Romans No.24 The Gospel to the World

We're going to be looking at this chapter, or this part of this chapter, under the rather lovely heading of the Gospel to the Whole World. The Gospel to the Whole World. Ten years' time or so, just a little over that span, we will be into the 21st century.

There's a conference which is going to be held in the Philippines in the not-too-distant future in which a group of folk from various mission organizations will be planning to ensure that by the end of the century, every people's group in the world will have the possibility of hearing the Gospel. There's a conference that's equivalent to the Lausanne Conference on Evangelism, which will be held in just a few months' time, which also has as one of its objectives that goal of bringing everyone under the sound of the Gospel. Modern technology has brought with it many deficits, many temptations, but it's also made it fundamentally possible for the whole of our known world – well, all the world is known, isn't it? – for the whole of our world to be blanketed with the sound of the Gospel in terms of it being bounced back from the ether, radio waves, in terms of literature distribution, and so on and so forth.

I was listening to amazing statistics while I was traveling around yesterday and today, yesterday coming back from Yorkshire, as to the millions of people that actually were contacted with the Gospel of Christ as a result of the ministry of MV Lagos, the ship that sank, and how many millions of people have been contacted also through the doulos. Now, I mention that because they're two ships, two ministries in which I've been personally involved in a very small way, but when you multiply that by the ministries of many, many groups in our 20th century, you get very excited, despite all that there is to depress us about the world today, you get very excited that the possibility is there for the worldwide proclamation of the Gospel, and indeed by that goal being achieved by the end of this century, that every people's group in the world will have heard that Jesus saves. And that has tremendous implications, doesn't it? Because the Bible tells us in Matthew that this Gospel has the kingdom, of the kingdom, has to be preached throughout the whole world before our Lord Jesus returns.

Now it's to that end of Gospel proclamation that we concentrate our attention this evening, picking up on what Paul has to say in the 13th verse of this 10th chapter, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. If there's one thing that I want for Worthing Tabernacle, it's not that we are called an evangelical church, it is that we are an evangelistic church. And the difference is a difference in terms of action over against creedal statement.

As far as our creedal statement is concerned, we're evangelicals. That means that we believe in the authority of Scripture, we believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross of Calvary, was raised again on the third day for the salvation of men and women. That's what we believe.

But we're not just called to believe, we are called to action. Not to be evangelical, but to be evangelistic. That means everyone involved in attempting to win somebody else to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So here is the first time I touch a nerve this evening. When did you, forget everyone else, you. When did you last try, honestly, hand over your heart to tell somebody about Jesus? That's the message that I think God wants me to share from this passage of Scripture with you.

So, this evening, God wants us all involved in the proclamation of the Gospel. Now, we've no need to go back on those previous verses, but there are problems, are there not, that the Apostle Paul has been attending to, inasmuch as he believes, and obviously rightly so, because he's moved by the Spirit of God, that there is a large number of people for whom Jesus died who will be saved. I have no apologies in offering the fact, the statement again, that I find myself, in the teachings, in the position of John Calvin, I do believe that God has called an innumerable company of people, and by his irresistible grace, they will come from the darkness of unbelief from the Jewish camp, from the Gentile camp, and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Now, there are some people who take that doctrine of election, and they think, well, if God's going to do that, all I need to do is to sit down. But you don't sit down. Why not? Well, because the Negro spiritual tells you, you don't go to heaven on the rocking chair, because the Lord won't have.

No lazy bones there. It's terrible on the English language, but it's good theology, because the Apostle Paul, though he believes in the elective decree of God, also believes in getting up out of your seat and telling people about Jesus. So my understanding, as I preach, from the tabernacle pulpit or anywhere else where I can get a foothold, is that I can preach my heart out with a possibility that everybody who hears what I have to say might indeed respond to salvation.

Whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. I once heard this teaching of the election of God and man's responsibility well expressed like this, and I can give it to you in the form of an illustration. Let's imagine, shall we, that the first time you come into the church, it's the tabernacle, you see the text over our pulpit.

Now instead of the one that we've got, let's say the text is, whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And then let's assume that you can, and here you can't be literal because this isn't quite what happens, but let's assume that you move beyond the pulpit area into the back of that recess where there's that text. Let's imagine that now you're looking back on the text, but we've changed it.

You're one of the people who's passed through, one of the whosoever who has been saved. And when you look back, you see elect according to the foreknowledge of God, a whosoever, you thought you chose him yourself, and yet when you look back, you realize it wasn't you that chose him, it was he that chose you. Now as we've been saying in the last two or three series, you can't work that out logically, but this is what the apostle Paul does.

He holds these two things in tension, God's elective decree and man's responsibility, and he's got no problems at all. William Carey was a great man, wasn't he? You say, who was William Carey? He was one of the first pioneers of the gospel to the land of India. He used to be a school teacher, it's an honorable profession.

Actually started off as a cobbler and decided he couldn't cope with shoes, so he turned on kids. And according to the story, it may be apocryphal, but I like to believe that it's right. He taught geography, that's not apocryphal, he did that, but the story is that he got one of the globes and he was spinning it round and he was pointing to the children in his class where the Hindu lived, that time just some 200 million of them.

200 million Hindu lived there in India, and he says they don't know Jesus. And according to the story, the tears started to roll down his cheeks. William Carey, who became a Baptist preacher, felt that he ought to leave his native Leicester and go and take the gospel to India, but there was no missionary society.

So he called together some of the august older member of the Baptist denomination and older ministers and he asks them about his desire to become a missionary. Couldn't the Baptist church start the Baptist missionary society? There wasn't one at that time. Those wily old boys, they said, young man, when God wants to win the heathen for his son, he'll do it without your help.

And you see, that really is what one calls hyper-Calvinism, this idea that we don't need to do anything about it. We do. Jesus called disciples in his day, he's still calling disciples to this very day, and it's a wonderful thing to realise as you're called to preach the gospel that out there are those people for whom Jesus died and with the power of the Holy Spirit, you might be used by God.

You can claim that you will be used by the Lord to win them for him. Okay, says the Apostle Paul, having outlined the fact that whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, alright, he puts up three questions. Verse 14, how then can they call on the one they have not believed in? Second question, which follows closely in meaning on the first one, how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And the third question, completing the logic, how can they hear without someone preaching to them? Paul is concerned because there were many people, not just Jewish people but Gentile people, especially Gentile people, who had not heard the gospel of the Lord Jesus.

How then can they be saved? They don't know who the Lord Jesus is. How can they call on him because no one has informed them about the nature of this remarkable son of God? And so he's pleading that the ignorance of men and women may be eliminated by the widespread distribution of the good news. But that requires somebody to go and tell them, not anybody, but somebody who's got a divine urge to get up out of their seat and to go.

How can they hear without someone preaching to them? There is the idea in the 15th verse that people who preach must be sent, they must have this divine urge to go and tell men and women of the great and glorious gospel of our Lord Jesus. Remember how on one occasion our Savior had been teaching and preaching and there were multitudes of folk who were hanging on to his words and looking at the congregation or looking at the crowd, you read it in Matthew 9, verse 37, he says to the disciples, speaking metaphorically, the harvest is plentiful, but there are so few workers, says Jesus. And then he tells them to do something which I think is probably unique.

You can check this with Tim because he's a better theologian than I am. But I think, I really mean that, I think it's unique in scripture, Tim. It's perhaps the only verse in the whole Bible where there is a direct command by the Lord to ask the Holy Spirit to do something.

Ask the Lord of the harvest. It seems to me, and I may have got this wrong, but this is my understanding of that term, the Lord of the harvest, that the reference actually is to the Holy Spirit whose work is to move out into the world to empower men and women to bring in those who are lost into the kingdom of God. So we are to ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest field.

So this is what Paul has in mind. How can they preach unless they are sent? When did you last ask people to be displaced from our church fellowship to go out into the outermost parts of the world and to preach the gospel? Well I think some of you must have done a lot of asking because in more recent times we've had a good stream of folk who have been prepared in this country and in other countries to take the good news of the gospel. Happy is a church that does that.

You've no idea how difficult it was for me, I'm speaking personally, to lay hands on John and Jean Hansen and commit them to the work of the gospel in North Africa. Why? Well you see John was one of our best men, he really was one of our best men and yet how wonderful to be able to send your best and his dear wife and others too. We've got four more folk in the pipeline so to speak wanting to go out and broadcast the gospel of the Lord Jesus.

But although there is this grand and specific call for individuals to go abroad you can't opt out yourself because it seems to me that in one sense each one of us should be engaged in this business of evangelising here in pagan Worthing. The word apostle means the sent one. How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? How can they hear without someone preaching to them? How can they preach, verse 15, unless they are sent? So the sent ones, the apostles, are the people who take the peace that God has wrought through Jesus called God's Amnesty by FF Bruce and distributes the knowledge to others.

Amnesty International is a great organisation, I have every respect for it and the work that it does in the 20th century endeavouring to bring to the attention of people with sensitive conscience the needs of prisoners around the world who are deprived of their freedom simply because of their political and philosophical beliefs. I think that the work of Amnesty International is an excellent work. But there is a sense, now hear me carefully, in which Amnesty International started on the day of Pentecost.

You see, God's amnesty is that he receives sinners. He receives sinners because Jesus died for men and women such as are in that category. And those of us who have experienced God's peace are called to be part of the international amnesty movement, bringing the joyful glad tidings to others in the world.

And that, to me, seems the most wonderful work to do. Now, I don't know what your feet are like. I think mine are quite nice, actually.

How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. What's this got to do? Chiropody with theology? No, not really. We're talking metaphorically, aren't we? Here is Isaiah.

Paul is quoting him. Why? Well, you see, Isaiah lived at a day of great political discord. The Babylonians had dealt very badly with the Jews.

They carted off the chosen people of God. But the day came when the iron fist of Babylon had to be unclenched because God said the Jews were to return. And there were those who were proclaiming to those Jews in captivity that they could go back to Israel.

What a wonderful thing to be able to tell the captives that they're free. Now, says the apostle Paul, how more wonderful it is on the part of those who bring good news of God's freedom. How lovely are their feet, these people who are prepared to stomp around with a message of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Freedom from the penalty of sin, the best news in the world. So great that you ask yourself sometimes, those of you who were converted in middle years or in later years, why was I so stupid as not to respond to it in the first instance? Or why was it that somebody didn't tell me when I was a younger person? I would have responded immediately. And so you go with full-blooded Doug Wheeler enthusiasm and you try to tell the rest of the people in Goring that the good news is that Jesus saves sinners.

And you can't understand. And I say, Doug, because he's got such a compassion for the lost. And he shares this with me.

Why is it people in Goring don't respond? Why is it that when we preach the gospel and some people think we're idiots for so doing down in Montague Precinct that people don't respond? To me, it's so difficult to comprehend why people are so hardened to the gospel. Now this is what Paul is saying. His heartbreak, verse 18, is it not? Not all the Israelites accepted the good news.

Brothers, verse 1, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. Some of you know because he came and gave his testimony here at the Tabs a couple of years ago. My cousin's in the police force and occasionally in Billy Graham crusades in this country and on the continent, Dr. Graham asks him to be his sort of security officer, his bodyguard.

And so he's traveled around with Billy Graham quite a bit. He told me on one occasion when they went from Sheffield United's football ground, and we're driving back to Rotherham where Graham was being housed in some hotel, Dr. Graham had him stop the car and they came into a lay-by and he started to pray. But he prefaced his remarks and he says to my cousin Brian, he said, there were so many people there, weren't there tonight? And Brian said something to the effect of agreeing with a great evangelist.

And he said, so many people responded, so many people didn't. So he stopped and he prayed. His heart's desire, you see, not just grateful to the Lord for those who did come, but thinking of the condemnation that others who'd heard were under, who didn't respond.

It's always the heartache of the preacher. I tell you, far rather than have my stipend month by month at the Tab give me a hundred souls, I'd settle for that and bake the bread in Montague Precinct as an option in terms of physical upkeep. You know what I mean by that.

I'm not saying that's to be melodramatic, this is true. You live for people to be one for the Lord. Not all the Israelites accepted the good news.

This is the thing that's hard to understand. Here is God's gift of salvation, why doesn't my boy respond? Why doesn't my husband respond? My dear friend, I wish I had the answer to that question, I don't. But we're still to continue, still to continue preaching and proclaiming the gospel.

Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our message? He knew what it was to be in the doldrums, Isaiah. And of course, he's quoting, Paul is quoting from Isaiah chapter 53. When Isaiah has in mind the remarkable passage of scripture that actually depicts the coming of the Messiah, the suffering servant.

You remember that great passage in some of you, particularly in the authorized version, surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken of God and so on and so forth. The heralding, the predictions of the life and the death of the Messiah, by his stripes we are healed.

God put upon him the consequences of our sin. Now, why is it? Why is it that when God sends his Messiah into the world that all Israel does not respond? Isaiah doesn't understand. Paul doesn't understand.

But this is the truth of the matter. Lord, who has believed our message? And when our Lord was on earth, you remember in John's Gospel how he's been engaged in remarkable signs and wonders, ministry, and yet people by and large don't respond to what he has to say. And so the evangelist sees this as a fulfillment of Isaiah's prediction.

There is a hardness that's come upon Israel. There's a hardness that's come upon the Gentile world, but especially upon Israel. And this is what's breaking Paul's heart, not so in this 10th chapter.

How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. But not all the Israelites have accepted the good news brought by these fleet-footed messengers. It's a fulfillment, says Paul, of what Isaiah had to say some years ago, some centuries ago.

Now, Paul is going to tell you something that's important. Most of you know it by heart in any case, but it's good for it to be re-emphasized. He's going to tell you about the necessity, the vital ingredient whereby salvation comes.

Verse 17, consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of God. What is it that the Jews liked more than anything else when they were told the word of God from the lips of the prophets? What is it that people in Worthing Tabernacle like more than anything else, those who don't respond? Well, the writer to the Hebrews will tell you. He says the message, or she says, to be a little bit provocative there, the message they heard was of no value to them because those who heard did not combine it with faith.

Now, look at the 32nd verse, will you, of the previous chapter. Why haven't people responded from the Jewish race? Because they pursued it not by faith, but as if it were by works. You see, you'll never save anyone by preaching alone, will you? I'd love to believe that you could, but you can't.

I've used illustrations many times to indicate occasions when I'm sure that I've won an argument. Times when I've been in universities and colleges, and it's not always gone easily with me, but there have been occasions when I thought, hook, line, and sinker, I got my points in. I won it.

But that didn't create faith. I've convinced people sometimes of the historicity of Jesus, of the necessity of being saved, because they realize their inadequate lifestyle, and yet still they haven't become Christians. What is the one thing lacking, the one thing that you and I must have in terms of a response from people if they are to be confirmed as Christians? Well, it is faith.

God has spoken to our world, verse 17. He's spoken to our world the word of Christ. Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.

In other words, here is Paul narrowing things down, and he's saying that if anyone is going to be saved, then he's got to hear a clear telling forth of what the gospel is all about. And he describes the gospel beautifully as the word of Christ, God's word to the world. But when you proclaim that word, you're still waiting by the power of the Holy Ghost for the preaching of the word to act as a catalyst that creates faith in the part of the listener.

This is why, you see, it's so important, and I sometimes wonder why some folk are casual about attendance at gospel services, services when they know the gospel is being preached. It doesn't really matter what happens before or, for that matter, what happens afterwards. Those are secondary issues.

The important thing is here comes a man, here comes a woman. Generally, in the tabernacle, it's a man, and he's going to declare the word of Christ. Now, what that man needs more than anything else is a baptism of the Spirit as he's proclaiming the word of Christ.

And he needs that baptism, that effect of the penetration of the Spirit to work it through into the heart and marrow of the hearers so that the word as it's preached creates faith within the heart of the persons who are listening to the gospel being explained. So what I'm charging you all to when you hear me preach or Tim preach or anyone else, George Verver will be with us in three weeks' time, he needs it too. I'm going to ask you that you pray that God creates faith in the hearts of people who listen to what's being preached.

Faith comes through preaching. It's not automatic. That's why the preacher must always be asking God to bless his word, to make it the word of Christ, specifically to the heart of the listeners who are gathered in that particular sanctuary, auditorium, or what have you.

So we pray that God will bless our word. I don't understand why it is that some people are convinced and some people aren't. Now, here's an incredible illustration of what I mean.

I've used it once before, but as it was a few months ago, it's perhaps good that I bring it back for your recall. Here is Joseph. He's been sprung from prison, you remember.

Pharaoh's had this dream. He doesn't understand it. He went from BBC to ITV and got a rerun of the dream, but it was the same thing.

Fat ears of corn, thin ears of corn, fat cows, thin cows. What does it all mean? Joseph comes along and he tells him. And the consequence of all this, Pharaoh, is that you ought to be storing during those seven fruitful years all the excess grain so that when the bad years come, you will be able to feed your people and ultimately save the world.

I mean that, if you please, is a paraphrase of what Joseph had to say, isn't it? Well, no, not really. It wasn't Joseph who said it, was it? Pharaoh, I don't interpret dreams. The God I serve, he discloses the secrets of his heart.

Pharaoh, I'll tell you what he says, if you give me a moment. And so Joseph comes and he declares the word of God to Pharaoh. And Pharaoh believes.

I think that's incredible. Joseph couldn't prove it, could he? Seven years would have to elapse. Well, at least one or two would have to elapse to at least demonstrate the fact that they're going to have bumper years of good harvest.

Seven years, you'd have to get to the eighth year before Pharaoh could actually say that what Joseph had predicted about the bad years actually would come true. And yet here is faith built into the heart of Pharaoh as he responds to the preaching, in effect, of Joseph. Now, put the clock on a few centuries, if you can do that with a clock.

Here's Moses standing in front of another Pharaoh. And he brings the word of God. And when Pharaoh hears the word of God, his heart is hardened and hardened and hardened.

See, two Pharaohs live at different times, two men of God, two words of God relevant to that situation. And one word has its effect. It produces faith.

It acts as a catalyst for faith. And the other word doesn't. Why? I don't know.

I don't know. But what I do know is this, that you can help me and I can help you. When we're both engaged in interacting in evangelism, whether it's from the pulpit or on a one-to-one basis, that by praying, that the words that we bring might create faith within the hearts of the people who listen.

So the apostle Paul is very concerned about the word of Christ. And he wants people to respond. Does he not? Faith comes from hearing verse 17, the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.

But now he goes back to the Jewish people, the Jewish dilemma, if you please, two somber prophecies here. He harks back to the fact that the Jews are not saved by and large and that this is not surprising, inasmuch there has been an anticipation of the hardness of the Jews by Moses and by Isaiah. But the first thing he refuses to do is to get the Jews off the hook and to say the reason is they never were told.

I ask, did they not hear? How wonderful it might have been to Paul at that point to have been able to say, yes, there is an excuse. No, the prophets were not diligent about their task. They were men who had the word of God, but they kept it locked up in their own subconscious, but they didn't do anything of the sort.

Moses brought it faithfully, Isaiah brought it faithfully, all the patriarchs, all the prophets, they brought what God had to say, the patriarchs sharing it with their families, the prophets with the larger company of Israel. Their voice has gone out into all the earth. Paul has already demonstrated that the Jew and the Gentile, chapters 1 through to 3, have no defence before God.

The Gentile has heard his word, God's word, through the voice of creation and through the voice of conscience, and the Jews are in a worse state because they've heard God through those two witnesses, and the third, they have the oracles of God, the very word of God has been spoken to the nation. Therefore, their sin before God, their sin of unbelief is the greater. Did Israel not understand, verse 19? Of course they understood, but Moses predicted that these people would have such hard hearts.

He's quoting from the final sermon of Moses in Deuteronomy. I give you the reference in my notes. No need to turn to it now because Paul quotes it in the 19th verse.

I will make you envious by those who are not a nation. I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding. The old Hebrews, they provoke God by their unbelief, by going off into idolatry.

You remember the golden calf and what have you. Time and time again, again saying in a disobedient people, All right, says God, the time will come when my patience will run out, and I will take the no people, the not anybodies of this world, the Gentile dogs, and I will interact with them and provoke you to jealousy. As a result, thus the quotation from Isaiah in verse 30, I was found by those who did not seek me.

I reveal myself to those who did not ask for me. But, and here is one of the most pathetic verses in the whole of Scripture. Here is pathos made absolute.

But concerning Israel, Jehovah says, All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient, an obstacle people. You remember the father in the parable of the prodigal son? The older son refuses to come in when the younger one has returned and a party has been held, a party of celebration because of his salvation. My son was lost and he's found.

He was dead and he's alive again. And it's interesting that in that parable, the father goes out and he talks to the son, the older boy, and he pleads with him. The word is beseech.

It's a very, very strong word. He powerfully urges. He comes before the boy and with everyone else who's present, perhaps straining at the windows in the banqueting house, wondering what's happening outside, he pleads with his boy to return into the family household and to celebrate with him as a result of the recovery of the younger son.

Now that's the way that God pleads. With hands outstretched to disobedient Israel. That's how I see God as he looks towards the Jews today, with outstretched hands, with broken heart.

He turns to the Gentiles for he would have Gentiles and Jews to be saved. But his first concern and the first concern of the Son of God and the first concern of Paul was for the salvation of the Jews. My heart's desire and prayer to God is that they may be saved.

So that's the picture I leave you with, a remarkable picture of God's extended hands, the pleading God, concern for the salvation of Jew and Gentile. Now, if Jew will not respond, he'll go to the Gentile. If the so-called religious would not respond to the ministry of Jesus, the Son of God says, all right, I'll go to the tax collectors, I'll go to the sinners, for I have come not to call the righteous.

I'm a physician that's come not to heal those who reckon themselves to be healthy. I've come for the unrighteous. I've come for the sick.

The apostle says, take this gospel and proclaim it. Proclaim it throughout the world, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And that means that you and I are fully involved in this work of gospel dissemination, part of Amnesty International.

May God make us all good members. Amen.