Late Tuesday afternoon, residents of Port-au-Prince, Haiti went about their normal lives. In one moment everything changed. With no warning and no expectation, a massive earthquake only a few miles beneath the surface shifted the tectonic plates in the Caribbean, toppling most of the structures in the capital city, burying tens of thousands beneath rubble, and shocking an entire generation of Haitians within seconds. What has been the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere suddenly became much poorer. The standard of living that made American poverty look like wealth quickly dropped beyond comprehension.
As many groups mobilized to assist, Christian organizations raced to aid. With many organizations already in the country, Christians are able to by-pass government red tape to serve, alleviate suffering, comfort the grieving, feed the starving, and begin the slow process of rebuilding the shattered nation. Countless numbers of Christians will likely spend millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours in the years to come investing in helping the helpless. We join in praying, giving, and seeing the part that God would have us do in the rebuilding effort that lies ahead. Such great need calls for great response on the part of those redeemed and living with eternal hope.
But then what? We pray, give, go, and help nurse, rehabilitate, and rebuild. Then we return to our homes with the consciousness that we have served needy people?
We might labor and give, getting involved in saving a wrecked country from further deprivation, loss, and ruin. Yet we can do all of that as Christians and still ultimately lose everyone in Haiti. Does that mean that we are to throw our hands up and say, ‘What’s the use?’ Certainly not, since as Christians, we are told to serve others, whether by offering cups of cold water in Jesus’ name, or healing the sick or feeding the poor, just as our Lord gave us example. Being Christian and being a servant to the needy go hand-in-hand. We read over and over in the Gospels of how Jesus went about serving rather than being served. We should do likewise. It is our nature as Christians to serve!
But might not government and non-government agencies do the same? Red-tape aside, many will go through non-Christian agencies to willingly serve the needy Haitians. That is commendable. Yet the reality is that as Christians attend to the physical needs of Haitians, we must offer more. We must offer what the non-Christian agencies cannot offer. NGO’s can feed, clothe, bury the dead, heal, and rebuild but they stop short. They cannot affect the heart and eternity of Haitians or Somolians or Afghanis or any other people. That work belongs to the redeemed of the Lord! Christians uniquely proclaim the good news welcomed by needy people. Of course, the good news is not that we have money to throw at a problem but rather that the Son of God has come, lived, died, and risen from the dead so that we might have true life—life that triumphs even over earthquakes or great loss. Christians bear the aroma of grace in serving a desperate world. How is that the case? How does the good news of the gospel move from heaven to earth and into the lives of desperate people? That’s our concern this morning as we open our hearts to the Word of God.
Keep in mind where Paul has taken us. He has explained how we can receive the righteous of God through Jesus Christ (10:4). It is not by our works (10:5) or through religious methodologies aimed at self-achieved salvation but rather through “the word of faith which we are preaching” (10:8). Paul delineates that gospel word with simplicity. “That if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (10:9). Heart belief results in righteousness; confession results in salvation; and no disappointment or shame follows this belief and confession of Jesus Christ! This is universally true. Whether Jew or Greek, “whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” That’s the promise of God!
Paul is going to take us into an investigation of how the Jews rejected the good news of Jesus Christ but before he does, he embarks on a rhetorical flourish. He uses a series of questions that build upon one another, starting with the end and aiming for the source. He keeps asking the question, “How?” In light of the promise of God that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent?” So why does he ask this series of rhetorical questions?
Maybe he does so to show his own place as a gospel herald. You know from studying Galatians and 2 Corinthians that some people doubted Paul’s authority and authenticity as an apostle. It is not out of question to suppose that some in Rome, a city where the apostle had not yet traveled, doubted his gospel authority. Or maybe he wanted to show God’s way of salvation to the Gentiles or to the Jews, so he asked the questions in order to instruct us in the process common to every believer—Jew or Gentile. Perhaps he desired to show the primacy of gospel proclamation in God’s economy. Surely we need that reiterated in our own day! With all of the gimmicks and subtleties substituted for gospel proclamation, we need the reminder that God is pleased, through the foolishness of preaching, to save sinners (1 Corinthians 1). Or maybe Paul wanted to show the necessity of means when it comes to salvation. In other words, a person is not saved by getting a certain feeling or reaching a personal stage of self-attainment. God uses the preached word to deliver the good news that Jesus saves. Or it could be that he rattled off the series of rhetorical questions to show the gospel proclaimed as the only bridge for Jews and Gentiles to enter into union with Christ and receive the righteousness of God.
Movement takes place in the questions asked by the apostle. By movement, I mean action! Definite actions take place for one dead in trespasses and sins to enter into the fullness of life in Christ! Each action savors of the grace of God at work. Even when there is personal responsibility, behind the actions the grace of God meets the sinner to bring him to life. I think we’ll see this as it develops in the text. Paul begins with the response and then works his way to the source of salvation.
(1) Calling. “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” We considered in our previous study that the idea of calling on the name of the Lord conveys worship, prayer, praise, and trust. It is a word that fits what takes place when the sinner sees his desperate need of righteousness, realizing that he is totally deficient before God, and so he calls on the Lord. Is it an act of worship, prayer, praise, or trust? Yes! It is gloriously all of these since with his whole being, the sinner casts himself on the Lord. To call on His “name” means to call on the whole person, all that He is, all that is represented in His name. It is a call of dependence, reliance, and submission to the Lord who died and rose from the dead to give us life. But is this calling subjective? By that I mean: do we just call upon whatever we think the Lord is? Do we rely upon whatever we imagine that Jesus offers? Unfortunately, this happens quite often as people drum up ideas of Christ that are just not true of Him, and then they call on that imaginative Lord. Instead, calling is deeply grounded in faith.
(2) Believing. Notice the progression: “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed?” We’re met with the impossibility of rightly calling on the Lord for salvation in response to the promise in the gospel if we do not believe in Christ. A person may mouth words, but there’s no such thing as a person truly calling on God to save them apart from faith in Jesus Christ as He is revealed in the gospel.
Of course, that makes good sense to us, and yet, here is where there is often a tragic error in some gospel presentations. Effort is made to urge an unbeliever to call on the Lord. But without faith in Christ as God’s Son, the Savior who died on the cross and rose from the dead, and the Lord who reigns over all and to whom we bow in absolute surrender, we are merely mouthing words. That’s where the “pray-a-prayer” evangelism technique that convinces someone to repeat words in an act of calling on the Lord, fails without accompanying faith in Christ.
Believing calls for (a) knowledge of the truths or facts concerning Christ and the gospel; (b) assenting to or acknowledging these facts to be true; and (c) trust or commitment to the person of Christ, relying upon His work alone to save [cf. Boice, 1239]. So if one calls on the Lord to save him without believing the revelation of God concerning His Son then his calling is futile. Many people call on the Lord to save them from times of trouble. You can rest assured that tens of thousands of Haitians were calling on the Lord to save them last Tuesday, yet in all likelihood, many of them did not call upon the Lord as revealed in the gospel but rather a Lord of their own imagination and tradition. Anyone that has worked in emergency rooms can testify to this same phenomenon. We see the same thing often repeated in the Gospels. The crowds followed Jesus and cried out to Him to heal them or feed them or provide for them. Yet many from the multitudes also called for His crucifixion. They called on the Lord but not with hearts of faith.
(3) Hearing. But how can one believe in Jesus Christ? “How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard?” Let’s consider how specific the language is of this verse. The NASB captures the Greek with clarity. Unfortunately, both the NIV and ESV seem to miss the thrust of the original. “And how will they believe whom they have not heard?” It is not just hearing about Christ or hearing of Christ that is implied, rather hearing Christ. Christ is present in the preached word [cf. L. Morris, The Epistle to the Romans, 390]. It is what our Lord explained in John 10. “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” (10:27). Paul used similar language with the Ephesians. “But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus…” (4:20-21).
Granted, we are taught about Jesus when we sit under the teaching of the Word. Yet many are taught about Jesus without believing Him. It is when that word is proclaimed and Christ speaks through that word, that one believes. In that sense, the sinner hears Christ and immediately turns from his sins to follow after Him. Here is the mystery of the Word and Spirit at work in ways that we cannot predict or often explain. This is why the old Helvetic Confession stated, “the preaching of the word of God is the word of God.” Perhaps this is better grasped when we consider that the preacher was a herald, one whose words were to accurately represent and reflect the words of the one who sent him.
What does this mean? Leon Morris commented, “The point is that Christ is present in the preachers; to hear them is to hear him (cf. Luke 10:16), and people ought to believe when they hear him” [i.e. Christ through the preaching; p. 390]. He references Luke 10:16 as Jesus sent the seventy out to proclaim the gospel. “The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me; and he who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me.” Does that statement from Christ not change the way that we listen to the preached word? Christ meets us through the preaching of the gospel. Christ comes to us, revealing Himself to us through the message preached. Even though the vessels preaching are unworthy of Him and falter in our attempts to declare Him, the Lord is pleased to meet sinners through the message preached.
(4) Proclaiming. Notice the necessity of one preaching the word. “And how will they hear without a preacher?” Who is the preacher that Paul has in mind? Here the ESV better captures the Greek: “And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” Rather than a noun, preacher, Paul uses a participle, “preaching,” to show the action of what is regularly done. The present participle speaks of the ongoing act of proclamation of the gospel with Christ meeting us through this proclamation.
Ancient kings and military generals kept “heralds” in their presence so that at a moment’s notice, the herald could go forth from the master’s presence to represent him and declare his message to a particular people. His authority was bound up in the message given from the king. That’s the same term used for preaching.
Morris rightly points out, “‘Hearing’ is a reflection of first-century life. Paul does not raise the possibility of the message being read. While there were people who could read, the ordinary first-century citizen depended rather on being able to hear something.” Then he added, “If the message of God was going to be effective in biblical times, it had to be heard. And for this a preacher was needed” [Morris 390].
Does this mean that there’s no place for the written word? Certainly not but, as Morris pointed out, we must keep in mind the historical context. It was an oral society in which the gospel first came to the world. That does not mean that their lack of literacy implied lower levels of intelligence but that they did not have the means that we have to enjoy the written word. Their ears were trained to listen acutely and remember what they heard much more so than in our literacy!
For many in our day, the preacher may be a book or tract or booklet explaining the good news. It may be the audio-visual presentation of the gospel found in the well-known “Jesus Film” that has been seen by millions in their national language. It may be a conversation in a coffee shop or over a meal. Yet the point is that for someone to “hear” the good news of Jesus Christ in order to believe, there must be someone delivering the message. This puts a premium upon every occasion when you and I hear the gospel preached. And it elevates the significance of biblical exposition in the eyes of the church.
(5) Sending. Where did the preaching of the gospel come from so that a sinner might hear, believe, and call upon the Lord to be saved? Here’s the thread of grace drawn beautifully through the repetitive links. “How will they preach unless they are sent?” Behind it all—the calling, believing, hearing, and proclaiming is the Sovereign Lord who sends the messenger to deliver the good news. There is grace, indeed! Why did the gospel come to you and not another? The Lord sent the messenger to proclaim the good news to you. Think of the way that Paul intended to move in the direction of Asia on his 2nd Missionary Journey, when the Lord sent him to Europe. Twice he sought to go that way but the Lord stopped him. Luke records, “When he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them” (Acts 16:10).
Remember the words of Jesus as He looked on the multitudes who “were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd,” awaiting response to the gospel. “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest” (Matthew 9:36-38). It is His harvest! He sends the workers into the harvest. That gives the workers authority to enter into the harvest with the gospel that calls sinners to the crucified, resurrected, and reigning Lord.
Where does this leave each of us when it comes to the gospel and to getting it out into the world? It leaves us with the need to pray for the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into His harvest. And it leaves us with the need to volunteer, “Here am I, Lord, send me!”
What happens if you lift any link out of the chain that we’ve just considered? Take out hearing. Can a person believe and call on Christ without first hearing the gospel? No, that’s quite impossible. Remove proclaiming from the chain. Can anyone hear the gospel without it first being proclaimed, whether from a pulpit or classroom or conversation or even through printed media? No, again, that’s quite impossible.
I must admit that I was somewhat staggered when I first heard of how God has used dreams in Central Asia in evangelism. I’m not accustomed to this and tend to look with skepticism on any suggestion of dreams as a means toward evangelizing. But I’m also approaching it from my own cultural context in which I have a couple dozen copies of the Bible in various translations, plus my handy electronic version on my phone. In other words, you and I live in a society where it is easy to hear the gospel or to get a copy of the Scripture and read the gospel. Does that mean that everyone avails himself of this opportunity? Certainly not but it does mean that the gospel is accessible to most people in our region. However, that’s not the case in Central Asia. Most living there have never seen a Bible or heard a gospel explanation or have even a remote clue of the truth of the gospel. They have heard the name of Jesus but even that name has been distorted through Islamic teaching. Yet countless numbers in Central Asia and other regions where there’s no available gospel material have had dreams that stirred them or caused great fear or motivated them to find out about Jesus Christ. Remarkable as that may be by the testimony of many, dreams are not the means of proclaiming the gospel so that a person might hear, believe and call on the name of the Lord to be saved. Rather dreams have been instruments for getting sinners into a position to hear the gospel proclaimed. Where there are no Bibles or no gospel messengers, it is appropriate that we pray that God might give dreams to soften hearts so that those entrapped in other religions might be open to the gospel when it comes to them. Yet without the five repetitive links in a person’s life, dreams do nothing of value.
What we notice in the repetitive links is a three-fold engagement in the process of salvation. In the actions of calling, believing, and hearing the unbelieving sinner is engaged. He is responding to the proclamation of the gospel. He is not robotically converted but rather the whole of his being is involved in responding to the good news.
The mouthpieces that trumpet the gospel are those engaged in proclaiming the good news. They have no authority in themselves but only in the message proclaimed as heralds of God. They are ambassadors for Christ, beseeching others to be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:20). They preach not themselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord; they are merely servants for Jesus sake (2 Cor. 4:5).
Behind it all is the gracious Sovereign who sends messengers of the gospel. It is God’s gospel! The message and the messengers belong to Him. It is His prerogative to send forth the light of the good news or to withhold it in judgment. Yet the reality that the gospel has come to us gives evidence that the Lord God actively worked to send His messenger so that we might hear, believe, and call on Him to be saved. Grace lines every action in our salvation!
As he has done throughout the Epistle to the Romans, Paul draws an Old Testament basis for his teaching. “Just as it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!’” The construction of the opening phrase, “Just as it is written,” means just as it is written and stands forever written. God’s Word stands so we must build our lives on it instead of the changing whims of our world. Paul quotes from Isaiah 52:7 and perhaps refers to Nahum 1:15. It is a word of celebration and joy of what would happen one day when those exiled in Babylon would be released. So it is a word of liberation for those in bondage after years in exile when God’s messengers announce the good news of happiness, “Your God reigns!” As John Stott explains, “If those who proclaimed the good news of release from Babylonian exile were thus celebrated, how much more welcome the heralds of the gospel of Christ should be!” [Romans: God’s Good News for the World, 286].
When the news comes of deliverance, forgiveness, assurance, and life, it is beautiful to the recipients! And so, in spite of the dusty and dirty feet of the messenger, the one who proclaims the good news is declared to have beautiful feet! There’s celebration and joy at the good news that Christ has come, lived, died an atoning death, risen from the dead, and ascended to the throne of the universe on behalf of sinners who hear, believe, and call on Him!
Do you have beautiful feet? Yes, that’s a strange question to ask a church. Or is it? Do we not long to join the fellowship of beautiful feet for the sake of Christ and His kingdom? When you serve as a messenger of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, you join the fellowship of beautiful feet. May our Lord raise up from us a congregation of beautiful feet committed to declaring the good news of Jesus Christ both at home and throughout the world!
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