We're going to be looking this morning in Romans chapter 10, a familiar chapter of scripture that has very much to do with missions. And while you're turning there, we just will begin our time together by asking God's blessing on it in prayer. Father, we thank you that you have not left us without a witness. We realize, Lord, that you are the invisible God and you dwell in a holy place that we cannot enter. But we thank You that even in Your holiness You loved us, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And so God, condescended as man in human flesh, lived among us that spotless, sinless life that none of us are capable of living, and then went to the cross where He bore our sin in our place, became the final sacrifice, the Lamb of God, to take away the sin of the world. Lord, without this message, we'd have no purpose for being here today. We'd have nothing to do or nothing to say. We'd have no songs of worship to sing to you, and we'd have no reason to put money in an offering plate to do what this church and many others do even around the world. So we thank you for your revelation of yourself to us in your word. As we open it today and as we seek to expound it, we ask that the Holy Spirit would be our teacher, that he would guide us into your truth and, Lord, even that the same Holy Spirit might empower me as a messenger of clay to speak boldly and passionately and compassionately the truth that you have for us today in your word. Guard what I say, may it be what you would have us hear. And may your spirit drive home the truth to our hearts that we may bear fruit for your glory. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. You know, God is not only concerned about what we do. He's concerned about how we do it, and especially in the New Testament, he's concerned about why we do it. While I'm here, I've been having the privilege of teaching some modular courses in the International Bible Institute here, and we've been looking at the greatest commandments of loving God and loving your neighbor. And as we turn especially into the pages of the New Testament, God tells us that no matter what we might do or appear to do in service for Him, if it's separated from love, and if love is not the motive of it, it's actually useless. But in addition to why we do what we do, God is concerned about how we do it. We certainly see this all through the Old Testament with a very intricate sacrificial system where God is giving intricate details about the tabernacle and later the temple and the instruments of sacrifice and the priests themselves and their attire and how they were to behave in their service for the Lord. As we come to Romans chapter 10, I believe we see here the method of missions. How God expects that to be carried out. We have an entire world that needs to know about our Savior and there's a methodology that God lays out for us, I believe, in this chapter. And I'm going to assume some familiarity with it for sake of time. We're not start out by reading large portions of it. But we will make our way through it to point out various things really in a series of S's that I think we see in this chapter. Beginning in the very first verse, we run across in the last word our first S. Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel, Paul says, is that they might be saved. If you drop down to verse 9, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Verse 13, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. The last word in each of those verses is the verb saved. In verse 10, we see it in noun form. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Now, if we're going to talk about being saved or salvation, the natural question would be in our minds, saved from what? You can't talk about being saved unless there's some kind of danger or some kind of malady or some kind of emergency in which you find yourself from which you need to be saved, from which you need to be rescued. Well, those of us who are familiar with the pages of Scripture understand that it speaks primarily and foremost of a spiritual salvation, a salvation from sin. And yet what's interesting in Romans chapter 10 is the words sin or sinner do not occur even one time. And so here's the Apostle Paul, writing under divine inspiration, right in the early sections of this chapter, telling us four times that we need to be saved. And yet, not even one time in this chapter does he tell us what we are being saved from. What we need to realize, though, is that Romans is a letter. It's an epistle. It has an author and it has recipients. And when you and I receive letters today, I would ask a simple question, where do we start reading them? Now, if you're reading a novel, or you're reading a book, or something you're already familiar with, or maybe just curiosity, you want to know how the story ends, so you jump to the end, and then you come back to the beginning. But I would submit, when we read letters, we almost always, without exception, start at the beginning of the letter, and we work our way progressively through it. And so as the recipients of Paul's letter did that, by the time they got to what we know as chapter 10, they would have read about the concept of sin, even by word, 55 times. So by the time those who had received this letter reached this chapter, they would be very familiar with the concept of sin. In fact, in the first three chapters alone, the Apostle Paul would have pointed out very dramatically and very conclusively that all are sinners. That there's not a single person alive on the face of the earth that has not violated the law of God. that has not offended His holiness by our very behavior, by our very thoughts and our attitudes, not only externally but internally. We violate the law of God. We sin against Him. We offend His holiness. The Apostle Paul would show us in those first three chapters that it matters not how religious we are. It matters not what kind of upbringing or educational background we have. It doesn't even matter how familiar with Scripture we are. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And so, we come to this need to be saved from our sin. And may I say that that is the ultimate, most foundational reason for missions. There's a lot of poverty in our world. There's a need for education in our world. There's a need for jobs and training and all kinds of things we could talk about. There's a need for health in our world. A need for more food. A need for cleaner water. And we have all kinds of organizations and all kinds of endeavors to meet these needs. But the most universal, the most basic, and the most crying need in our world is the need for human beings to be saved from their sin. To be made right with the holy God who has created them. To be reconciled to Him. And so we are propelled, we are compelled, and we are commanded in the Scriptures to go and to share this need of salvation. This greatest need that all people in all cultures of all colors have. Now, as we would ask ourselves about the method that God uses to save us, There are examples around the world of many different religions. And regardless of how you may talk about those religions or how specific you may get with those religions, all of them compile lists. In fact, we even have lists in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament. And the most familiar list is probably that of the Ten Commandments. And so the Bible has some thou shalt's and thou shalt not's in it. It has some very specific commandments and instructions. But there's something very, very unique about the Bible. There's something very, very unique about biblical Christianity. And that is that God tells us none of those lists can save us. He actually tells us that the reason for giving those lists was not to save us from our sin, but rather to show us our sin. The reason is to show us that we can't measure up to the lists. The lists don't save us, they frustrate us. They indicate to us that we're not perfect enough to meet the requirements of a holy God. Those lists actually stand as a barrier between us and our God. They block our way to eternal life, our place in His presence. They show us that we are sinners. But God didn't stop with lists. When God desired to save us, He sent us not a list, but a person. And so the second S that we have in this chapter, as we realize we need to be saved, how are we saved? What is God's method for saving us? It is a personal Savior. And that's our second S. He did not give us a list. He gave us a person. And that person is identified for us, again, in several verses in this chapter. In verse 6 we read, but the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, say not in thine heart who shall ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down from above. Here we have a name, a name of a person, and that name is Christ. Verse 7, or who shall descend into the deep, that is to bring up Christ, again that name, from the dead. Verse 9, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Verse 12, for there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek, For the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Now you see a title up here, For the Sake of His Name. That's an excellent title. Because God sent us a Savior with a personal name. There are actually three terms used in identifying Him in these verses. The first one we saw was Christ, and then we saw Lord, and then we saw Jesus. In fact, we see Lord several times, we see Christ a couple times, we see Jesus only once in these verses that we read. But I would submit to you that all three of those, only one of which is really a name, that is Jesus, the other two are titles. And in order to be saved, we have to embrace this person. We have to know who He is. We have to know what these names mean. And so that word, Lord, is a title of sovereignty. It means that He holds ultimate control. That He, at the end, is over all other principalities and powers and all authority structures. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is the one to whom every knee shall bow and declare that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He is the ultimate Master. And whether you receive Him as such, whether you recognize Him as such, whether you ever in this life bow the knee, He is still Lord. He always has been. He always will be. And there is coming a time when all that He has created will bow that knee and declare Him to be Lord. But I would submit to you that the reason He is Lord is because He is God. It could be no other way. Because if all are bowing to Him and He is less than God, how is God going to bow to a lesser person than Himself? This individual personal Savior is none other than the one true God. He is the second member of the Trinity, the triune God. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Three distinct persons in one God. I can't fully explain that, but I absolutely believe it. Because He's God, He's Lord. Now, he has, we could say, a middle name, but actually, Lord is a title. His name is Jesus. This is the name that was given to him at his human birth when he became man. God condescending to become man. Mary and Joseph were instructed, particularly Joseph, to call his name Jesus. Matthew 1.21 says, for he shall save his people. from their sins. So there we have it. That name given to Him at birth was a personal name assigned to identify His mission. For He shall save His people from their sins. The name Jesus means Savior. And He alone is that Savior. The word Christ is again a title. It's actually the New Testament rendering for the Old Testament concept of the Messiah. One that was promised all the way back in Genesis 3, verse 15, after Adam and Eve had sinned. They had violated God's command in the garden not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And at that moment, they became mortal human beings with death in their genes. They would live a life separated from the kind of intimacy with God they had known before they fell. They knew the shame of their nakedness. They knew the guilt of their sin. They were hiding from God in the presence, God's presence in that garden. But God explained to them that a Redeemer would come. That there would be one who was born of the seed of a woman. One born of a virgin. And that one would defeat Satan. And that one would have the power to redeem us from sin. And so Christ is that promised Messiah. He is Lord because He's God. He is Jesus because He's man. And He's Christ because He's both. This is the God-man. Now, there's a reason why he's both in the concept of salvation. Because he's got to bridge the gap between God and man. You see, the reason God sent us a person and not a list is because He wants a relationship with us. He created us in His image. And before Adam and Eve sinned, God's voice as a Spirit, but His presence, and He would speak verbally to them, would come into that garden in the cool of the day and they would be in the very presence of God communing with Him. That's why He had created man in His image to represent Him, to fellowship with Him when they sinned. They violated that very relationship and fellowship. They were separated from God. And God, in His love for us, even though we had defiled ourselves and in our rebellion turned our backs on Him, God said, I desire for that relationship to be reconciled. We could not reconcile it. We could not bridge the gap. We in our sin could not offer God any kind of righteousness that He would accept. We could not buy salvation. We could not purchase it. We could not earn it. God sent a Redeemer who was both God and man to reconcile men to God. And so, He wants a relationship with you. He wants a relationship with me. This Savior is the Lord Jesus Christ. So we could ask ourselves at this point a question, is there any other Savior? Is He one of several? Can Mohammed or Allah save us? Can Buddha save us? Can one of the 33 million gods of the Hindus save us? Well, when we come to the pages of Scripture, Jesus Himself said in John 14, verse 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by Me. And Peter later preaching in Acts chapter 4, verse 12 said, Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name given among men under heaven whereby we must be saved. It is that name, it is that name alone that can save us. And you must receive, by faith, the Lord Jesus Christ and enter into a personal relationship with Him in order to be saved. There is no other way. Now when we talk about a relationship, what would you say is the most foundational ingredient in a relationship? Well, you could say love. And again, I taught seven hours on that concept, looking at God's love for us, our love for God, our love for enemies, even our love for others, and even the concept of self-love, which is completely warped and made ridiculous in many ways in our culture today. And so we could say that love is foundational to a relationship, and that would be true, but I think there's something that's even more foundational than love. If you've done any marriage counseling, or you know anyone who has had the heartbreak of infidelity in a marriage, you know that love is very strained if trust is broken. The basis of love must be trust. It's not that we can't love without it, but we're not talking just about love right now, we're talking about relationship. And before you enter into a close, intimate relationship with someone, and even build love with them, they must be trustworthy. You must know that you can trust this person, you can commit yourself to them, and you can accept their commitment to you. And so that very commitment of love is anchored in trust. So when God sends His Son to enter into a relationship with us, what does He ask from us? That's what He asks for. He asks for trust. In other words, the way you receive this Savior is to trust Him. Let's look at it here in the passage. Another word for trust is believe. Notice verse 9, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be what? Saved. So I enter into that relationship with the Lord Jesus, Through a sincere faith of my heart, I believe upon Him. Verse 14. How then shall they call on Him, that is, to call on Him as Savior in salvation? How shall they call on Him of 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? Verse 16, But they have not all obeyed the gospel, for Isaiah saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? We see believe, believe, believe, which is trust. I look at verses 6 and 8, we see the noun form of that. But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, say not in thine heart who shall descend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down from above. Verse 8, but what saith it, the word is nigh thee even in thy mouth and in thy heart, that is the word of faith which we preach. This is something else that separates Christianity and makes it unique. And I'm talking about biblical Christianity, not just nominal Christianity. Biblical Christianity is a faith-based system. It is not a works-based one. You and I do not come to God and offer our works to him as a means for him to justify us in his sight. We have no work that He will accept. The Bible says that our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. That even the plowing of the wicked is sin. The most noble things we can do in this life are not good enough to offer as a sacrifice to God whereby He will accept us. It can't happen. And so, though all the religions of the world have these works-based systems whereby they may enter heaven, if you talk to people in those religions, they don't have assurance because they never know if they're performing the list well enough. They never know if they've conformed exactly as they should to that list. And God again has given us lists, but He tells us we can't conform to them because God demands perfect conformity. So do you realize if the name, if Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ had ever committed a single sin in thought, deed, Word, He could not save us. He can save us because He met the perfect standard that the Father requires. And so God does not throw away His justice to save us. That's why people get upset when we talk about a faith-based religion. They think that works don't matter. They think that works don't mean anything to God. I want to tell you, works mean everything to God. It's just that we can't perform them. Someone had to. Do you realize that Jesus, the human Jesus, earned His way to heaven? He's given a name that's above every name because He earned that name. We will bow to Him and worship Him as the One in human flesh, whoever did that which pleases the Father, who met the perfect requirements of God's law and never broke any aspect of God's law in thought, word or deed. And when you and I place faith in Him, when we trust Him, God not only cleanses our sin, He applies the righteousness of Jesus Christ to our account. The only reason I can enter heaven is because I've got the righteousness of Jesus Christ to offer to God. And that righteousness is given by my faith, not my performance. That's how we enter the relationship. Well, if it's based upon faith, then we have another question. And fortunately, that question is also answered in this chapter. Where do we get faith? From whence does it come? Sinners, those who are separated from Jesus Christ, are called unbelievers in the Scriptures. They don't know God. They don't love God. They haven't placed faith in the Lord Jesus Christ personally. Does that person one day wake up who has been an unbeliever all the way from the time of his birth up to that point and suddenly say, I think today I'm going to become a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ? How does an unbeliever become a believer? Well, this brings us to another S. We've seen that we need to be saved. We've seen that we need a personal Savior to save us. But now when we come to verse 17, Romans 10, so then faith cometh by what? Here's the source of faith. And hearing by the Word of God. Okay, so this S is seed. Now I know it's not called that in this chapter, but Jesus Himself in Matthew chapter 13 told us that the Word is seed that needs to be scattered. It needs to be scattered all over the face of the earth and the soil upon which the seed of the Word of God falls is human hearts. So we see ourselves as farmers who are sowing seed in order to produce a harvest for the glory of God. And we pray as we sow the seed of God's Word that it will generate or germinate faith in the human heart. This verse tells us that faith comes by hearing the Word of God. Now, we need to understand this, because even many times when I was pastoring, I would have people come to me and say, well, I would love to witness to my neighbor, but I can't use the Bible because he doesn't believe it. Do you understand that you're arguing against Romans 10.17? Romans 10.17 does not say, get someone to believe the Bible so you can then use it to save them. It assumes that they're hearing the Word of God before they believe it. Because faith comes from hearing it. So if we were to put this verse in chronological order, if we were to turn it into action, the hearing would come first while there's still an unbelief. And as they continue to hear the Word of God, it is the power of the Word which is written by human authors under divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Do you understand that to be saved, we must be born of the Spirit? That's what Jesus said to Nicodemus in John chapter 3. And we're familiar with verse 16. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." But the context of that verse is a conversation with Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a very religious man, a renowned teacher. But he was lost. He was still separated from God because he didn't have any faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ that day shared the Gospel with Nicodemus. He told him that he must be born again. And Nicodemus, thinking on physical terms, says, how do I enter back into my mother's womb as an adult man? And Jesus said, no, to be born again is not a physical birth. It's to be born of the Spirit. And so when we hear the Word of God, which is authored by the Spirit of God, He, through that Word, begins to illuminate God's truth to our hearts. One of those truths is that we are sinners separated from God. Another one is that God sent a Son who loves us and wants to save us. And those truths are revealed to us through the Word of God. And as a person hears those truths, the blessed Spirit of God illuminates and convicts the human heart to receive and accept God's revelation by faith. And that's where it comes from. That means that you and I must share the truth of Scripture with people who don't believe it. We don't need anything else. We don't have any other weapon that God promises will lead to salvation. The Bible is called the sword of the Spirit in Ephesians chapter 6. A sword was an instrument of death in that day. We could compare it, if we wanted to get an instrument of death today, to a gun. Now, Matthew Barfield, I believe, is somewhere in this place today. And so I'm going to pick on him just before we close. And I didn't get to all the S's. I will share another one that has everything to do with faith promise. So I want you to come back tonight. And I have a separate message on faith promise, too, if I get to it. But the instrument of death in our culture today would be a gun. So I'll pick on Matthew Barfield. I've never thought of shooting him. I don't think I ever will. His office used to be next to mine. And when he sat down with Pastor Phelps and they came up with this Rev. 5-9 concept, and it already fit within the umbrella of IPMUSA, but I knew as I was listening to these words that Matthew Barfield's office would not be next door to mine much longer. But I saw God written all over it. I had to let him go. But I said to Pastor Phelps, it's like you cut off my right arm. So I'm picking on him facetiously. But if I actually had a gun in my pocket, and I walked up to Matthew Barfield, and I pointed it at him, and he said, that gun can't hurt me, and I said, why not? And he said, because I don't believe it's loaded. Does whether or not he believe it's loaded matter when I pull the trigger? The weapon's still going to work, right? But let's make it a little more dramatic. Let's say somebody's broken into my home and they're armed and they could kill my family. When I'm pulling the trigger to protect myself and my family, who's got to have the faith then? I do. And do you understand that Romans 10, 17, before it generates faith in an unbeliever, it better have faith in our hearts. We don't go out using clever philosophies and all kinds of arguments. We go out believing as human messengers that the Word of God is a weapon capable of generating faith. And we know that it works whether or not the person on the other end understands or believes that yet. When you pull the trigger, the person still hits the ground whether they believe the gun was loaded or not. And we need to pull the trigger of Scripture when we witness to people and believe that it can generate faith. That's the seed. And I'm going to jump ahead just as we close and say that all seeds require a sower. And all sowers require senders. And that gives you a glimpse of where we're going tonight. Because we need sowers all over the world sowing this seed of the gospel so that sinners can be saved by a personal Savior. And we need many more of those sowers. And those sowers need to be sent. And they're sent from people like you sitting in pews right where you are this morning. What a powerful and wonderful opportunity you have in faith promise to become a sender of sowers. We'll look more at that tonight. Lord willing we'll look at some examples of it in the scriptures that are very powerful. May God speak to our hearts. Father, thank you today for your word. Thank you for the power of it. Thank you for the method of missions that you've given to us. We haven't completely encapsulated it even from Romans 10 yet. But Lord, we're familiar, many of us, with the words. And I pray you drive home those words to our heart, that we place confidence in those words, that we realize we're not only saved by faith, but we live by faith, we serve by faith, and give us the faith this day in Faith Promise Sunday to stretch ourselves as we give to you. to trust you to give back, to understand that you're depending upon us as part of this process, this methodology of missions. Thank you for giving us a privilege in that process. May we exercise faith and may we obey you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.