Their Voice Has Gone Out into All the Earth
Romans 10:18 · Mike Doyle · Oct 27, 2024
Romans (2022-25), No. 096
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926193747261

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So interesting verses today. I thought that, a couple of things. One is that, and we've talked about this before, one of the interesting things about the Book of Romans is that it takes place and teaches us on the earth. It never takes us off the earth, like Ephesians and some other books do. So the focus is always on what's going on in the earth and how God has, through Christ, has come and with the Messiah. So I thought that in place, I would start with just a little review, I hope.

The very first thing we learned in chapter 10 was that Paul had prayed that Israel would be saved. Pretty good prayer. The Jews had a problem, as we talked about. They had great zeal for God, but they didn't have the knowledge according to the way God's salvation worked. They wanted to work for God's righteousness, salvation, rather than accept God's faith-based requirement. Pretty simple, we all sort of think that way. And we discovered that salvation to the Jews was rescue from his troubles and physical deliverance from his enemies into the kingdom. I think it's hard to us sometimes as Gentiles in the church, we always think about going to heaven. A Jew doesn't think that way.

He thinks about going into the kingdom. So, In John 3, if you remember, Jesus told Nicodemus that in order to see the kingdom or let alone enter into it, he must be born from above. Jesus said to him, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he can't see the kingdom of God. Focus on the kingdom. And then in verse five, he says, Jesus answered and said, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he can't enter into the kingdom of God. Must have scared. Nicodemus. Nicodemus didn't understand. Why?

Because he'd been brought up, taught, trained, he had traditions, heritage, and zeal, all focused on keeping the law, that that would get him into the kingdom. If I'm born a Jew, if I'm circumcised, I have heritage from my family, and I have zeal for the law, I'll get in the kingdom. Well, Jesus said, no, that's not gonna get you anything. So what was the requirement for the Jew to get into the kingdom? What did he have to have? Or we would say, what's the ticket in?

The answer is you have to have God's righteousness. Your righteousness isn't enough. It's gotta be his. And the reason is is that when Christ died on the cross, he totally satisfied the holiness of God and the righteousness that required in regards to sin and all unrighteousness for all creatures. Christ had already done it. So the result is that everyone who believes in the person and work of Christ is never required under a law system to possess his own righteousness. So if you've got it in the back of your mind that you're doing really cool things for the Lord and somehow he's gonna be pleased, you're just self-righteous.

And it has to be his righteousness. And the only way you get it is believing what Christ did. So then Paul, in verse five, he quotes Moses. For Moses writes that the man who practices righteousness, this is a guy who really is trying to do it, which is based on the law shall live by that righteousness, Leviticus 18.5.

I don't know if any of you have ever really tried hard to be good. How did that work out for you? If you're like me, I failed every time. So when the gospel of Christ came to me, this was the first time I'd ever heard anything that my salvation was dependent on somebody else and not me. That was really great news.

So if the acquisition of God's righteousness for salvation is not based upon any type of obedience to law commands, has God provided a solution for the Jews? So now down to verse six and seven, Paul quotes Deuteronomy 30 to tell the Jews that God does not ask the impossible to find out the information that they needed. He says in six, but the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows.

Do not say in your heart who will ascend to heaven that is to bring Christ down. Verse seven, and who will descend into the abyss or whatever distance to bring Christ up from the dead? You don't have to send someone, probably Moses they had in mind, because you know, when God spoke to the Jews in Mount Sinai, they said, don't talk to us anymore, your voice just scares the daylights out of us. So why don't you talk to Moses, and then Moses will talk to us. So I'm sure he's thinking, well, we'll get Moses to do this job. So up to heaven to get Christ, the problem is that Christ had already come. or don't need someone to go into the depths of the earth to bring Christ up from the dead, he's already risen. That's the message. So the words were right in front of them. It's the message of the spoken word of faith. You know that phrase that the words are in your mouth? It means they're right here, you have them, you already know them.

Verse nine says, if that you confess with your mouth, Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Nowhere does it add, and, that's the end of it. For with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness. Whose righteousness? God's. And with the mouth, he confesses, resulting in salvations.

So I know Roger spent some time last week talking about this. The Jew had no problem. If you went to a godly Jew and said, call on the name of the Lord, he would, to be saved, he would say, no problem. I call on the name of the Lord all the time. to be delivered into the kingdom. However, if you told him that the Lord was Jesus of Nazareth, he would gag, because in his mind, Jesus of Nazareth was not the Lord.

And that's still true today. So we also saw that belief in the message of Jesus resulted in confession that Jesus was Lord. And here's how that went. I took this from Ron Merriman. I thought he did a really good job here. He said, what confessing Jesus as Lord does not mean. The first thing it does not mean is to make Jesus the Lord of your life. You do that for salvation, like the Lordship people preach today.

The second thing it does not mean is a programmed verbal confession. Something that I remember when I was first a Christian, I was going to a bigger church in Aurora, and going to Sunday school, and the whole tenor of the Sunday school was your testimony. So there having you write it out, edit it, and put some questions in there, and so you would be ready It was a programmed verbal confession. Even back then, when I didn't know anything, I thought, oh, this doesn't sound right to me.

And it does not mean that making Jesus the Lord is a requirement for salvation, because it's not. What it does mean, though, is that you recognize his deity. You just recognize who he is. It means recognition of the significance of his name. We've talked a lot about how careful the word of God is, especially in the Old Testament. A person's name means everything. It tells you everything you ever wanna know about the person, his name. It means dependence on his name under which we are counted, we count his death and resurrection for our sins, because that's what he did.

So under the understanding is consistent with Acts 4.12 which says, and there is a salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which you must be saved. There's no other name, it's his name. So verse 11 says, the scripture says though, whoever believes in him isn't gonna be disappointed. It's him and his work. The word, when it says whoever, it's to the Jews, but it also means anybody.

Romans 10.12 says, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding to the riches of all who call on him. And the 13 says, for whosoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved. So we have to understand, I think, we have to understand right here that there is this one name, Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel, he's the one. There is no other. I don't know if you pay attention to this. I guess I do, because I came out of Catholicism. The Pope announced a month ago that there were many ways to God. Really? How many? There's only one. It's the Lord Jesus.

So he says in 14, how then, he asks this question, 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 a preacher is sent?

So, here's how it goes. Someone is sent. It can be any one of us, anybody. Someone is sent by God. That person is sent to preach. What? To preach the name of Christ. That's his job. And by the way, you don't have to go to seminary to preach God's word. It can be anybody. The person preached hears the message. He listens to it. And those who hear believe. And when they believe, they call on the name of the Lord for salvation. That's the sequence. That's the sequence. So just as it is written, think about how beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news of good things. How wonderful they are, they brought the good news.

So, how will they call on him in whom they haven't believed? How will they believe in him who have not heard, et cetera? Who are the they? I think the they are the Jews. Paul points out that no Jew will call on the name of the Lord Jesus if he has not first believed in who he is.

He would never call. This is the reason that Paul has been making his argument from the Old Testament, that faith righteousness is the only righteousness acceptable to God. What Jesus did is the only righteousness that a person needs to enter, if you're a Jew, the kingdom, to enter in heaven as a believer. So once that is put in place, Then verse 16 says, how, however, did they not all heed the good news? Answer, no, they did not.

And I wanna talk a little bit about that. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. But I put some side notes together. There are those who insist that the Jew has a special place right now through this dispensation, that he must always be first. That there is a difference, although God says plainly in chapter three of Romans that there is no difference between a Jew and a Gentile.

And here's what the similarities are. They're sinners, we're sinners. They're guilty, we're guilty. There's no difference as to the lordship of Christ and the availability of salvation, whosoever will. It doesn't distinguish. However, when they don't believe the report, Isaiah says, oh Lord, they didn't believe us. I took the message and they don't believe me.

So, We did a great translation of these two verses right here. He said, but not all lent an obedient ear, which is the word hupakuo, means to hear under. You place yourself under what you're hearing and you assent to it. They're good news, for in Isaiah 53.1 says, Lord, who believed our message? I'm sure everybody in this audience at one time in your life brought the good message to somebody, and they wouldn't listen. They just wouldn't listen. So then, faith is out of the source of that which is heard, and that which is heard, the message, is through the agency of the word concerning Christ.

I think if Paul were alive today, he wouldn't like how things are done with the Jewish nation, and he would condemn the special methods of approach to the Jews. some trendy pretentious sections today. There's no such thing from God's perspective as a Jewish Christian. You're either a Christian or you're not. It's like saying I'm an Italian Christian or I'm an Irish Christian or I'm a American Christian. What's the difference? There is no difference.

The Jews in exile, really today I think they need a Paul to go in amongst them and teach them whosoever. A message for sinners. Not a storybook approach, but the exact opposite. Boldly, I have this vision, the weak Paul, physically weak, and not very eloquent, provoking the Jews to jealousy today. They need somebody like that. They need somebody like Paul to boast about in the Messiah of whom that nation has lost. A nation to whom God is not now offering this Messiah, but instead he's offering salvation through him. And it's communion whatsoever, no distinction of people, just ordinary guilty sinners. Ordinary guilty sinners.

Don and I live in a neighborhood of Hasidic Jews, and I've asked several of them over the years on Yom Kippur, which is the Day of Atonement. I said, well, what do you do? Well, we go up to the synagogue and we confess our sins. I said, so do you sacrifice animals up there? And they said, oh no, we don't do that anymore. I said, why, because you don't have a temple? Well, no, but this is how we do it now.

They're not listening. They are not listening. So we find out, Newell said, I thought this was interesting, he said, men will listen intently to good news along all other lines. business, pleasure, social preferment, ambition, physical health, Colorado buffaloes. Go to any stock exchange or watch anybody watch the ticker tapes on the TV and behold the political candidates that we're about to vote for sitting up all night for the election news favorable to them. We will listen to that.

But who has believed the gospel message? Probably man's unbelief is the greatest final burden before God for every man who speaks for God. Anybody who brings that message, that's what's on their heart. The fact that there's so much unbelief Lord, they don't believe. They don't believe.

So, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. So let's dig into that a little bit. The Greek term for word here is rhema. It's not logos. Rhema is a spoken word. It's literally saying speech. So if you look at Acts 11, 13 and 14, let's see if I got it here. Acts 11, 13, and 14, faith does come from a report and there must be a message and a messenger sent of God as we have seen. That's what's gotta happen.

And oh, by the way, one of the cool things that happens in a place like Holly Hills where we spend so much time in God's word, do you realize that the study of God's word qualifies you to be the messenger? that you are not going out there and giving opinions, or how you feel about it. We're talking about giving them God's word. And it can be simple and clear. And feelings start going out of the way because faith is what we're talking about, and the information that the faith is based on. So.

But Christ accompanies his preached word by his almighty voice. When I ran into this verse, I thought, oh yeah, the hour comes that the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. He's in the words, and his words are powerful. So when you are the messenger, you speak his words. Those words have the ability to give life It's the Quicken word that creates a living faith.

2 Corinthians 5.18, 19 and 20 says, you see that while God was indeed in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, he has committed to us, placed in us the word of reconciliation. Oh, we have a responsibility. We have to tell about it, what God did in Christ. so that God is entering and treating us, by us, we beseech you, anybody, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. Be reconciled to him.

It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching, literally the preach thing, Christ crucified, to save them that believed. First Corinthians 121. Note also that faith comes if you hear with a willing heart the good news that Christ died for you, that he was buried and he was raised from the dead. If you truly hear that, faith will come to you. Faith will come to you.

You don't have to do a thing, but listen. Listen to what he has to say. So actually, there's three parts to this. I thought this was kind of interesting. The first part is Christ's part. I'm sorry, the first part is God's part. He gave by the Spirit the written word. It's his word. And in that word is where the power is. Then there's Christ's part. He speaks, quickening the word. And then there's our part. He that has ears, let him hear. Let's listen.

So faith does come from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. So back to my discussion about learning how to write my testimony down when I was first a Christian. Rather than spend my time doing that, I should have been studying God's word so that I could adequately relate it. And those words have the power, not me. The words have the power.

But I say, surely they have never heard, have they? This is one of those Greek questions that demands an answer before you ask it. The answer is yes. Indeed they have. Their voice has gone out to all the earth. And surely, Surely, in verse 19, surely Isaiah did not know, did they? Isaiah's gonna say the same thing in verse 19, and then he's gonna quote Moses. It's almost like we're having a trial here. And the Holy Spirit is calling different witnesses up. And next week we'll talk about 19, 20, and 21 of what witnesses were called to prove that yeah, they got the word, they knew.

So did all Israel not hear? They sure did. How about us Gentiles? Have we heard? Have we heard? Well, if you look at Psalm 19, four, and I encourage you to read the whole thing, their sound or their voice went out to all the earth and their words unto the ends of the world. So, but I say, has Israel not heard?

Yes, indeed. God had been faithful to his Israel. He had given the long-promised one to be in their midst, going about doing good and healing all those who were oppressed of the devil. They had Emmanuel with them in gracious power. He was there with them.

Their voices, the voice is a vast chorus of the created universe and it's plural. The heavens are telling of the glory of God and their expanse is declaring the word of his hand. Day by day, pours forth speech, and night by night reveals knowledge. And there is no speech, nor are there words, their voice is not heard. Their line or sound has gone out through all the earth, and their utterance is to the end of the world." Psalm 19. So the Jew couldn't say, we didn't hear it.

The testimony of the creation itself, as we've learned in Romans 1, to all the world with a special testimony of the law to Israel. In this section, the psalm presents a testimony to the power and wisdom of God declared to the whole world. Three parts of the creation are used. Notice, the first is the heavens, the vast expanse. The second is the continual testimony going on day and night. And third, the rising and setting of the sun. The three parts of creation brought before us is given a universal testimony to the habitable parts of the earth. Their testimony has gone out through all the earth and to the end of the world.

I've wondered sometimes, well, how does God get the Word out? The Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin because they don't believe in Him. we don't realize how impressive and strong just the creation is. You know, you can maybe look at it this way. God put man on the earth, and we've done a pretty good job of ruining it, but we can't get to the heavens, and we can't get to the sun or the moon, and we can't get to day or night. We can't mess that up. So that's where the testimony is, because the testimony isn't here anymore. But I say, surely they never heard, have they? Indeed, their voice has gone out. Paul has just been speaking here of hearing and coming by Christ's word.

Christ is himself the creator of the universe. He created it. And all things were created by him and for him. Do you think he would create it and not have himself in it? The psalm witnesses to the universality of the testimony of Christ, Him. The emphasis unto all the earth, unto the ends of the earth, certainly includes Israel.

Invisible things of God were clearly perceived from the creation of the world, even His everlasting power and divinity. You can't look at His creation and not understand The creation of the world is by power and divinely done by God himself. So Romans 1, 19 and 20 says the same thing. Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. That's what God's word says. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, His eternal power, his divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse.

So all the tap dancing you're hearing is just tap dance. God says they're without excuse. Doesn't matter if you're a Gentile or a Jew, he's made it clear. The Jews though had immeasurably more. God had come down and spoken to them on Mount Sinai. He didn't do that to the Chinese or to the Western Europeans. He did it to the Jews. God sent them prophets, lots of them, who were direct communication from God to them. Did they listen to him? No. The sun, the air had come down. had been born in Bethlehem, was with them for 33 plus years. He was there.

Through the apostles and Stephen, they had had the testimony of the Holy Spirit directly from Christ on high. So Israel had indeed heard Therefore, in quoting Psalm 19, Paul holds Israel to the voice of creation as if no other people existed. It was their psalm. Their psalm. That psalm wasn't written to Irish Catholics. It was written to the Jews.

So, in closing, I was thinking this morning, as I started, we spent a lot of time studying Romans, and I thought for a second I would read something out of the hungry heart that, because of our perspective as members of the body of Christ, newly resurrected in Christ, we're heavenly people, and so I thought I would read this. This one is titled Heavenly Fostered Faith. And the verse that he quotes is Romans 10, 17, that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

Walking in the spirit, our faith is heavenly and it's spiritual. Walking in the flesh, our faith is earthly and carnal. It is, is it the mind of the Father which influences my faith and controls my actions? Or is it the order of things around me here? The latter is the world. Faith overcomes the world. The world and its influences on me is the rival of God's word.

And many a one who knows what faith is for safety of his soul is nevertheless not safe from the world. J.B. Stoney. It's imperative that the believer knows his position in grace because grace is the source of all spiritual supply. A man can take unto himself nothing except it be given to him from heaven, John 3.27. Everything from beginning to end of the Christian life depends on a proper faith apprehension of that which the Father has besowed on him with and in his own Son in glory.

Most growing believers rightly maintain that all must come from the risen Lord. But instead of taking their actual position of being dwellers in heaven and coming from heaven or coming from there to the earth, they only looked up to heaven for help as to their walk on the earth. And their faith and labors are always influenced and dictated by the conditions and the order of things on the earth. And instead of seeking the mind of the Lord as learned in heaven, they are occupied with the blessings of man on earth.

Very little abiding growth and fruit can be known by the believer until he accepts the fact of his identification with Christ, I was crucified. and its response by an attitude of faith, reckon myself dead unto sin and alive unto God, thus yielding himself to the Holy Spirit for the life of the Lord Jesus to be manifested in and through him. For we walk by faith and not by sight. Let's close.

Father, how thankful we are, how gracious you are and how active you are to teach us all the time about the wonders of your Son, the Lord Jesus. And for us as members of his body, a heavenly people from that perspective. We're thankful that we have that perspective and we can also become knowledgeable about what you're doing with your chosen people, the Jewish nation. Thank you again and we pray in your son's precious name, amen.