He Was Seen (Part B)

If you're going to lead somebody to Christ, it is totally acceptable to open your Bible to Romans Chapter 10, Verses 9 and 10, and say, if you make this confession with me in earnest, you will be going to heaven. Otherwise, we're shrouded in doubt. We have a double-minded message. We don't have a double-minded message. It's single-minded.

It's straight and it's narrow. And believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. Resurrection. Here's Pastor Rick in Romans Chapter 10 as he continues his message, He Was Seen.

But even in Christian circles, you're going to find resistance to this too. Mankind has always needed an ultimate Savior. There have been deliverers. There have been those the judges were deliverers. They saved the people from circumstances of their time, but they could not deliver them from the plague on humanity of sin. Everything in their religion pointed to the coming of this ultimate Savior, this anointed one, the Messiah. And when he arrived, they rejected him. His way of coming to God did not fit their preconceived reality. Going back to, yeah, we want God to do it this way. To keep us Jewish, to keep the diets, to keep the feast, and to keep the Gentiles either proselytized into Judaism or damned to hell. And they would accept no alternative. New Covenant did not mean New Covenant in the end to those who rejected the Christ that we love. He did not applaud their self-importance.

That was a big strike. Do that today. We're living in a time where they want you to celebrate debauchery. They want you to celebrate perversity. Not enough to acknowledge them.

You have to celebrate it with them. That's what hell does. And that's what they were trying to do. The Pharisees and the Sadducees, the religious elite, you had to applaud their self-righteousness. They wouldn't call it self-righteousness, but that's what it was. And so those hostile Jews, because again, it's not about Jew or Gentile, it's about who rejected the Christ and who should have known better. And the Jews were first in line, the Jewish people. Many of them were believers, but overall not. And so those hostile amongst them did not care for a Messiah who dined with tax collectors, allowed harlots to weep over him, preached in Samaria, healed on the Sabbath day, outperformed their rabbis, held them accountable to scripture, mocked their sacred cows. You're not allowed to do that.

You're not allowed to do that today in every circle that you find yourself in. So they invalidated his miracles, his fulfillment of scripture. They invalidated his claim to be the Messiah. Never mind, he was from the line of David and all the other things were in place.

He's not applauding us. One time, in John chapter 9, and there are many times, they said, we know that God spoke to Moses, as for this fellow, we do not know where he is from. Well, they could find out in a short walk to the temple.

Temple records were available. They knew where he was from. They knew he was the son of David. Even lepers were crying out. The blind were crying out, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. They knew.

They just rejected. This makes good ammunition for preaching the gospel to the lost and saying, they knew they opted for hell. What are you going to do? Because now you know.

Are you going to do the same thing? You don't have to be Jewish to reject the Messiah that came from the Jews. Anybody can reject him and anybody can receive him. In verse 6, Paul writes, but the righteousness of faith speaks in this way. Now he's quoting Deuteronomy.

Do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down from above, verse 7, or who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ up from the dead. So verses 6 and 7 is Paul pointing back to that choose life passage in Deuteronomy 12. He's pointing back to their scripture. He pictures for those with the Bible that they have no excuse to be zealously ignorant. They have the scriptures. And we say the same thing to peoples like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons who bypass the scriptures. Or to some of those, the prosperity teachers who add to the scriptures the things that they are teaching that actually take away from the scripture. Telling people it's alright to sin. You can sin all you want, just don't forget to repent. Righteousness of faith is near every man.

That's what Paul is talking about. None are any longer required to bring the blood of goats or to bathe in the filthy waters of some river in the world for salvation. No one has to climb up steps in Fatima, Italy on their knees to demonstrate to God how sincere they are and therefore worthy they are of repentance. Faith, not effort, travels not required. You don't have to climb up towards heaven or sink down towards hell to benefit from what Christ has done. You have to believe.

What is so tricky about that? What will the man or woman say before the throne of God when he says to them, all I did was ask you to believe? And you refused.

So then they will be refused. There is no need to leave earth for Christ. He has been given.

He is here. Otherwise, how would the fishermen of Galilee have been saved? They didn't go to heaven to get saved.

They didn't sink to the abyss. They were on the shores of Galilee. The women of ill repute, the lepers, the demon-possessed, the beggars, the tax men, they could find Christ.

The rich man Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, they could find Christ. Everything man needs from religion is right here on earth and it is available, especially as the internet just continues to sprawl throughout the planet. And so God says avail yourselves. He was saying it to Paul. It was right there in front of him. He said you got the scriptures.

Avail yourselves of their meanings. Other Jews are able to do it. What is your excuse? Ah, self-righteousness. Is my religion as a Christian built on self-righteousness?

I think God owes me something other than judgment for breaking his law. Is God's anointed my savior? Savior from my failed self-righteousness.

Yes, that's what he is to me. He saves me from my failed ability to obey God completely. Where is he whom the prophets spoke? Well, that's why the prophets spoke so they could know and that's what he's telling them. He's right here according to the word. Man is to live by the word of God. It's right there on the dining table.

Avail yourselves of it. That's why we read this earlier in our study through Romans, John chapter 1. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, we have found him of whom Moses in the law. And also the prophets wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Oh, he knew where he was from.

But the ones I read, the Pharisees in chapter 9 from John that I read earlier, they said we don't know where this guy is from. They knew. They lied. There's a difference between being ignorant and saying the wrong thing or being wrong about something versus lying.

A lie is an intentional attack on the truth. This is what is meant by the righteousness by faith that Paul is talking about. The Jews were expected that his audience, the church in Rome was not only Jews, they were Jew and Gentile, but he is dealing with the Judaic influence on Christianity and in the lives of those Jewish Christians who still had friends and family and co-workers who were Jewish and they were addicted to the law without the law giver, Messiah. So he's teaching them. He's giving them ammunition and he's saying, this is what it means to have righteousness by faith and not righteousness because you think you did something. Righteousness by the law, righteousness by deed, by good works. God wants us to do good works.

He wants us to abide by the law. But he also knows that if we were to get to heaven on obedience, we wouldn't get there. And so he's put this together, this new covenant.

And all you have to find him in Paul's day, you go to the empty tomb near the city. So Paul properly expands the Old Testament quotation into a larger meaning than what many times seems to have been the original intention of the prophet. The prophets would write something and it was pointing to Messiah and they could see some of that. But after Christ comes, they could see all of that and that's what the apostles, that was their task, to take the Old Testament scriptures and to hold them next to the empty tomb and say, there you go, fulfilled. Now let me tell you what this means for everybody. In verse 8, but what does it say?

See, he's reasoning with them. The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith, which we preach, is what we're trying to tell you. The very things Moses was talking about are fulfilled now and we've got the resurrection to back it all up.

Were it not for the resurrection then we would have nothing. We would just stay in Judaism. But now they can't stay in Judaism.

Conscious won't let them. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword. He who lives by their conscience will die by their conscience.

It's a good thing. I'm not going to be moved off of what I know to be right and wrong, righteous and unrighteous. Those are the terms. Antipas, my faithful martyr, because he wouldn't back off of his conviction. They killed him as they did others. Verse 8 again, but what does it say? It means what the scripture says. Salvation is right in front of the listener. Deuteronomy 30 verse 14.

I'm not going to turn there because we want to get through this section. They only have to believe in their heart. The scripture, the word of faith, is accessible and the scripture is a word of faith. In verse 9 he continues, if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

You see, he puts the terms out there. If you don't believe that he raised him from the dead, you can't be a Christian. What is so difficult about that? And if you insist on being one anyway, you're just demonstrating the righteousness of the Pharisees in Christian garb. If you confess with your mouth, the Lord emphasizes in this passage, if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, that's the deity of Christ.

It's not the lordship that is common amongst people. It is exclusive to the God the Son. Disbelievers refuse his deity and they refuse his resurrection to this day amongst Jew and Gentile alike. But if he is indeed divine, and he is, then the resurrection was a walk in the park. What kind of God do you have that can't do these kind of things? Or what kind of God do you have that can do these kind of things?

And so many continue to insist on good deeds as grounds to bring God delight. You're not without his son. Not without his son. Without the Christ, you make mockery of God's character.

You attack him. It is a front on who he is. It is a character assassination to say, you are dumb enough to let your son come here and be crucified when you know as well as we know there are other ways into heaven.

That's what it would be. That would be the voice of the devil. If you cannot admit that Jesus is Lord and that there is no other on this level of deity, then he will not admit you into heaven. If you cannot admit you're a sinner, you will not find admission into heaven.

These are the terms of scripture, and they're fair terms, and they're good terms, and God gets the short end of the stick. What does God get by bringing you into heaven? Woohoo!

Place is a better place now. Rick's here. Well, that one might be true. It is the love of God.

He can't help himself. He can't help himself but to receive into heaven those who will just submit according to the revelation and not their perception of reality, but to the revelation of God through what we call the Bible. And if you do not believe that Christ was risen from the dead, then you won't be risen from the dead. And by that, it doesn't mean you will finish your existence in a state of annihilation. It doesn't mean that at all.

You wish. It means you will continue to be conscious and exist, not in this world, not with this body, but you will be eternally separated from God and eternally separated from what is good. And I am saying to you, hell, a very real place. It's amazing how many people use that word hell and don't believe they're going there when they have no right to think they're not. Are you going to hell? No.

Why? Tell me why you're not going to hell. Well, I'm a good boy. There's the self-righteousness versus the righteousness which is by faith. The emphasis on righteousness by faith in contrast to righteousness by behavior. Believe and you will behave, not behave and you will believe because it won't work that way. Unless, again, you have this preconceived reality which is a false reality. This is what gives us things like communism and socialism. You know, on paper it looks so good, but in reality you just can't pull it off.

And rather than admitting it, they just double down, make things worse. Yet if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, he's talking about an unashamed personal declaration of faith. Now water baptism and the communion table are public declarations of faith, but they mean nothing without the personal declaration and there are those that fake it. They get baptized, they don't mean it. Or they take communion, they don't mean it.

But then, of course, the true Christians, and there are many of us, we do take it and we do believe it. Luke 12 verse 8, I say to you, whoever confesses me before men in the Son of Man also Pardon me, I left that out. I say to you, whoever confesses me before men, him, the Son of Man, also will confess before the angels of God. I will take your physical, earnest confession in the Spirit and put it into the spiritual realm.

The angels will know about it. There's no shame. God said, I'm not ashamed of you because the blood of Jesus Christ has washed away the shame of sin. So it takes more to make a Christian than an intellectual belief. Somebody can agree with the tenets of Christianity and still remain outside of Christianity. Intellectually, Satan knows that God, Christ, is the creator of the universe, but he remains Satan nonetheless.

It's not enough to have this intellectual consent. The head, the heart, the will, those three must be involved to make the Christian. John's Gospel chapter 16, for the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came forth from God. You know you can love God and be loved by God and wrestle with God to a point. That's one of the pictures of Jacob wrestling with God. And prevailed, the Bible says. Jacob prevailed only because God led him.

Of course. Or else it wouldn't be God. Jacob would be God.

And that would be absurd. But yeah, God loves you even if you're wrestling with something in your heart, in your life. God, why? Why are you doing? Why don't you?

Why do you? And at the end, what do you do? You get up and you say, your will be done, not mine. And hell hates it. Romans 3, 28, therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. What law? Any law. Of course, in context, you're talking about the Mosaic law. Well, there's no higher law at that time, not in ink. And believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, it says here in verse 9.

If you're going to lead somebody to Christ, it is totally acceptable to open your Bible to Romans chapter 10 verses 9 and 10 and say, if you make this confession with me in earnest, you will be going to heaven. Otherwise, we're shrouded in doubt. We have a double-minded message. We don't have a double-minded message. Just single-minded.

It's straight and it's narrow. And believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. Resurrection. The resurrection began Christianity. That's when Christianity began, at the resurrection of Jesus Christ. No longer was it through the law, it was through belief in Christ. And without the resurrection, we're still in, all we have is a Messiah, the Messiah of a partial Messiah. All we have is the Messiah who was wounded for our transgressions, but couldn't follow through and fulfill what was called for.

But he did rise and he did fulfill. 1 Corinthians 15, verse 17. If Christ is not risen, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. So if you have your Bible open, I don't do this all the time, but I'm going to do it this time. Turn to 1 Corinthians 15.

I'll wait a little bit. 1 Corinthians 15. It's not far from Romans 11.

And I want you to turn there for a specific reason. We're going to take verses 5 through 8. And I want you to notice something as we go through these few verses. 1 Corinthians 15, beginning at verse 5. I hear pages going, so I'm giving a little mercy, because I'm merciful.

Yeah, I try to be. And that he was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve, after he was seen by over five hundred brethren, at once of whom the greater part remained to the present, but some have fallen asleep. Yeah, well nobody here has done that. There's a euphemism for death, of course. Verse 7 of 1 Corinthians 15. After that, he was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Last of all, he was seen by me also. He was seen, he was seen, he was seen, he was seen. One word in the Greek. We get our English word optometry from that single Greek word. He was seen. Three words in the English, one in the Greek. And I ask you to turn there so if it's not highlighted in your Bible, that you highlight, so when you look over this verse, it blasts forth from the pages into your heart.

He was seen. When the Bible clusters repetition like this, it means business, it's not fooling around. Not that it ever does fool around, but it hammers in the truth. Ecclesiastes 12.

The words of the wise are like goads and the words of scholars are like well-driven nails given by one shepherd. When you're being crushed in life, remember he was seen, he's alive. He was seen, cried to your early Christians, and everyone knew it.

Everyone knew they cried this. Acts chapter 4 verse 33. And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, of the Lord Jesus, and great grace fell upon them all, as I read in the beginning. Jesus did not die for me so that my flesh could sin and damn my soul nonetheless.

He died for me so that even if I sin, and I'm rightly related to him, there'll be grace at the cross of Christ. So what about the 12 apostles, even after Judas and Matthias was put in this place? What about the 120 that met there in the first chapter of Acts? What about the 500 witnesses that Paul just witnessed in 1 Corinthians 15? We just read that. Imagine being indicted and 500 people come out ready to die for their witness on your behalf. Rather than change their testimony. That's what happened. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick will be back next time in the Book of Romans here on Cross-Reference Radio.