The title of the message is called The Gospel's Belief and Confession. We needed to kind of slow down on those two words. We've looked at them the last two times that I have been teaching in Romans 10 here. So let's think for a moment from verse 13, chapter 10 and verse 13. This is where it says, whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And this is, at least in one sense, why we call the gospel good news. The Bible clearly teaches, Romans clearly teaches that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And this is for Christians to understand. This is for you and I to understand. The last section that we had been studying, we thought about two different phrases that Moses said are a reflection of what the righteousness of the law says. Remember, Romans 10 has taught us that there are two ways of going about finding righteousness. Romans chapter 10 says that there is a righteousness that is according to the law, and it says that there is a righteousness of faith. And last week we were reading about what does the righteousness of the law say, and what does righteousness of faith say. We read also, and you'll remember that earlier in the chapter, it says that the Jews sought righteousness. They went after it. It was something they earnestly did desire, and they did it via paying attention to the law of God. And then it also said earlier in the chapter that because they were ignorant of the righteousness of God, They remain, until the time of the writing of this letter, they remain unrighteous. They remain lost. So, this letter has spent quite a bit of time, really, reflecting on where are the Jews at? Where are they at? The Jews came from Abraham, and all of the Jews believe, and even you and I believe, because of what the scripture says, that Abraham is saved, right? And then Moses. Moses, in the giving of the law. Moses tells the Jews that they're to follow the law. And we understand from Paul's teaching that righteousness and salvation is by faith in Christ, and the Jews naturally feel and see a conflict. They understand that there's something a little bit different about what's being taught here and what we understood by Abraham, by Moses, even by David and by the prophets. Most of them did not understand that they were waiting for a substitute righteousness. They thought that Paul and even the Lord Jesus was talking down on the law, right? What was the Jews' chief complaint against the Lord Jesus regarding the law? Well, they accused him of two major things. One was that he would break the Sabbath. Because of what he was doing on the Sabbath, which was a major law, they knew that Jesus had to be a heretic. And what else? Because of the way Jesus spoke, Early on in his ministry, many began to realize that he was professing to be God in flesh. The Lord Jesus was claiming to be God, and that was blasphemy to the Jews. The law prohibits blasphemy. Blasphemy is against God's law. And so, there's much confusion among the Jews. The righteousness of the law says in verse 5, 10-5, Romans 10-5, it says, the man who does these things shall live by them. In other words, the man who hopes to attain righteousness by the law, the man who would attain righteousness by the law would do everything that the law said without fail. And you don't have to try that for more than a week to realize you cannot do it. It cannot be done. And this is why the end of the law is Christ. The point of the law, the purpose of the law isn't to prove that the law is worthless, it's to prove that you are not made up of law-keeping stuff. You are lawbreakers in your blood, in your hearts, and in your minds. You are lawbreakers. And it's to direct you to Christ, longing for Christ, hoping for the righteousness of Christ, which is promised in Genesis 3, promised again in Genesis 12, promised again in Genesis 17, promised again in 2 Samuel 7. The Bible is full of these prophetic declarations that the Messiah is on the way to save His people. The righteousness of faith speaks in another way. It says in Romans 10.8, the righteousness of faith is what Romans is announcing to us. The righteousness of faith is what Paul is not ashamed of in Romans 1. It is the righteousness of God. Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Belief of Abraham toward God and God's Word to him is credited to him as righteousness. This is the righteousness of faith What does it say in Romans 10 8 it says the word is near you in your mouth in your heart? That is the word of faith, which we preach And yet the Jews Remain to this point even ignorant of how the law and the Lord Jesus come together and And if you're honest, you've probably struggled to totally understand how does the law and the Lord Jesus come together? The Lord Jesus said, not a jot or a tittle, not an iota will be taken away from the law until all comes to pass. The Lord Jesus himself upheld all of the law. It's not like the Lord Jesus stamped on the law and declared it worthless and silly. the law. If man could be made righteous by keeping the law, then man surely would have been made righteous by keeping the law. But men can't. Men can't do it. They think they can, but they can't do it. Romans 10.3 says, as I mentioned a moment ago, the Jews seek to establish their own righteousness. Longing to be righteous. Do you And have you, in your own heart of hearts, do you long for the righteousness that God requires? Do you understand your own unholiness? Do you understand the offer of God's righteousness and the threat of death for sinners? Do you understand that so that you long for the righteousness of God? This is what the gospel is about. The gospel witness of the good news says the righteousness of God is now available to all men by faith in Christ. And so in Romans 10, 9, and 10, which is where kind of the key part of our verses are today, Romans 10, 9, and 10, we find it says, if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, This is additionally what the righteousness of faith says. So the righteousness of the law speaks in one way, this is how the righteousness of faith speaks. If you confess the Lord Jesus with your mouth and believe in your heart 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. And this is the Word that is near you, even now. As Paul was teaching by the words of Moses, the Word is near you. This is what he means. This is the Gospel Paul has been preaching and teaching. The Word is near you. Do you long for and are you seeking God's righteousness? The Word is near you. You must have God's righteousness. You must be righteousness, perfectly righteous. And this is how. It's by belief and confession. When the end of the age comes, the New Testament has taught us to expect it could be imminently. It could be this afternoon. When the end of the age comes, will you be found in Christ? Or will you be found seeking your own righteousness? Where are you going to be found? It does say in Romans 10.11, whoever believes on Him, whoever believes, this is the belief, whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame. When that day finally comes and you have invested your hope in that, it's not going to be a shameful, sad and scary day. And this would be the concern of some of the Jews, of course, as they imagine what it means to believe in Jesus and to not seek righteousness according to the law. They think that, wow, when the end comes, that will be embarrassing. God will find us to be falling short. Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame. And then in verse 12 it says, There is no distinction between Jew and Greek. Now this is where we're going to get into some interesting teaching by the Apostle. There's 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 will be saved. How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? 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? And 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. We'll refer to some of these verses throughout the remaining minutes of our message. But I want you to think for a moment about the righteousness of faith that says, believe and confess, in verse 9. These are two different things that accompany the one who now is wearing righteousness, God's righteousness. I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for in it the power of God, the righteousness of God is revealed. The righteousness of God is revealed. in this Gospel. There are two things, believing and confessing in this righteousness. I wonder if you know what it means to believe. Have you, in your heart, pondered over the meaning of what it means to actually believe something? And probably all of us have in some way or another. Maybe in your mind you have kind of wondered about yourself and you've thought, I know that it's good to save money. I think I should probably save money. But I don't save money. I just spend it. So, one of the things that the New Testament does is it tries to bring together the difference between thinking something and doing something. In other words, if you say, I believe it's right to save money for a day when I'm extra sick or when a tree falls through the roof of my house, I think it's right. But if you don't save money The Bible has a special word for someone who says, I know that it's right, but I don't do it. What is that word? Can you remember what that word's called? Hypocrite. Hypocrite. You and I know what that means. We know what it means to think something is so and then not do it, okay? So believing. Believing means to actually yield to. to give yourself to, to be convinced. God raised Christ from the dead. Believe God raised Christ from the dead. There is no gospel, there is no salvation without this. There is no such thing as eternal life without believing that God raised Christ from the dead. Now, we'll talk about that a little bit more in a few minutes, but confession is another interesting necessity. Confession means to adopt the same terms of language. Confession means adopt the same terms of language. It means you totally agree with what is stated to be true. You don't need to redefine terms and re-say it so that you are content and satisfied with it. It means to avow frankly. It means to uphold and assert honestly and simply. So, when you are asked as a kid on the playground maybe, or when you are asked maybe as a witness in a courtroom, your confession When maybe the yard duty person or the judge asks you to make a confession, you're expected to frankly say what you think was true. What you saw that young boy over there do to that young boy over here, you're going to make a confession. and say what's taken place. Sometimes a confession, when you were at least younger, might have been a requirement for you to say what you had done wrong. Sometimes you were asked to say how you had hurt your sister, maybe, or how you had told a lie. That's what a confession is. You know, Some know the Lord Jesus, even in the Lord Jesus' day and in our day. Some know who He was. They could hear His teaching. They saw His miracles. They would even say things like, only somebody who has come from God could do such a thing. And so they know that He is God in the flesh. He's a great prophet. He's somebody utterly worthy of all of their attention. They even come to believe in his resurrection. The body of the Lord Jesus was resurrected after his death, and the rulers of the Jews and the rulers of the Romans conspired to say that his body had been stolen. Do you think they knew that the body of the Lord Jesus had been resurrected? Yes, they did. Why would they hold back their confession? Why wouldn't they just say, I believe he is resurrected. I believe he is the Christ. I'll just confess that he is the Christ. Why wouldn't they just go ahead and confess it? This is an important question because the confession of a Christian goes in the face of what we're talking about here. Why will some refuse to confess what they actually even come to realize is true? They know it's true, but they will not confess it. Well, one reason is it's not cool. It's not cool to be a Christian. When I was a kid, a young kid, when I was in college, even now, it's not cool in America to be a Christian, because Christians have views about things that are unpopular. Christians have opinions about good and bad and right and wrong, so it's not cool. It might cause social discomfort. That's why you wouldn't confess Christ, because people would maybe even mock you. People would maybe even Just hold unpopular opinions about you. They'll have ideas about you that you find to be uncomfortable. Maybe you'll be embarrassed by confessing Christ. And here's another one. Some are bothered about confessing Christ because when you confess Christ, you are very clearly saying those who do not confess Christ are wrong. When you say, I know there is one God and one Savior and one Spirit, I believe there is black and white truth, I believe the claims of the gospel, I believe God's revelation to us about what's right and wrong. When you make that claim that I confess this God, I believe in this God, you are saying that probably, I'll just throw out a number, 80, 95% of your friends are wrong. in what they believe. And people don't want to confess that. Maybe you struggle being willing to confess that because you don't want your friend to think you're judgmental. You don't want your friend to think that you have this holier than thou opinion about things. And what we need to learn to do is say, you know, I'm not holier than you. I believe God's word. I believe his revelation about what's right and wrong. We are all sinners. We've all wronged God and we've all wronged our fellow men and we need a savior. Confessing Christ will make you divide from many people that you are close to. In at least some ways, when the Gospel here in Romans 10 says confess, it means to accept the testimony in your heart. Or in other words, you have already begun to be witness to in your heart and in your conscience that the Lord Jesus is the Son of God and He died for sinners and He rose from the dead. You're beginning to think that's true. You're beginning to realize that this is the truth. And for you to confess it, will mean I'm going to agree with this conviction. I'm going to say what I've slowly become convinced of. I'm going to agree with it instead of fighting it and arguing with it. I'm going to choose Christ. I'm going to go with the Lord Jesus against whoever and against whatever is going to stand before me and oppose me because I'm standing with Christ. I'm going to confess it. I don't care. And in some ways you're going to say, I do care. I'm concerned. I'm worried. I feel a little bit fearful. But I love the Lord more. I believe in the claims of the gospel. I want to be found standing with the Lord Jesus. I want to be found standing with the righteousness of Christ at the end of the age. Our believing is accompanied with evidences and testimonies. That is to say, the things that we say we believe and we confess we believe, we have evidences for. Remember, faith is a substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen is what it says in the book of Hebrews. So, when we see that faith has a means of being strengthened. When we learn that faith has a way of being fortified and made more full and more robust and more strong, look at Romans 10 verse 17. You'll see what I'm referring to. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. When we learn that faith has a means of being applied to a person's mind and heart, including your own, when we learn that, when we learn that there's a means to it, We want to recognize that God has given you and I tools of strengthening our own faith. Or, listen to this, the person we love, a friend, a spouse, a child, a brother who does not believe, how do they come to believe? How do they come to have faith? Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. So, you may have been praying for the salvation of people that you love, of people that you know, who want to know the gospel, and we should be. We should be praying that they would be humbled, and that they would hear the gospel, and that they would believe the gospel. We should be praying and asking God's Spirit to work on them in this way. Are they gonna come to faith in Christ without hearing the words of the gospel? No, faith comes by hearing. and hearing by the word of Christ. Faith is evidence and substance. You can give the unbeliever evidence for believing. You can give the unbeliever testimony for knowing who is this Jesus Christ. Which prophets spoke of him? How did they speak of him? How did they know that he would be born in Bethlehem? And does the Bible say that they knew he was going to be born in Bethlehem, according to Micah 5, if I'm remembering correctly? And he actually was born in Bethlehem, because we know that the Magi wanted to know where the Messiah was supposed to be born, and they went to look for him in Bethlehem. No, we know these things. We have many witnesses, many evidences. of why we believe He is the Christ, why we believe in the resurrection. If unbelief is strong in your heart, if doubts prevail in your own heart, listen to this, will God's Word be powerless to strengthen your faith? If your faith is weak, If you become weak in unbelief, will God's Word be powerless to strengthen you and to comfort you and to give you hope in your faith? No, it will not be. God's Word will be powerful. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. When you feel tempted to not come to church on Sunday, don't worry that the religious duty is somehow gonna make you a worse Christian. What you miss out on when you don't come to worship on Sunday is hearing the word of God preached and taught so you know what the legs of your faith stand on. Faith is made of stuff. Faith is made. of the Word of God. Don't be negligent to be in the Word of God on a regular basis so that your strength is coming from the Word of God. And if you spend more time, I don't want to rant about television, but television feeds certain appetites in you. Entertainment feeds certain appetites in us. And when we are drinking that in and eating that down, What you may or may not realize is that your faith in Christ and your knowledge of His Word is being weakened at the same time. Your confidence or even your knowledge of certain verses in the Word of God are weakened when you feed it with news radio, with silly stuff in the media, with YouTube, That stuff literally just comes in your mind and pushes out the words of faith that help to build and establish and strengthen the faith of our own hearts. You and I need to learn to love the truth of God's Word and to seek it and be consumers of the truth of God's Word. Faith is fed and made of God's Word. Now, one of the things we discover as we keep reading through the passage here at verse 11, Romans 10 and verse 11, he says, Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame." You see that? It goes on to say, there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. Now listen carefully. We're going to learn something interesting here. The same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. It's a very, very interesting statement. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. There's an awful lot of information being given to us here. Verse 11, among other things, affirms the threat of shame. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will not be ashamed. Well, who said there was shame involved? Well, the verse affirms it. It means there is a temptation to be ashamed, to confess the name of Christ. There is a temptation to stay away from Him far enough so that you are not gonna be identified with Him. But the verse says, there is no shame in grabbing ahold of and confessing the name of Christ. whoever believes on him will not be ashamed. And it also begins to address, now this is one of the reasons why you will not be ashamed. This is one of the reasons why you cannot be ashamed. There is no difference between Jew and Greek, why? Why is there no difference between Jew and Greek? Here, let me put this in our vernacular, okay? There is no difference between the religious and the non-religious. There's no difference. There's no difference between, and now let's, in the days of Paul writing this letter, what's the farthest place in the world we can imagine? It would have to be down in Africa somewhere. It would be down in Egypt. Those, or Babylon would be like the ultimate pagans of Jesus' day, right? There's no difference between Egyptians and the people in Jerusalem. Why does He say that? He says, because, look what it says, the same Lord over all is rich to all that call upon Him. Who is the Lord Jesus Lord of? Think about this and look at that verse. Who is He Lord of? He is Lord of all. He is Lord of Jew and Greek. Don't be ashamed to confess this Lord, because there is only one Lord, and the same Lord is Lord over all. There's one Lord. Even if they don't claim to be a believer, He is their Lord. You understand that? Even if they're of a total different country, different religion, He is the Lord over all. And so when you confess His name, you are literally bonding to and binding to the only God, the only Savior, the only hope of eternal life. Let's think about this for a moment. First, shame being threatened to the unbeliever who's thinking about becoming a believer or shame being threatened to you, that is a tactic of a bully. Shaming you is a tactic of a bully. Shaming the unbeliever. And when a Buddhist in Thailand or when a Buddhist in Cambodia is thinking about believing in the Lord Jesus and believing in the claims of the gospel, when they're thinking about that, one of the biggest threats in their mind is shame. If I believe the gospel of the white people, if I believe this message of the Americans or of the Europeans, the Australians are very common in Asia as well, teaching the gospel. If I believe that, then I'm abandoning the religion of my country. And my family and my friends will shame me. My friends who used to go to the temple with me, the Buddhist temple, they'll shame me. And so there's that threat. That is a threat of the bully. That is a threat of the deceiver. When a Christian is contemplating the gospel, when an unbeliever is contemplating the gospel and they're thinking about shame, that shame are the threats and the words of a bully who wants you to walk away from the Savior. want you to deny the Savior. The bully wants you to do that and to stand with him. It is a tool of the bully. But look at, I'll just read you 2 Corinthians 4.17. As you endure these threats, as you decide, I am gonna stand with Christ, There is one Lord and I'm going to stand with Him. I'm going to come over here and stand with truth. Listen to that one verse here. 2 Corinthians 4.17 says, For our light affliction is for but a moment. In other words, you really will experience affliction because of your standing with Christ. you really will. It won't always be easy, but he says your light affliction is for a moment, it is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. What that means is as you exercise your faith in the Lord Jesus, as you consistently confess Christ as your Savior, The afflictions you endure are a way of saying, even if it hurts me, I will trust in my Lord. Even if it costs me money or respect, I am going to stand with my Lord." The scripture here says this turns into an eternal weight of glory. Why? Because when we finally step into the other side of eternity and the Lord, God, Father, Son, and Spirit is looking at His saints, one of the things that the saints have in common is that they together They together said, we don't care if they afflict us. We don't care if they persecute us. We know there's only one God. We know there's only one righteousness. We know there's only one eternal life. And this becomes part of the eternal glory of our God. It's a way of praising him. It's a way of worshiping him. He is the same Lord over all. Now, there is no shame standing in Him and everybody must know and believe in Him. I'm gonna bring you to a few verses beginning in Genesis 9, be in Genesis 9, Genesis 10, and a couple of different spots. I want to establish the fact that He really is Lord of all. The Lord in the New Testament language is a word for master. It could be sometimes a word that would be used to address a king, for example. You might call the king, my lord. It speaks of his supremacy and of his authority. There is one Lord, and one of the ways we know that this is biblically true, in Genesis 9.18, it's speaking about Noah and his sons. Genesis 9.18 says, And so those three men, and their wives become the fathers and the mothers of different groups of people." So this particular reference is really interesting. The sons of Noah went out of the ark, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan, which is that area over in the Middle East at Israel. Verse 19 says, These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated. Now, as we go from the time of Noah, and there were eight people in the time of Noah, the Bible says the whole earth was populated from these eight. Now, of these eight, what percentage of them know who the creator and the judge of the world is? 100% of these 8 know. Who is the Creator? Who is the Judge? Who is the Lord? 100% know. Okay, let's read a little bit further. Of those eight, the whole earth is populated, Genesis 10, two through five. The sons of Japheth, that's one of those, were, here's the names of these sons, Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshach, and Tiras. The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Riphoth, and Togarmah. The sons of Javan were Elisha, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim." Now listen carefully at verse 5. It says, "...from these the coastland peoples of the Gentiles were separated into their lands, everyone according to his language, according to their families, into their nations." It even used the word Gentiles in this passage. In other words, what I'm saying is, even from the time of Adam and Eve, what percentage of the world knew that there was one Creator, one God, All of the people knew. From the time of Noah, what percentage of the people and their children knew there is one God and one Lord? 100% of them knew it. He is the Lord over all. He is the God over all. There is no other. Genesis 11. 5-9 is a very important piece of the history of mankind. Genesis 11 verse 5. is where God comes and speaks to a people who had one language. So at Genesis 10, there's one language, and then Genesis 11 explains why there are many languages. So I'm gonna read to you verses five to nine. The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built, and the Lord said, indeed, the people are one and they have one language. And this is what they begin to do. Now, nothing they propose to do will be withheld from them. And in some ways you can see our day being referred to there. In other words, the less language barrier there is in the earth, and the more men conspire and work together, their capacity to do bad increases. As people gang up and team up in larger and larger groups of intelligences and schemings and what have you, more and more things happen that are bad things. This is what they begin to do, the scripture says, nothing they propose to do will be withheld. Come, let us then go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. Verse seven is a little reference to the Trinity there. Come, let us go down, even in the Old Testament, as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. Let us go down and confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth." All of those people that were building the Tower of Babel get scattered over all the earth. They ceased building the city, and therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the earth. The Gospel asks men to take their stand on Christ. Believe in your heart this Word that is near you, that is in your ear. Believe in this Christ, who God raised from the dead. Believe in Him. Confess with your mouth. It's not about who's a Jew and who's a Gentile, because the same Lord is Lord over all. All men, all women, all peoples have one God, one Creator, one Judge. If shame keeps you from faithful belief, if shame scares you, if shame is hard for you to deal with, think about the Lord's soon return. The Gospel says that He returns. It's called the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord comes. The coming of the Lord comes. There is a passage in Matthew 25 verses 32 and 33 that talks about God separating sheep from goats. Those are the only two groups of people on the earth when He returns. Sheep and goats. Sheep are those who love the Lord, call on His name, love the sound of His voice. Those are the sheep. The goats are mad at the Lord, don't want Him to have any Lordship, don't want Him to be in charge of anything. They wanna be in charge of themselves. At the end of the age, the Lord Jesus teaches about this. So I'm gonna read to you just a little bit, verses 32 to 33, Matthew 25, 32 to 33. all the nations will be gathered before him. He is the Lord of all the nations, and that's why he has the right to do so. He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats, and he will set the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left. And then the king will say to those on his right, come you blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. This scripture teaches us consistently and faithfully. There is one Lord and he is rich to all who call upon him. He is rich to whoever would call upon him. Verse 12 speaks about His richness to whoever, richness to whoever would call upon Him. Even men and women who live years of their lives being content in their rebellion against Him. People who have been just carefree in their godlessness. God is rich to them who would call on Him. God is forgiving to those who turn to him and say, God, forgive me of my sin. God, I thank you and praise you for the only sacrifice that could have been instead of me. I thank you that the blood of the shed blood of Christ can be my atonement. Thank you, God, that you have atoned for my sin by your very own perfectly righteous Son. All men in the world will bow to the one Lord. Every man and woman in the world will bow to this one Lord. This is the gospel that we believe and confess. You believe in your heart. God raised Him from the dead. You confess with your mouth. Jesus is Lord. He is Lord over all. The riches of God is almost never understood. And as we close here, I just want to give you a small example, kind of a shocking example of God's richness and God's grace to repentant people. And as I read about Ahab here in 1 Kings chapter 21, Ahab was a king of the rebellious, the most rebellious half of Israel. Ahab was a very wicked king. Ahab was the one who was married to Jezebel. Ahab is the one who wanted a vineyard of his neighbor, and he kind of told his wife about it, and his wife put together a scheme to get the neighbor killed so that he could have the vineyard. Ahab was a very wicked king. Man, you guys, if you lived in his kingdom, or in a neighboring kingdom, you would say, that is not a good king. He is a wicked man. I'm going to read to you from verse 24. 1 Kings 21 verse 24 says, The dogs shall eat whoever belongs to Ahab. Now this is the prophet speaking against Ahab because of Ahab's wickedness. The dogs will eat whoever belongs to Ahab and dies in the city. The birds of the air shall eat whoever dies in the field. But there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do wickedness in the sight of the Lord, because Jezebel his wife stirred him up. She was very complicit in his wickedness. He wasn't willing to say no to her. They were a terrible, wicked team. and he behaved very abominably in following idols, according to all that the Amorites have done." The Amorites are their neighbors, who are not God-fearing people. They are idolaters. "...and whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel. So it was, when Ahab heard these words..." Listen carefully, please. Last couple of verses here. "...when Ahab heard these words, when he heard the prophets speaking, He tore his clothes, and he put sackcloth on his body, and he fasted, and he lay in sackcloth, and he went about mourning. And the word of the Lord came to the prophet Elijah, saying, See how Ahab has humbled himself. Because he has humbled himself before me, I will not bring the calamity in his days. God looks on the repentance of Ahab. Really, Ahab is a picture of just the worst kind of sinner, isn't he? Worst kind of adulterer, worst kind of liar, worst kind of idolater. Whatever the sins are in your heart and mind that you think make somebody the worst, this is pictured here in Ahab. And when he hears of the condemnation that is declared for him, what did he do? He repented. He repented and he said, this is me. I am a great sinner. Now, you are not Ahab. You are a man and woman who lives in North America in the year 2023, and you might be a Republican, or you might be a Democrat, you might be a pot grower, you might be a daycare worker. You might fix equipment. You might live at home. But now, in this moment of reflection on the gospel, of believing and confessing, in order that you may seek and have God's righteousness by Christ. This is when you look into your little data file, your little heart file, and you see those dark things in you, your pride, your unrighteous anger, your ungodly timidity, your greed, your adulteries, There's a list, and God is faithful to help you remember that list. If you need to find that list so you know what to confess, if you say, Lord, I can't think of one bad thing about me, I don't know what I need to confess, Lord. Well, you're ignorant of yourself. I don't want to be hard on you, but you're ignorant of yourself. Everybody who had come to God and receive the righteousness of Christ would come in repentance and say, Lord, that's me. I'm the sinner. I'm the one who would die unless I receive the righteousness of Christ. I believe that the death of Christ is the payment for my sin. I believe that his resurrection is the evidence It's the evidence of His righteousness. It's the evidence of the truth of the gospel. The righteousness of Christ is my hope. I confess Christ. I publicly confess Christ. I love the Messiah. He is Lord over all and I will endure hardship if it comes my way. I want to walk with you, Lord. I want to know you, Lord. I want to know your righteousness. I want to know how to serve you, Lord. This is our belief, and this is our confession. And Romans 10, 9, and 10 says there's business going on in the heart of men and women who hear this gospel. This is the word that is near you. And I ask you to believe in your heart, and confess with your mouth. When somebody taunts you tomorrow or this evening, tempts you to be afraid of saying, no, I really am a Christian. My only hope of righteousness is Christ. It's not me. I'm not righteous. Christ is righteous and He's my hope. He is the reason, I hope, in eternal life. This is the confession of a Christian. Remember, the Apostle says that faith comes by hearing. You need to hear and believe the words of God. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Let me close in prayer with you for a minute, and we will close our morning. Our Father in Heaven, we thank you and praise you for the gracious and rich offer of the gospel by the life and death of the Lord Jesus. Dear God, I thank you that the resurrection is a pillar of a testimony in the years of time that we can look back to, we can reckon on, and we can be hopeful in and strengthened in, that at your return, dear God, by faith in Christ, we would wear His righteousness. We thank you, Lord. In the name of Christ Jesus, the Son, we pray, Amen.