to get that feeling. I could have just bought the book and looked at the pictures. But then I remember flying back home and being in my little slummy apartment in Santa Ana, California, with a high crime rate where I lived, and one night with my Bible open, feeling the presence of God in a very powerful, palpable way after that, after I had gotten home from Israel. And I just, it felt so amazing.

And then I thought, man, I could have just saved a whole boatload of money if I had just done that earlier. I'm not saying don't go to Israel. I'm saying don't go to Israel for that reason. It's like if you're thinking, oh, you're going to buy points with God or you're going to somehow get some kind of, and you might get some kind of crazy experience, but we'll see. The word is near you. It's in your mouth. It's 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 has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart, one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth, confession is made to salvation. Notice the key elements for salvation. You believe, and you believe in your heart.

And it's not speaking of the cardiac muscle. It's just in the core of your being. It has to be a real, authentic belief. Not, I just acknowledge God exists. I acknowledge Jesus is right.

I acknowledge all that. It's in the very heart or core of your being, the authentic you, the real you. It's more than just a knowledge.

It's a conviction. You have the conviction that he is who he said he is, that he is Lord, that he is God in human flesh, and that he conquered death by resurrection, that God raised him from the dead. This is the core of the gospel. If you believe in your heart, you confess with your mouth, you believe in your heart, you will be saved. For with the heart, one believes to righteousness. That's how righteousness comes, by faith. And with the mouth, confession is made to 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 is rich to all who call upon him. For whoever calls on the name of the Lord, quoting Joel chapter 2, whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Okay. Something is at play here.

I just want you to see a relationship. The Apostle Paul has been noting in the last few chapters that salvation is by faith, but it is a sovereign act of God. God sovereignly chooses or elects. He elected the nation of the Jews to be the receptacle of the law, to be the receptacle of truth, to be the receptacle of the Savior. He chose them for a very, very specific special purpose.

He chooses you and I as the elect of God to be saved. There's predestination. We have covered, touched on some of those things.

But there is also human responsibility at work. That's Skip Hytzen with a message from the series Expound Romans. Now, we want to share about a resource that will nourish your soul with God's amazing truths. Trials, Temptation, and the Tongue. Those are the mega themes of three booklets from Lenya Hytzen that we're making available this month at connectwithskip.com.

Here's Lenya with more on this bundle. In Don't Tempt Me, I hand you the keys to unlock the thoughts, circumstances, and fears that can cause you to give in to temptation. And in Speak No Evil, I encourage you to avoid setting fires with your words and instead use them to bring showers of blessing. Lenya Hytzen's booklets, Don't Tempt Me, Speak No Evil, and Happy Trials, provides help, hope, and encouragement in dealing with life's challenges. This bundle of three booklets are yours for a gift of $20 or more to help keep this Bible teaching ministry on the air. Get yours when you give today by calling 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. That's connectwithskip.com slash offer. Thank you for tuning in today. We're passionate about helping you strengthen your walk with God.

And you can be a part of connecting others to Jesus in the same way with a gift to help keep these teachings you love on the air. Just call 800-922-1888. That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate.

That's connectwithskip.com slash donate. Thank you. Tune in tomorrow as Skip Hytzen brings you some clarity on how both God's sovereign election and your free will play into your salvation. So then, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. That's how faith is developed. Somebody speaks truth, you and I hear the truth, and we make a decision of what we'll do with the truth. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Hytzen is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.