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Romans 10 "The Word is Near You"

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 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? "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 has raised Him from the dead, 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. For "whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." (Romans 10:1-13)

Paul sums up the situation of the Jews in verse 2, "For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge." One thing that can be said for the Jews is that they have passion. In Greek the word "zealos" originally meant boiling a pot of water. This boiling heat came to be applied to people when they were very excited. The Jewish underground of Jesus’ time that was trying to rebel against Roman rule was known as the "Zealots", the "Boilers". The Jews have served God with incredible devotion, staying true to their traditions despite terrible persecution. But Paul says that while they generate a lot of heat, there is not much light. Their passion is misguided because they do not use it according to knowledge. Now how could this be? When you look at the top universities, research institutes and professions in the U.S. many of the names that you find will be Jewish. If anything the intelligence of the Jews as a people is far higher than the rest of the world. Without a doubt their knowledge of the Bible was much greater than that of the Gentiles whom Paul taught. How could he say that they lacked knowledge? The word Paul uses here is not just knowledge, "gnosis" He uses the word, "epignosis" which is precise, correct knowledge.

When I was a jr. high school student I received a Rubik’s Cube as a present. You know the puzzle that I am talking about. It is a box with three rows of smaller boxes on each side that each have colors. The object of the thing is to get all the colors back to their original position after mixing them up. Now I would spend hours flipping those little cubes back and forth trying to get them to all line up the right way. On and on I struggled, determined to prevail. But then after I had become so frustrated that I would go to sleep and dream of little multi-colored cubes, my brother would come in and in and solve the thing in a minute and a half. You see I had heat; passion, devotion, determination to persevere to the end, zeal. But my brother had light; the precise correct knowledge of how to solve the problem. With the Rubik’s cube, once you knew the solution it was no longer difficult, without that knowledge you could struggle on for as long as you like without getting any closer to solving it.

The Rubik’s cube was immensely popular in the States. Everyone had one. I found that there were two kinds of people when it comes to cubes, the realists who just want to know the answer and the purists who don’t want to know until they figure it out for themselves. I was a purist, and I still don’t know how to solve it. Like me, the Jews also are purists, instead of getting the answer "cheap" they are seeking to work it out for themselves. In Paul’s words "seeking to establish their own righteousness" They do this by trying to keep the law. But Moses wrote about the law that "the man who does those things shall live by them." And this is the basic problem of the law. It is not enough to do one or two good things. You have to continue doing good all through your life. Western and Japanese fairy tales, "mukashi banashi" are filled with heroes who set out to perform heroic deeds. They have to slay the dragon or rescue the princess or fight the goblins or do all three. Once the good deed is done then the hero gets to go home with the princess and live happily ever after. But in real life this rarely ever happens. We know that sports heroes can end up on trial for murder, movie stars check into drug rehabilitation centers, and presidents … well you know about presidents. Like everything that man does, righteousness is only good for the moment. But the righteousness of faith is different.
Paul starts quoting from Deuteronomy 30 in verse 6 and gives his own commentary as he goes along. "Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’" We do not need a religious hero to go up to heaven to get righteousness for us, because Christ is our righteousness. Likewise we do not need to dig deeper and deeper for more mystic spiritual experiences to get righteousness. Christ, our righteousness, is already risen from the dead. Christ has brought righteousness to us. We can stop our zealous struggle with the dark, because Jesus is the light. "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 has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." So the choice is set before us. You can be a purist or a realist. If you are a purist, you will have the pride and satisfaction of knowing that you are doing it all yourself, but you will also have the frustration of never being able to achieve your goal. If you are a realist and simply want to be righteous, have peace with God and live eternally, then let me introduce you to somebody who has the all the answers; Jesus Christ. "Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

To call on Jesus Christ means to believe two things. That Jesus is God, our Lord in that He is the One who made us and all things and our Lord in that we submit to Him as our true ruler. And that Jesus is not dead, but that after He died for our sins on the cross, God raised Him from the dead. But the word "call" reminds us that there is more to faith than just believing. What we believe in our hearts must also come out of our lips. Remember that the word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your hearts. The redeemed of the Lord must say so! So Paul says, "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed."

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 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 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 ends of the world." But I say, did Israel not know? First 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 contrary people." (Romans 10:14-21)

Right now I could divide the whole world into two groups of people. Those who are saved and those who are not. This would be a very unbalanced division. There are so many more people who are lost than those who call on Jesus Christ. Has God simply decided that all these people will perish and so there is nothing that we can do? One of the very first missionaries, William Carey of England, made a moving speech in front of the church leaders of his day trying to persuade them to send him to India. When he finished one bishop rebuked him saying, "Sit down young man, if God wanted to convert the heathen, He wouldn’t need your help to do it." As we studied in chapter 8, God’s plan has been worked out from the very beginning of time and everyone who will be saved is foreknown and predestined by Him, but chapter 10 shows us that this does not excuse us from bringing the good news to others. Indeed, the very life of Paul, totally given over to spreading the gospel should convince us that he did not have fatalistic view of God.

Let’s take that huge number of those who have not called on Jesus Christ and divide it once again. How many of those people actually believe that Jesus is the Son of God and rose again from the grave, but have never known what that means for them personally. I imagine that it is a very large number. Especially in my country and in other so-called "Christian" nations. There are many who have never doubted that Jesus was God but have never confessed their faith and received forgiveness for their own sins. This gives us a strategy with people that we meet. It is important that no matter how Christian someone might look, that you share with them the good news that their sins can be forgiven. Your confession might be all they need to push them over that line between the saved and unsaved.

If we could divide the remainder of those who don’t believe again it would be between those who have heard the good news of Jesus Christ and those who have not heard at all. As I walk through bookstores in Japan I see that there are biographies of Jesus Christ and considering how literate the Japanese people are I would find it hard to believe that someone had never even heard the name of Jesus. But I am sure that there are many in Japan who could not tell you anything more about Jesus than that He was the founder of the Christian religion. How many people in the world have never heard the basic gospel message that Jesus Christ the Son of God died for our sins on the cross and was raised again so that we can have eternal life? Paul says, "How can they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? Our instructions are clear. There are those who believe but never confess their faith. Our responsibility is to pray for them, like Paul prayed for the Jews, but ultimately they are rejecting Christ by not receiving His free grace. There are those who have heard the gospel but choose not to believe. Again we love them and pray for them but we cannot force them to receive Christ. Then there are those who have not heard because there was no one to go and preach to them. These people are the ones that God would have us reach. As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!" According to the word of God, I have beautiful feet! We are surrounded by millions of people who have never heard the gospel. I hope that your feet are beautiful too.