Today's scripture reading is from Romans chapter 10, verses 6 through 13. This is the word of God. But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven? That is to bring Christ down. 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 that we proclaim. Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, what a joyous promise from you. And we thank you for your word. We ask that you would magnify your word to our hearts today. And Lord, we as your people are gathered here today to confess, Jesus, you are Lord, and you are risen from the dead. Thank you for this time together with your people. Lord, call us to understand and to believe your word. And Lord, forgive people ears to hear your word today, we pray. In Christ's name, amen. You can be seated. Well, the 1980s was quite the decade for pop culture. From Michael Jackson to the other MJ and his shoes. That would be Michael Jordan and his still ever popular Air Jordans, which grieves me as a Pistons fan. We had a jovial, quick-witted president And then came the blockbuster hit, Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise. Some of you may recognize the song from that movie, Highway to the Danger Zone, performed by Kenny Loggins. Kenny Loggins had many top hits, and he won a Grammy in 1981 for his song, This Is It. And Loggins wrote the lyrics to this song while his dad was hospitalized with heart failure. And one day after visiting his dad in the hospital and arguing with his dad, because his dad wanted to give up his spirit of life, Logan left the hospital, went to the recording studio, and began to write the lyrics for This Is It. He wrote them to his dad in the spirit of wanting his dad to hang on to his spirit of life. So it was an encouragement to his dad to not give up life. Here are some lyrics from that song. Are you gonna wait for a sign? You're a miracle. Stand up and fight. Make no mistake where you are, this is it. Your back's to the corner, this is it. Don't be a fool anymore, this is it. For once in your life, here's your miracle, stand up and fight. That is a heartfelt plea from a son to his father for sure. But a dying man cannot save himself by his unction to live, nor by his son's pleas. And today we have the Apostle Paul's, this is it, his heartfelt, evangelistic call to attain to righteousness and eternal life. And whereas Kenny Loggins sings, for once in your life, here's your miracle, stand up and fight, Paul has shown us the miracle of God's righteousness for us in his son, Jesus Christ. And Paul doesn't cry for us to stand up and fight, but he cries for us to be believing and to call upon the Lord to be saved. Well, if you're not already there, turn with me to Romans chapter 10, and I have titled this sermon, The Emergence of a Saving Faith. And I've outlined the progressions or the emergence of a saving faith in this order following the text. First, futile efforts, frustrated purpose, the focus of saving faith, belief and confession, and calling upon the Lord to be saved. So we'll start with number one in your bulletin outline, futile efforts, frustrated purpose, and I'm gonna begin reading in verse one of chapter 10 in Romans. Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law that the person who does the commandment shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says. Paul is setting obtaining righteousness by faith in opposition to the failure to obtain righteousness by works or by trying to earn it. And he also did this at the end of chapter 9, as Greg preached on last week. But here, beginning in verse 5, Paul shows us that the command to keep the law was never a way to obtain eternal life. And verse 5 is a quotation from Leviticus 18. Let me read that verse again to you. Verse 5, a quote from Leviticus 18. For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law. that the person who does the commandment shall live by them. Paul's emphasis is on the doing. And trying to earn righteousness by doing the law could never be a way to obtain salvation. And why can't it be a way to obtain salvation? There is none righteous, no, not one. And all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. keeping the law has never been a way of obtaining salvation because the people of the Old Testament to whom this was written were fallen creatures just as we are. And so trying to obtain righteousness by the works of the law or by any other work is an act of futility and it is a frustrated purpose. You see we don't need the law as a way of salvation, we need a Savior. And so Paul is passionately calling the Jews and us out of a most desperate place of not having eternal life. And where does he take us? He takes us to a focused faith. Point number two in your outline. We go to a focused faith, exiting the magical mystery tour and hearing the proclaimed faith. Verse six. But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven? That is to bring Christ down. 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 that we proclaim. It was about seven years ago I met Sam at church. He was a stereotypical Philadelphian, a bit brutish with an edge of anger, and we started to meet to talk about Christ and Christianity. And he was wearied in his sins and lostness. He was frustrated in his search for the truth. And he used to go around the Denver metro area and try to take a meeting with the highest official he could take a meeting with in all these different religions to see what they believed and taught. And he used to tell me he would even go out on hikes and demand that Jesus would jump out from behind a tree to show him a visible sign. And as we talked about the Christian faith, every time we met, he got angrier. and angry at me, until one evening, having dinner in downtown Littleton, we broke up. I guess that's how we could term it. And Sam stopped coming to church. Months later, I arrived one Sunday morning at church, and Ben Haley, as many of you know, at Calvary, said to me, guess who is here? And after making several attempts, Ben said, Philly Sam is here. And he was no longer angry. And we started meeting twice a week for over a year going through Romans. And he would always want to go off into all these different religious beliefs and various hypotheses. And I just kept bringing him back to the text of Romans. I said, we are going to stay in the scriptures. And I would many times take him to these verses. And this is what it says again. Do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven? That is to bring Christ down. Or who will descend into the abyss? That is to bring Christ up from the dead. I would tell Sam, we are not going to go on a magical mystery tour through the universe looking for something other than Christ. Here in his word, Christ is proclaimed and salvation in Jesus Christ is proclaimed. we are gonna put our focus in the scriptures, because God's son is revealed to us here, and salvation in his son is revealed to us here. And this is what we are to believe. See, salvation is not too far off that we should say, who will go and find it for us and bring it to us? Faith does not say it is impossible to be saved. But what does it say of faith that leads to righteousness, to salvation? Point number three, belief and confession. Verse nine, because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart, one believes and is justified and with the mouth, one confesses and is saved. And here in verse nine, we have the confessional foundation of the Christian faith. First, Jesus is Lord. The name Lord is the personal name of God. You might remember God's revelation to Moses, I am Yahweh. And in verse 13 here in chapter 10, Paul quotes from the Old Testament prophet, Joel, saying that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord, and Paul is referring to Jesus Christ there, So what is happening is Paul is putting Jesus precisely in the place God was in the Old Testament, as Lord. To confess Jesus is Lord is to confess that he is God. And as God, he is master. He is my master. Not one among many, he is the only master. also want us to notice something else, another place Paul is putting Jesus. And I have to backtrack into verses 6 to 8 to show you this. In verses 6 to 8 Paul is quoting from Deuteronomy 30. And this is what it says in Deuteronomy 30, same part of scripture as Leviticus. For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven that you should say, who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it. Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say, who will go over to the sea and bring it to us." Now, I want you to listen to these verses that Paul uses in chapter 10 of Romans, verses 6 to 8. And I want you to notice where he puts Jesus Christ. Verse 6. righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down. Or who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ up from the dead. Paul is putting Jesus where the commandment was in the Old Testament. So the point Paul is making here in verse 5 he quotes from Leviticus 18, to show the Jews of his day that righteousness cannot come from the law, that by their doing they cannot attain to righteousness, because they cannot keep the law, because they are sinners. And then in verses 68, he quotes from Deuteronomy, putting Jesus where the commandment is. Jesus is the one who does the doing. And what Paul is doing for us here is he's proving verse four to us. In verse four, Paul wrote that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. See, Christ meets the conditions required by the law. And he is the only one as both fully God and fully man who can meet the demands of complete obedience to the law. And by believing in him, He is the end of the law for us. As Greg said last week, Christ is the end or the fulfillment or the goal of the law. And what that means for us today in today's passage is that Christ's goal was to fulfill the law for us. Because we cannot do it, he does it for us. You can't save yourself, verse five, but Jesus Christ can, verses six through 10. And there's another confessional foundation of our faith found there in verse nine, and that is that Jesus is risen from the dead. This is what every Christian confesses. His resurrection is the fulfillment of prophecy. It was witnessed by the disciples and the Marys who went to the tomb. It was witnessed by 500 others. and it was the focus of apostolic preaching. And his resurrection is a profound affirmation of his lordship and victory over sin and death. And the resurrection of Jesus Christ is an ongoing reality in our lives, in the believer's life, because it proves that there was an actual atonement made for our sins. It proves that it had the full effect of making us at peace with God. Listen to what John Murray writes in his book, Redemption Accomplished and Applied. What is offered to men in the gospel? It is not the possibility of salvation, not simply the opportunity of salvation. What is offered is salvation. And to be more specific, Murray continues on, it is Christ himself in all the glory of his person and all the perfection of his finished work who is offered. Jesus did the perfect work of satisfying the righteousness of God, the holy demands of God that must be propitiated or satisfied for our sins. That was in Romans chapter three. And Christ's perfect work was accepted and rewarded in being raised from the dead by God the Father. We have a real salvation because Christ's person is offered to us. And we have a real salvation because Christ was risen from the dead. The reality of who we are as Christians is cemented in Jesus Christ being risen from the dead and we too will be raised to life from the dead. So to be saved, to attain to the resurrection from the dead, to attain to the righteousness of God, to attain to eternal life, you must confess that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. Now I need to pause a little bit before we move on to the next section here because I want us to take notice of the personal commitment it takes to believe unto salvation. It is you, it is me that must do the believing. Verse nine, if you confess, if you believe in your heart. Paul said, I know whom I have believed. I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him. Baptist preacher Henry Mahan says, you might say, you sure are using a lot of I's there. Well, I am the one that has to die. I am the one that has to face God in judgment. And I am the one who has to go to hell or to heaven. So I am interested in the I's. You better get interested in you too. The reason Paul talks about heart belief is because he's talking about a sincere, genuine faith. And may I add, a sincere, genuine faith is seen in your commitments. And I'm gonna have to preach to the choir a little bit here, but I think that's okay. Are you committed to what the Lord is committed to? Jesus loves and is committed to the word of God. And Jesus loves and is committed to his bride, the church. And Jesus is committed to himself as the only savior between God and man. Do you have these same commitments? You see, coming to faith in Jesus is not an equation to be solved. Mixing belief systems with some cultural additives and stirring it all together to come up with something that fits your way of thinking or your lifestyle. Saving faith is to submit and rest in trust and self-commitment to Jesus Christ who is risen and who is Lord. The emergence of a saving faith does not end with just knowledge as focused as it may be on Jesus Christ Nor as grand as it may be to acknowledge that Jesus is real and that he is risen and that he is Lord. A saving faith must go all the way to calling upon the Lord to be saved. Point number four in your outline, calling upon the Lord to be saved. We'll look at this in verse 11 through 13. For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. I imagine there are some of you here today who feel unworthy of being saved, or you don't want to repent and commit yourself to Jesus Christ. I, for many years, felt unworthy of Jesus Christ and salvation, and it kept me from calling upon the Lord to be saved. I knew that Jesus is Lord. I knew that He was raised from the dead. I knew that I was a sinner in need of Him, but I didn't want to commit myself to Him by repenting of my sins. I want to read these verses again to you. This is the word of God. It is Jesus speaking. I want you to hear him speaking to you and see that he is willing to save you. Verse 13, everyone who believes in me will not be put to shame. For I make no distinction between Jew and Greek, for I am the Lord of all, bestowing my riches on all who call on me. For everyone who calls on my name, I will save. Now let's go back to verse 10. For with the heart one believes. We can believe all the facts about Jesus, but until we see him as a person, with the tender heart of one who loves us and gave himself up for us. There isn't much heart to it. I want you to turn with me to Isaiah 53. And we just love Isaiah 53 here, don't we? It was the focus of the Lord's table service theme from last week. When we first started to come to church here, my family, myself, my eldest daughter in the fourth and fifth grade class memorized all of Isaiah 53. Evan, two weeks ago, stood up during the Lord's table service and read from Isaiah 53 and prayed from Isaiah 53 for us. So let us get some more of Isaiah 53, shall we? This is the prophecy of Isaiah concerning our Savior, Jesus Christ. I want you to see the willingness of Christ to save you. Christ is willing and able to save you. Verse four in Isaiah 53. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. This is the Savior. He went through an awful agony out of love for you, that you might be saved. And look at verse 10 there in Isaiah. He shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days. This is the risen Lord. He is now alive and has saved his offspring. And to be his offspring is to be in a rejoicing, bursting with love relationship. G.I. Packer says that the goal of grace, of course, is to create a love relationship between God and us who believe. Now back to Romans chapter 10. Did you notice in verse 11 and 12 a love relationship where he bestows his riches upon us? The riches of righteousness, the riches of salvation. He makes known the riches to us of his glory. We will not be put to shame. What a beautiful thing. And one day we will be made perfectly righteous. Salvation has many blessings to it. Not only saved from the wrath of God and from the punishment for our sins, but to be brought into a perfect love rejoicing relationship with God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Saving faith must see the willingness of Christ to save. It must see the commitment of Jesus Christ to save sinners. But can I show you a little bit more? Christ desiring you to call upon him to be saved. In John chapter 12, Jesus is teaching in the temple. It's the Apostle John's last recorded public appearance of Jesus Christ and Jesus is calling upon the people, he's calling them to believe upon him so that they might be saved. He is soon gonna go to be alone with his disciples and then be tried wrongly and then drug off to the cross of Calvary. So he's in the temple calling people to believe on him and he says this, while you have the light, believe in the light that you may become sons of the light. When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them. Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him. Now it doesn't say this in the text specifically, but I can't help to think that Jesus departed and hid himself from them to weep over them. He desired for them to be saved and he wept over their souls because it says he went back and he cried out and he said, I have come into the world as light so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. You see, Jesus is willing to save you, which means he desires to save you if you will call upon him to be saved. As James Boyce says, Jesus doesn't need to be persuaded to save you. He will save all who come to Him in faith. Will you bring glory to God today? Will you bring joy to the Lord to call upon Him to be saved? It is His delight to save sinners. God has always shown Himself as a saving God. He loves to save sinners. I do want to add one more thing here that I think is helpful for us. It's something else that John Murray writes. It is speaking about the nature of faith. And an element in the nature of faith is trust. And we call upon the Lord to be saved when we trust him, that he is both willing and able to save. You see, faith flows out of a heart that trusts a person. And it involves self-commitment to this person. And that self-commitment includes repentance, it includes belief, and it concludes confession of Jesus as Lord. Well, this is what John Murray writes. It's always good to hear more about what trust really means. He says, faith cannot stop short of self-commitment to Christ, a transference of reliance upon ourselves and all human resources, to reliance upon Jesus Christ alone for salvation. It is a receiving and resting upon him. And here's where Murray really gets into it. It is here that the most characteristic act of faith appears. It is the engagement of person to person. The engagement of sinner. as lost to the Savior able and willing to save. That's beautiful. We have a Savior who desires and is willing and able to save. You may feel unworthy. The worth is not in you. The worth is in the risen Savior, and he is able, willing, and desires you to call upon his name to be saved. After about, I don't know, 100 hours together in Romans, I saw this emergence of a saving faith in Sam. He started by seeing his desperate need. I mean, he felt it. I could see that he felt it. He was wearied in his lostness and in his sins. He was frustrated, searching for the truth. And we took him to the scriptures. The Holy Spirit changed his heart of stone and gave him a heart of flesh. And together with an open Bible, we focused his faith on Jesus Christ. And he believed on the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved. And he made that public profession of faith just up Broadway at Calvary and was baptized before the church there. It is a very special blessing to see that truly the gospel is the power of God for salvation. And it is a blessing to witness an angry, lost sinner turn to Jesus Christ for the salvation of his soul. I hope you will hear this gospel. I hope you will see it. I hope you will seek understanding to believe it and to call upon the Lord to be saved. Don't stop at verse 12. Don't see all the goodness of salvation and what you must do to be saved and stop. What went wrong for Israel, do not let it be of you. And we'll pick this up in verse 14. 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. God did send the good news to Israel. It was preached with clarity so that they had understanding so that they might believe. But sadly, sadly, verse 16, but they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us? So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for their voice has gone throughout all the earth and their words to the end of the world. But I ask, Did Israel not understand, first Moses says, I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation. With a foolish nation, I will make you angry. Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, I've been found by those who did not seek me. I have shown myself to those who did not ask of me. Israel did understand. They saw the Gentiles coming to faith, rejoicing in their salvation and rejoicing in God. Remember the Philippian jailer and axe? After he and his household had believed, they rejoiced that they believed in God. So the Jews and the Israelites, they saw the Gentiles do this by faith and not by the works of the law. There is not only the problem of ethnic Israel's unbelief and anger. but they don't even take joy in God being a saving God. They want the promise, but they don't want the God. It's a double heartbreak for Paul and it's a double heartbreak for us. People's souls are lost and God is ignored and dishonored. Verse 21. But of Israel he says, all day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people. Again, the word of God was sent. It was sent to them. It's been sent to us. It was preached with clarity so that they had understanding and Israel refused to believe it. Chapters 9 through 11 have been described as the vindication of God's righteousness, proving that he is keeping his promises to ethnic Israel. All day long he is holding out his arm of salvation to them, but they refuse to believe. God is being faithful to them, but it's Israel who is culpable because they refuse to believe. They are a disobedient people to the call of submitting themselves to the way of God's righteousness. And so we see here that unbelief is rebellion. Unbelief isn't just ignorance or indifference to God. It doesn't take an intellectual whim to be unbelieving. It is suppressing the truth that God has revealed about himself and about us. We are lost sinners in need of the saving God. I hope you are not in that category today, trying to establish your own way of being made right with God. Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, is our salvation. and He is willing and able to save and to bestow the riches of salvation upon you. Because there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved, we proclaim Jesus Christ to you, the risen Lord and the risen Savior. I wanna close with Acts chapter two. This is Peter preaching on the day of Pentecost. And this is what he preaches. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized. Now you need to know here that repentance here includes faith and that we are not saved by baptism. Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for the promises for you and for your children and for all who are far off. Are you far off today? Christ isn't. The word of faith is near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart. The word of faith has been proclaimed to you today. Will you call upon the Lord to be saved? The promise from God is that if you do, You will be saved. Father, we thank you for your word. Thank you that you've sent it to us and that we have it. It's being taught throughout this building. Plans are for this summer for it to be taught at camps and youth groups. And Lord, we pray that we'd magnify your name and magnify your word. Lord, we thank you for the salvation that is in Jesus Christ. who is our righteousness, and who bore the punishment for our sins upon his body on the tree. So Lord, we praise you and glorify your name, we glorify your word, and we thank you for the blessing of knowing you and your salvation. We forever belong to you. You are our God, our Lord, our maker, our savior, our king, and our glory forevermore. We pray in Christ's name, amen.