Called To Share - Romans 10:9-15 - Mercy Hill

Hey, good evening Mercy Hill Church. My name is Nico Williams. I am the associate campus pastor at the Clifton Road campus. Shout out to my peeps at the 3815 Clifton Road.

Woo woo. Now as campus pastors, we get the wonderful opportunity to be able to speak to our campuses this weekend and call them to take advantage of the social climate of our world, to invite people to attend our Easter services. Speaking of the social climate of our world, I want to acknowledge that our culture has this temptation to think that if something is popular, that it's for everybody. Think about Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A is super popular, but it's not for everybody. I got a cousin who's allergic to more things than he has fingers. Needless to say, he's allergic to chicken.

And Chick-fil-A is not for him, and it certainly isn't for the chickens. I think another example I think about is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I love the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

It's one of my favorite things to do is to watch a movie about superheroes, but I got friends who do not like, theaters just don't like to spend their time watching shows and movies about superheroes. That's okay, okay, because I got a special, if you identify with any of that, I got a special message. I just want to say it's okay, because I like to be wrong sometimes too. Now, there's one thing in the world, well, maybe not one thing, but there's one thing in particular, actually, a person that I would say is for all kinds of people. And we're in church, so you probably know where I'm going. That one person is Jesus Christ. The gospel is for all kinds of people. Jesus came to redeem us from our broken and sinful lives to restore us to a right relationship with God. And this is what we're gonna have an opportunity to celebrate next weekend for Easter, this news that the great creator God was mindful enough of men to become like us, to be with us, to die for us, and then to empower us by his Spirit to live godly lives and to invite people to come and see and for us to go and tell. Mercy Hill, the Bible makes it clear that this message, this gospel, is for all kinds of people.

It's for the religious, it's for those that are far from God, it's for those that have doubts, it's for the people who grew up in church, the people who didn't. And maybe if you're watching online right now, and you're wondering if this gospel is for me, I'm here to let you know that God has orchestrated this moment just for you to let you know that the gospel is for you as well. This gospel message is for everyone and what's more, for anyone who has accepted it has been called to share it.

That leads us to the big idea for today. The gospel is for everyone and we are called to share. I need you all to do me a favor. I don't need you all to help me preach a little bit tonight. So I'm going to say the gospel is for everyone and I need you all to help me say everyone. And then I'm going to say and we are called to share. I need you all to help me say share.

So let's just practice real quick. The gospel is for everyone and we are called to share. I love that.

I love that. We're going to practice this one more time because we're going to do this several times tonight. The gospel is for everyone and we are called to share. Now, I know at Church of Our Sides, there's probably many people in our church that might have even just accepted Jesus Christ a few weeks ago or don't feel exceptionally gifted in evangelism. What you need to know is that the Bible is full of reminders that God himself will wonderfully empower you to share his message, not only because he called you to do it, but because that is what you were made to do.

Birds were made to fly, lions were made to roar, and humans were made to proclaim the glorious works of their master. I want to let you know that today we're going to be studying the book of Romans, Romans chapter 10. We're going to start at verse 10 and we're going to go all the way to 15.

So you can scroll there, you can turn there, but we'll also have it on screen. Now, the thing about the book of Romans is that it's written by the Apostle Paul and it's known for the way that it clearly presents some of the greatest truths that we can know about our salvation and how we are seen by God when we place our faith in Christ. Let's take a look at the text. Romans 10 and 10 says this. For with the heart, one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

Yeah, I just want to stop. I just want to take a minute right here, because this one verse tells us that salvation is by faith and not by works. It says if you believe you have been justified, y'all, that's a legal term that means that you have not been found guilty. And if you confess that Jesus is Lord, that means that you have been saved. Now, the term confess just means that you agree and you admit with God that you are a sinner, that you aren't good enough to bring yourself to salvation and to Jesus and the gospel, and you certainly aren't strong enough to keep yourself there. You're saying when you admit and believe, you're saying, Jesus, I need you.

Help me. Now, for the past two weeks, Pastor Hopper has been calling those in our church to place faith in Christ. And if you're one of those who maybe has accepted Christ for the first time and you haven't yet been baptized, I challenge you to fill out and complete the baptism card.

You found it on your seat on your way in. And when you finish it, you can drop it in a volunteer's bucket on your way out, because, y'all, next weekend we're going to have the opportunity to celebrate Easter and maybe even celebrate your baptism. Let's keep going, verse 11 says this, for the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. Everybody say everyone. There's no distinction between Jew and Greek for the same Lord as Lord of all, bestowing, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Verse 14 says, how then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?

And how are they to hear without someone preaching and how are they to preach unless they are sent as it is written? How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. Hey, will y'all go to God in prayer with me? Heavenly Father, I need you right now. I need your preaching power. I need your spirit to lead and direct my mouth and guide my my words.

Father, I need you to do for me what I cannot do on my own. I need you to open up people's ears so that they can hear your gospel. I need you to open up people's eyes so that they could see your gospel. Please, please, please, Lord, would you open up people's hearts so that they would experience your gospel? Would you use this text, oh, Lord, to convince your people that the gospel is for everyone. And we are called to share in Jesus name. Amen.

Y'all, that leaves us to point number one. The gospel is for everyone. Verse 12 says that there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who called on him for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord who will be saved. Y'all, Paul is trying to make it abundantly clear that salvation. It's not just for Israel. He says that there's no distinction between Jew and Greek. He's basically saying it doesn't matter about your family heritage. Verse 13 says that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, and everyone means everyone.

Y'all help me out here one more time. The gospel is for everyone. The problem it seems that Paul is trying to address is that Israel got it in their mind that salvation through Jesus was just for themselves and their family and their own kind of people.

And Paul is saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Salvation is for all kinds of people. And, y'all, we had to be careful because this kind of thinking can sneak up on us. Yeah, we would never say this with our mouths because I know the kind of people in our church, we would never say, hey, the gospel is not for that kind of person. We we would never say that because I know the kind of people I see you guys week in and week out, you're probably thinking to yourself of somebody right now, somebody you're very close to, that you got a burden for them to know Jesus.

But I want to call you to think about some of the other people in your life. What about the people that you see but you don't notice? What about the person that serves your food at your restaurant?

How about your neighbor that walks their dog at seven thirty a.m. on the dot, you know, because that dog is basically your alarm clock. What about the foreigners born, the foreigners that were born in another country that are here? You know, I heard a stat that there are over one hundred and thirty thousand foreign born people in just Greensboro, Winston-Salem and the Triad alone. Y'all, our formal theology can say, hey, the gospel is for everyone. But when you let these people walk by without even thinking of engaging them with the gospel, without even thinking to invite them to our church, your functional theology says the gospel is not for them. What if God is trying to do something in them and it starts with an invitation to come to one of our Easter services? When you invite someone to Easter, you're saying, hey, I believe that the gospel is for you too. Y'all, that brings us to point number one. The gospel, I mean, point number two, we said it, the gospel is for everyone and we are called to share.

Let's keep moving. We read with me verses 14 to 15, it says this. How will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?

And how are they to hear without someone preaching and how are they to preach unless someone is sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. Y'all, do y'all see Paul's logic? Paul traces a chain of events that lead to salvation. The end goal is that people would call on the name of the Lord and believe in him for salvation.

But there's a big problem. He's saying, hey, you can't call on the name of the Lord and trust in him for salvation without some of the events that come before. Paul says that there are some prerequisite events that that happen before belief in confession, I think the college students in the room can identify. Maybe you can think back to college. You're trying to register for a class. Maybe it's an elective. Maybe it's one that's that's necessary for you to graduate. You put your your class, you choose the class, you put it in.

And then the system blinks back at you with red letters. You cannot take this course because you haven't taken the prerequisite. In other words, what happened in the prerequisite classes was necessary for you to understand what's being taught in the following classes. And Paul is saying if somebody is going to come to saving faith in Jesus, they will have had to have heard the gospel. And if someone is going to hear it, someone has to speak it. You know, the word that we we read in the ESV is preach. We're not necessarily only talking about people in ministry.

We're talking about anybody who speaks the word of truth. We've got to pause right here because we learn a very important biblical truth about just how God saves his people. Y'all, God could send angels and miraculous signs and works to let people know of his saving faith in God.

And he has in the past. But y'all, in the era after Jesus's death and resurrection, he says that the method, the only method for someone to get saved is when they hear the word of God or they need to read about it. Here's how I know this is his book in the book of Acts. There's this guy named Cornelius and Cornelius was a worshipper of the Lord. He prayed to the he prayed to God Almighty. But, y'all, he did not believe in Jesus Christ. So God sends him an angel. And do you know what the angel does not say? The angel does not say, believe in Jesus Christ. The angel tells Cornelius, I need you to go and send for Peter because Peter is going to come and he's going to preach you the gospel of Jesus Christ and you know what happens, Cornelius believes in Jesus and he gets saved and he gets baptized and his whole family gets baptized. Y'all, this tells us that we are called to open up our mouths and tell people about Jesus. Let me tell you something. Every believer is called to share.

And I want to encourage you to do just that. Tom Rainer, he's an author and spiritual, spiritual commentator. He says that when you invite someone to church leading up to the week of Easter, there's an 80 percent chance that they'll go.

It's really crazy, y'all. People are ready to be invited. I was in Sam's Club the other day. I had gotten some jelly beans because I was going to attach them to some invited cards and kind of pass them out. And so I'm in Sam's Club and I'm going to the line and there's this woman.

And she looks at me, she says, what you got all these jelly beans for? And I said, hey, I'm going to be passing them out and I'm going to be inviting people to our Easter service that her adult daughter kind of pipes up and says, hey, we just moved to the area. We've been looking for a church.

Y'all people are ready. They're just waiting on you to invite them. So I handed her one of my trusty dusty invited cards and hopefully I'll see her one of the services for Easter. Y'all, I hope that you'll share the gospel with the people in your lives and I hope you'll be able to invite them to our church this weekend, not only to hear the gospel preached, but but also so they might experience what it feels like to be around the family of God. Y'all, we can bring people in when we invite them to come and see and when we go and tell. Y'all come and see means inviting people to the gathering to see what God is doing. Go and tell means going where the gospel is not to tell them about Jesus. Verse 15, moving forward, verse 15 has a prerequisite event.

That I would say is kind of special to our church. It says, how could someone be able to preach unless they are sent? Y'all, the word sent assumes two things. It assumes that the sender has a higher authority and that the message is originated from the sender. In other words, those who are sent are just glorified gospel mailmen. If we truly live sin, we're not saying anything new. You know, we're only relying on the authority of our Father's word. The Father's authority verifies our message.

I think we all get this authority verifies message a message. It'd be like this right here. If somebody comes up to me and says, Hey, Nico, I want to get better at basketball. Well, as you can see, I'm pretty short. I'm not good at basketball. I don't like basketball and I don't watch basketball, but I could give them some pretty good advice. I'd say, hey, it's probably good for you to spend about 15 minutes a day dribbling the ball in your left hand, 15 minutes a day dribbling the ball in your right hand.

Now, that's pretty good advice. But if you go to somebody like Avery Jackson, he's a part of our our kids, our students team. I love me some Avery. Avery is also a basketball coach. He has authority. His authority kind of verifies his message. So if he tells you to do something to get better at basketball, you ought to listen to him. But but if if somebody like Hubert Davis, the head coach of UNC Chapel Hill basketball team, tells you to do something, maybe you ought to disregard what he says, because apparently he can get you close, but he can't get you a championship. Is that too soon? Is that too soon? I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. No, but seriously, when we live sent lives, we are sent out on the authority of our Father. He verifies our message. At our church, the word sent is dripped throughout a couple of different ways in our church. One way you might be familiar with if you've been around for a while is that at each of our services, we close with the phrase, y'all help me say at Mercy Hill Church, you are sent.

Sent out, sent, same thing. This is what some traditions might call a benediction. Now, some of you who might be longtime attendees might wonder, why do we say this? It's because of this very same biblical principle that when you leave this place, we want you to know that you are sent out from your neighborhood to the nations.

You're sent to your family members, your co-workers, and ultimately to the nations. If you have confessed that Jesus Christ is the Lord and you believe that God raised him from the dead, he has called you to be one of these gospel mailmen. God calls you to share and he equips you to do it. But look at what happens when you share the gospel. Paul says in verse 15, and he's actually quoting Isaiah. He says, how beautiful are the feet who preach the good news? Paul says that what happens when you share the message is that you get beautiful feet. Now, this is good news for those of us who got ugly feet, because Paul says you don't need a pedicure, you just need to share the gospel. When Isaiah says this, he's thinking of a warrior or a soldier who has run to tell God's people that God has freed Israel from captivity, from Assyria and Babylon.

And Paul co-ops this verse almost as if to say, God's people rejoice in hearing the news of their physical salvation, how much more should God's people rejoice when they hear of the news of their eternal salvation from the very wrath of God? I want you to have this messenger in your mind who's been sent by an army or general who's come from a great long distance to bring the news that the war is over, that the battle is done, that the people of God have been freed. There's no way that this messenger's feet were actually beautiful. This messenger's feet would have traveled long and far over rocks and through the mud just to get the message to the right people. And do you know how the people that would have received that message, they would have seen his beautiful feet, not because of the way that the feet look, but because of the message that he carried? Mercy Hill Church, Jesus is the Father's messenger that not only brought good news for us, but he's the Messiah who started a good work in us.

How beautiful are the feet of Christ who didn't only carry a message to us, but he carried a cross for us. How could we not carry this message to others? How could we not hear this great news, have this great news in the entire world and fail to share it with the people in our lives? Like I said earlier, people, y'all, they're ready to hear. People are ready for you to invite them into the family of God.

You just got to open up your mouth and faith and invite them, invite them to come and see and you go and tell. OK, so main idea of the message, the gospel is for everybody and we are called to share. I'm glad y'all got it. Y'all got it.

So where do we go from here? In light of this text, I got three suggestions, me and the rest of the campus pastor team, we got three suggestions for you, especially if you are a follower of Christ. Number one, pray for a desire to share. Some of you are hit with this message, you've heard this entire message and you're hit with your responsibility, the necessity to share this message and to invite people to some of our Easter services, because if they don't hear, they won't be saved. But if you're being honest, you just don't want to.

Some of you, I don't know about everybody, but I can just imagine some of you are just I just don't want to. Maybe you've already got your Easter plans set. And if I invite this person, it's going to interrupt my Easter plans.

I might have to pick them up. I might have to go to the service that they're sitting. I don't I don't want to go through all that. Another reason why you might not want to invite and share the gospel is because you don't feel like evangelism is your spiritual gift. But it's one of those things in scripture that is simultaneously a spiritual gift and a calling. It's kind of like generosity. We're all called to give. But some of us, we just like to give. I got an aunt, as a matter of fact, she will not let you leave her house without taking something.

I'm talking about a can of beans if it comes down to it. Y'all, whether it's a gift of yours or not, evangelism is a gift of yours or not. Y'all, we're all called to share. And if I had to guess, if I had to pull back the hood, I might guess that there's not a desire to share because maybe your pride is there.

You just don't want to share because there's a fear of rejection or whatever. Y'all, I recently saw a YouTube video of this guy who engineered a basketball hoop to, like, go wherever he threw a ball. Like, now he's in a basement, but it was still pretty cool. When he throws the ball at the wall, there's this camera and it calculates where exactly the ball is going to hit. And the hoop kind of zooms over to where he's going to be, where the ball is going to be. And it goes in every time. Every time. 100% accuracy. Now, maybe sharing and inviting is scary to you because you feel like, man, when I try to do this, I miss the shot every time.

But, y'all, this one weekend is almost like no other. You might not make the shot 100% of the time, but apparently you're looking closer to somewhere about 80% of the ball going in and the person you invite coming to hear the gospel, which, by the way, is a little better than LeBron James' free throw average, he's kind of sitting at 75%. But, y'all, an even stronger motivation to overcome this fear of rejection is to replace your pride with others' desire for salvation. Y'all, Paul opens up this very chapter, declaring how much he desired that those who are lost be saved. Verse 10, chapter 10, verse one says, brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they might be saved. What if you follow Paul's example? You prayed for a greater desire for others' salvation to replace your fear of rejection.

What do your prayers look like in this season? What if you prayed, Lord, give me a desire to want to see others saved. Lord, would you please save my friends? Would you save my neighbor?

Would you save my family? Y'all, we want to encourage you to pray for the desire, but you should also know that praying isn't the only way to stoke the fire of desire. Another thing that you can do is, number two, prepare for opportunities to invite. When you take the time to prepare or plan to do something, it truly does pull your desires in a certain direction.

It also creates some excitement. Pastor Eugene at the High Point campus, he says, man, there's a value in the premeditation of the thing. OK, so when it comes to inviting my family kind of has a two pronged approach. OK, that's kind of me and my wife. So I just personally made the commitment that I got a bunch of invited cards in my back pocket. So whenever I'm talking to somebody, including a stranger, if I get the opportunity to invite them to the church, I just decided that I will. Now, we've also got we took some of those same boxes, the jelly beans and the invited cards, man, we've identified about five families that we already have relationship with in our neighborhood.

And we're just going to knock on their door and we're going to ask them. Now, when it comes to you planning, I want you to just be intentional to ask two questions, two questions. Number one, who am I going to invite? And number two, when are you going to invite them? One of the easiest ways that we've created as a church for you to prepare to share is for you to serve with us at one of our services, when you join up with us collectively, you create an environment for someone to hear the gospel. And let me tell you, you've played a significant role in sharing because somebody gets an opportunity to hear. You know, you can also pick up a few extra invited cards.

We literally have a we have thousands. We have thousands of invited cards in the back for you to pick up. We also got some for your kids as well, just in case they want to go out and do something special with their friends.

And if you take a stack and you get through the week and you're like, man, I need some more, we're going to have some extra ones in the office lobby for you to pick up throughout the week as well. Whatever you do, make a plan. Last thing, number three, proclaim the gospel by his power.

And here's the thing. After you've prayed and after you plan, you actually got to do it. And I know this is a lot easier said than done, especially for the person who's never even shared their favorite ice cream flavor to their co-workers, let alone inviting somebody to church. Here's where we want to do our very best to come alongside you to help you take that next step. Because, you know, the expectation is not for you to stand on a street corner and tell people about Jesus, if that's not where you are in your journey. Now, maybe it is, maybe God is calling you to kind of step out of your comfort zone and do something a little different, but wherever you are in your journey, he's calling you to take a next step.

Your next steps are small enough to accomplish, but large enough that it changes the ordinary rhythms of your life. Some of you, your next step is to be bold enough to maybe even post about it on social media. Now, I know some of you have been posting about Jesus, posting about church pretty much your entire lives. But there are some people in this room probably who have never said a single thing about Jesus on their social media page. There are probably people that follow them that have no idea that they follow Jesus. It might be for you to take the next step to just, hey, come to Easter services at our church.

Here's the times and the addresses. Now, it might be that on the other side of that, some of you need to walk across the street, knock on the door, tell them your testimony, share with them about Jesus and invite them to the church. Y'all, wherever you are, God is calling you to do something because we know that unless someone preaches, they can't hear it.

And if they can't hear it, they cannot be saved. Y'all, God is calling you to proclaim it, church. But you need to know that your inviting and your sharing is not to be done apart from the abiding presence and spirit of Christ. Y'all, one of my favorite scriptures in all the scripture is Second Corinthians chapter three, verses four through six. It says, Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything is coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Y'all, these verses tell us that our ultimate confidence in inviting and sharing is found in Jesus Christ. These verses tell us that it is God who makes us sufficient to be ministers of this new covenant.

And, y'all, the power for this whole thing comes with the Spirit because it's the Spirit that brings life. Y'all, my heart's prayer for our church is that every person who's a part of our home crowd would know that they have been empowered by God himself to invite people in to come and see and to go and tell. And my prayer is that it will result in thousands of people sharing the gospel and a ton of people getting saved. Y'all, God can do it through you.

Why not you? Y'all, let's pray. Heavenly Father, man, I just thank you so much for your goodness, because you've been so, so, so good to us. God, I pray that through this church, not only would the triad be saved and changed, not only would the state be changed and saved, but, Lord, I'm praying that the whole entire world would be touched by your gospel because of what you choose to do through us. God, we know that we need you and we know we can't do it without you. So please, Lord, would you empower us by your Spirit? In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.