Expound: Romans 10-11:18 - Part B

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.

Many people can get hung up on how salvation in Jesus Christ actually works. Well, today on Connect with Skip Heitzel, Skip brings you some clarity on how both God's sovereign election and your free will play into your salvation. Right now, we want to tell you about a resource that will help you grow stronger in your faith. Joy in the midst of hardship is a hallmark of the Christian life, but is it really possible?

Here's Lenya Heitzel. Sometimes what starts out as a happy trail turns into a really daunting road, and we have to figure out how to navigate. A lot of times, God's purpose in allowing trials is to give us opportunities to grow to the point where we genuinely experience joy in the midst of trials. Learn how to face trials with courage, wisdom, and yes, joy with Lenya's booklet, Happy Trials. And when you give $20 or more today to help keep this Bible teaching ministry on the air, we'll send you a special bundle of three booklets by Lenya, Happy Trials, Don't Tempt Me, and Speak No Evil. Get your bundle of three booklets for a gift of $20 or more by calling 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer.

That's connectwithskip.com slash offer. Now, we're in Romans chapter 10 as we join Skip Heitzel for today's teaching. 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, because it says, whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. It's not automatic, you're not saved automatically.

I was raised in a Christian home, therefore I'm a Christian. You're not saved irresistibly, you're just sort of, I had no choice at all, no human cooperation, just I was irresistibly drawn because the Calvinist told me I was. No, there is a human responsibility. Yes, God enables it, that's part of his sovereign plan, but you and I still must make a choice. And so who is salvation offered to? Whoever, that's the word that is used, whoever, whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever or whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom 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, quoting Isaiah, of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things. Faith comes by hearing, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. Before you hear, somebody has to be willing to speak and you hear the words that they speak. That's how faith is generated.

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And how shall they preach unless they are sent? Now the idea of being sent here does not imply being formally sent by a church or a mission board or or some Christian organization or group necessarily.

Because here's the truth. You've already been sent. You've already got marching orders. You just need to read them and obey them. Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

So once you read that, you're responsible for that. Jesus said to his disciples, as the father sent me, so I send you. So you and I are sent.

Even in the book of Acts, when they laid hands on Paul and Barnabas and sent them out, it says so being sent out by the Holy Spirit. So you and I are sent. We are called to go and proclaim and preach.

As the father sent me, so I send you. But verse 16, they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report? Now if you know your Bible, you know that that's how Isaiah 53, that suffering servant passage begins.

Who has believed our report? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? So he's quoting Isaiah and the point that he's making is, look, they have not all believed or obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report?

Now let me give you that context once again. What Paul is saying is that, okay, all of this is true and yet Israel, for the most part, has not believed. For the most part, Israel, as a majority, rejected their Messiah.

He came into his own, his own received them not. But the principle that he made a couple chapters back and it's kind of continuing now is that just because the majority doesn't believe, doesn't negate God's promise to the minority. So the fact that God made a promise and let's say only a few believe it, it's still true. And just because most people don't believe it or most of the nation of Israel rejected Jesus and still does, by the way, to this day, doesn't mean that Jesus isn't valid. It just shows the hardness of their heart and the fallenness of humanity. So it does not negate the promise of God.

So he's going to develop that. 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 word of God, and we make a decision of what we'll do with the truth. Faith comes by hearing and 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. He's quoting now Psalm 19 where David talks about natural revelation, sun, moon, stars, biosphere, a creative genius of God. God speaks to people of his existence, of his power, just through the natural environment.

So some message of the existence and reality of God is evident in creation is the point. But I say, verse 19, did Israel not know? First Moses says, I will provoke you to jealousy by those who are not an enemy.

But I say, by those who are not a nation I will anger you 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 a contrary people. Gentiles are the ones he's referring to in verse 20. I was found by those who did not seek me. The Jewish people, Israel, he's referring to in verse 21.

God said, I stretched out my hands all day long to this people. That is, the unbelief of Israel shouldn't take anybody off guard. Traditionally, historically, they have not believed God's promises. Stephen stood in front of the Jewish council in Acts chapter 7 and he said, you bunch of stiff-necked people, which one of the prophets did not your fathers persecute and kill? You have a long history of the rejection of God's message, of God's truth, of God's prophets, of God's messengers. So Paul is exploring that using the prophets. But he was found by those who did not seek me. So though the nation of Israel, by and large, has rejected Jesus as the Messiah, individuals, the remnant that he has referred to and will refer to it again in a moment, are saved.

But look at that last verse of chapter 10. All day long I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people. Have you ever tried to stretch out your hands for a long period of time? You may want to try it, not now, not here, but go home and just do this and see how long you can do this.

After a while, and it won't take very long, you'll get very weary of this and you won't have the strength to do it. So God says, you know, I've been doing this for a long time with my people. I've been stretching out my hand. I've been making invitations. I've sent prophet after prophet, message after message.

I predicted. I sent my son into the vineyard. They killed him like the parable. I've done this.

But you can only do this so long. So that would bring up a question in the fact that he quotes this verse. The natural thing to ask is, well then, doesn't that mean God has cast away his people, disowned them, rejected them? And that takes us to verse 1 of chapter 11. I say then, has God cast away his people?

Certainly not. For I also am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away his people, whom he foreknew. Whom he foreknew.

It's a good answer. Has God cast away his people? Paul says, ask me. He didn't cast me away. I was a rabbi. I persecuted the church. I couldn't stand Christians. And yet I got saved.

Explain that one. I was intellectually, I felt, superior to these people, morally superior, religiously superior. I didn't believe in this Jesus and yet I believe in Jesus now and I follow him wholeheartedly. So if God has cast away his people, explain me.

He's exhibit A. God has not cast away his people. Now it is a good question. Has God cast away the people, the nation of Israel, the Jewish people? And it's a worthy question because some will answer that, not in the negative but in the affirmative.

Some in the church. There's a whole spiritual set of interpretations called amillennialism that basically says God has cast away the people of Israel and even though the Bible predicts, I believe, a literal millennial period for Jesus to fulfill all the promises he made to the Jewish nation where he will rule and reign geocentrically from Jerusalem, rule the world for a thousand years. Amillennialism says that will never happen because the Jews rejected Jesus Christ nationally.

All of the promises that God made to the Jews in the Old Testament are fulfilled in the church spiritually. They're not going to have a literal fulfillment. They have a spiritual fulfillment.

There's not going to be a real literal millennium of a thousand years. There's sort of a spiritual fulfillment of that. And they negate or cancel out God's unique plan for the Jewish nation and all the promises that God made to the Jewish nation. So it's an important question. Has God cast away his people? The amillennialists, and by the way, they're everywhere.

There's a lot of them. And they're brothers in Christ, sisters in Christ. As long as a person believes in Jesus, are saved by grace through faith, we believe the essential doctrines of the church.

Amillennialism, premillennialism, which I believe in, post-millennialism, all of them. All of those things, that shouldn't separate our fellowship from one another. We can debate over it. And I'm happy to do it up to a point where if a person doesn't want to listen, then I'm done.

But I'll debate, but I won't divide over that. Okay, so here's what an amillennialist will say. They'll say, well, the millennium isn't a real literal thousand-year period. What happened is that Jesus is right now ruling and reigning on the throne in heaven. So the fulfillment of all those promises of Jesus ruling on the throne, the throne of David, etc., is happening now. Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father.

So he's ruling. So they say the millennium isn't a thousand-year period. It's just the indiscriminate period between the first coming and the second coming, which means right now is the millennium. You're in it. I just got to say, based on my understanding and my reading of what is predicted in that kingdom age, if this is the millennium, I am highly disappointed.

If this is it, try again. It's not so awesome. So it boils down to how a person interprets Scripture. An amillennial believer interprets the Scripture in a spiritualized way. It doesn't mean that literally.

They say it has a spiritual meaning. Now, I don't believe in spiritualizing the text. My hermeneutic, or the way I interpret Scripture, is called a grammatico-slash-historical hermeneutic.

I take the grammar and the history and I approach the text. An amillennial believer will say, well, so do we. We believe in a grammatical historical interpretation of the Bible, except when it comes to prophecy.

Then we take a spiritualizing hermeneutic. And then my follow-up question immediately is, on what basis? What is your basis for that?

Just because it's convenient for you? Because it's an inconsistent hermeneutic. And then if it's not literal, you have to tell me, what does it mean? And why does the book of Revelation get so heavy in numbers? Seven churches, seven seals, 144,000 sealed on their foreheads, you know, 12 gates, etc. I mean, the measurements of the New Jerusalem, etc. If you're going to just say, it doesn't mean what it says it means, then pray tell what on earth does it mean?

You really have a problem with that. But there are a lot of people who say, God has cast away Israel. And that is the belief, that is the hermeneutic, the amillennial position is the hermeneutic of the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Church of Christ, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, and a few others. I don't believe it's a responsible way to approach the scripture.

I think it does great damage to the text. More could be said, but time is running out. So has God cast away his people? I'll just let Paul answer it. No way, Jose.

Again, that's the NSV. The New King James says, God forbid, or certainly not, excuse me, for I am also of the seat of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin, as God cast away his people whom you foreknew. Or do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel, saying, Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life. But what does the divine response say to him?

I have reserved for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to bail. The point he is making is that, look, the whole nation has turned against Jesus, and yet there is a small remnant who do believe, like Elijah. Now Elijah was the one who stood on Mount Carmel and had a contest with the prophets of Baal. In 1 Kings 18, you remember the story. He stands out there alone, and there's all these prophets of Baal and Asherah, and he chooses them on in a contest. He says, look, let's get an animal, kill it on my altar, and you do your altar, and let's trust our gods. I'll trust my God, you trust all your pagan fake gods. And whichever God answers by fire and consumes the sacrifice, that's the true and living God. Fair enough? Show on.

Let's go. So they have a contest. Prophets of Baal start first. They pray from morning till evening. They divide their sacrifice on the altar. They dance around. They cut themselves. Elijah taunts them.

Yell louder. Maybe he's on a vacation. He's traveling.

He's relieving himself. I like his style. He just kind of mocked them because he realized you have your religion. It's just wacky. It's wrong. So instead of saying, well, you know, you have your belief, and I have my belief, he goes, yeah, yeah, your God's fake, and just, you know, just taunts them.

I just kind of like his style. And then it's his turn. And to rub it in, you know, he says, well, take water and pour it on my sacrifice because, you know, water's not going to burn. And so just to stack the odds against him, he says, do it again. We'll do it a third time.

And so they did it. And then he utters this simple little prayer. You know, probably like, God, if you don't show up, I'm dead meat. But a simple little prayer, Lord, just show up.

Glorify yourself. And boom, lightning fell, struck it, and consumed it. So he won the contest, killed the prophets of Baal. Then he ran away from Jezebel, way down in the Sinai desert.

He's under a broom tree exhausted. And he says, Lord, it's enough. Just take my life.

I just want to die. Look, I've been the only one in Israel. I'm the only guy who stands up for you. I'm the only believer. God says, Elijah, actually, I have 7,000 people just like you who haven't bowed the knee. Now, for Elijah, that's like, whoa, that's a lot of people. But when you think of the nation of Israel, God's people, all of them, there were about a million that lived in the land at that time, only 7,000 out of that million believed in God, in the covenant.

The others did not. So it was a very small remnant is the point. Even so, verse 5, here's the application, even so, then at this present time, there is a remnant according to the election of grace. There's always a remnant.

Remember that word, a remnant, a small portion. That concludes Skip Heitzig's message from the series Expound Romans. Now, we want to tell you about an opportunity you have to take your knowledge of God's Word to a deeper level. It's never too late to start taking classes in biblical studies. Here's Calvary College student, Timothy. Calvary College was an answer to prayer for me.

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800-922-1888. Thank you. Tune in tomorrow as Skip Heitzig shares how you can stay in tune with God's righteousness. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.