Faith Comes by Hearing

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⟦Transcript⟧ And so we talked last week about what the gospel is, and it boils down to, as I told you then, as I put in the bulletin this morning as well, it all boils down to who Christ is, what he did, and why he did it. And that’s the story we have to tell. That was the whole gist of last week’s message.

That’s the story we have to tell. That is the gospel. If we can explain to somebody that Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, died on the cross, shed his blood as a payment for our sins because we’d sinned and a holy God demanded a penalty be paid for that sin, just as any righteous judge would, demanded that a penalty be paid.

Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay that penalty according to the scriptures, that he was buried and that he rose again on the third day according to the scriptures, proving that he was God, proving that he had the power to forgive sins, and that simply by trusting in him and what he did, we can have forgiveness of our sins. Ladies Again, last week I kept saying we make it too hard even as I gave you about ten sub points. But like I said, we don’t have to explain all of those to everybody, to every person.

Some people will already understand. Yes, he was God and man. Some people will understand points that others won’t already.

But the message itself is very simple. And one of the reasons I think people are afraid to share the gospel, as I told you last week, is because they’re afraid of not knowing what to say, afraid of getting something wrong. And some of the godliest people I know have told me.

Just, I’m not sure I would be able to tell them. Folks, if you can tell somebody that Jesus Christ died for their sins according to the scriptures, was buried and rose again on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he offers forgiveness through faith in him, you can explain the gospel. But why would we want to do that?

I know we know what the church answers are, but today we’re going to talk about why do we want to do that. A good friend of mine says all the time that if you can explain the why, you can explain the how. If you can explain why you’re doing something, there’s your answer.

If you’re wondering, what do I need to do? If I’m getting dressed to go into town, something even as simple as that. I’m getting dressed to go into town and can’t decide what I need to wear.

I don’t usually have this problem and have to go through the steps, but something even this simple. I’m getting dressed to go into town and trying to decide what I should wear. Well, I ask myself, why am I going into town?

Am I going into town to go to Lowe’s to get mulch and fertilizer for the flower beds? Okay, then I would wear my boots, jeans, old t-shirts that are, you know, stuff that Christian wouldn’t normally want to be seen with me in public while I’m wearing those things. And I could wear those and go to Lowe’s and pick up fertilizer.

But if I’m going into town to have lunch with the mayor, I don’t know that the mayor would want to have lunch with me, but if I’m going into town to have lunch with the mayor, okay, that changes things a little bit differently. And so how I get dressed and what I wear changes considerably. Even something as simple as that, if we can nail down the why, a lot of the rest of it takes care of itself.

If we can understand why it is we need to preach Christ, this whole series of messages is on Christ-centered preaching. If we can understand why it is we need to preach Christ, then it’ll take care of a lot of the, well, I’m too scared to. It’ll take care, I think it’ll take care of a lot of the, well, what if they reject me?

It’ll take care of a lot of, well, I’m not sure exactly what to say. What if they have a question I can’t answer? All those sorts of things.

And I’m not faulting you for feeling that way because I’ve felt that way as well. Sometimes still, when I go to talk to somebody about Christ, occasionally get a knot in my stomach. And you know what?

You’ve just got to deal with it. That’s what I tell myself. You’ve just got to deal with it.

But if we can nail down why we preach Christ. And I shared with you last week as well, that in this series on Christ-centered preaching, when we talk about preaching Christ, I’m not just talking about what I do here. Because then it’d be very simple to do a study for myself and learn from it myself and not ever have to share it with you all. Because very few of you in here do what I’m doing right now.

Very few of you in here want to do what I’m doing right now. Not everybody’s called to preach from a pulpit and teach God’s Word and pastor a church. But ladies and gentlemen, we are all as Christians, if you are born again, if you’ve trusted Christ and his sacrifice, and you are a believer in Christ, you have been called to preach.

Because as I shared last week, all of the words that the Bible uses when it says preach or preaching or preacher, all the Greek and Hebrew words behind that indicate in some form or another just simply declaring a message. And I told you my favorite was the Greek word that meant to make words. Folks, if you can make words, you can preach the gospel.

And you ought to. Every one of us, every Christian in this room has been called to preach the gospel. This morning we talk about why we do it.

Romans chapter 10, starting in verse 9, probably a familiar passage to some of you. Starting in verse 9 says that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

For the Scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek. For the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.

And we’re going to stop there for just a minute. He starts out telling people that if they would confess with their mouth, they would be saved. And I’ve heard discussion over this.

I’ve been part of discussion over this. I don’t think it means that if somebody’s mute, not able to speak, that they can’t be saved. When we talk about repentance, I think a lot of repentance is tied up, a lot of what the Bible talks about repentance is tied up in this idea of confession.

People have taken the idea that in order to be saved, they call it lordship salvation, and say, well, you have to completely, you know, divest yourself of all sins, you have to live a righteous life. To me, that sounds a lot like working for your salvation. But I do believe that as a Christian, there ought to be some sort of change in your heart, in your life, that God begins through His Holy Spirit to change you from the inside out.

And repentance, when we repent, it doesn’t mean we will never sin again. It means that we are changed from the inside out. It means that our desire to sin has changed.

And it means that we go from saying, I work for myself, I do what I want to do, I sin when I want to sin, and God, you have nothing to say about it. And we turn from that and say, God, I recognize my sin, and I recognize my need for a Savior. And I believe that confession that it talks about here and repentance are all together.

I don’t see how you can separate one from the other. So this idea of confessing the Lord Jesus, this idea of confessing the Lord Jesus, means, I believe, admitting your need for a Savior. People don’t get saved who don’t think they need a Savior.

I’m not hollering for somebody up here to come and rescue me from a pack of wolves because I don’t see a pack of wolves up here. But if I was up here surrounded by a pack of wolves this morning, I would be hollering for somebody to save me. And it’s hard to see that somebody would accept Jesus Christ as their Savior if they don’t realize that they need to be saved.

And confessing Christ, part of confessing Christ is confessing your need for Christ. I’m sure in some way, shape, or form, every one of us in here who’s been born again, when we received Christ, it was because we realized the gravity of our sins. As a five-year-old child, when I got saved, there was part of it that, you know, I’d been raised in church and knew that’s what you were supposed to do. But after hearing the gospel all those times and thinking, yeah, that’s what you’re supposed to do, the time that I got saved, what really made me come to that point was the realization that I was a sinner and I would end up in hell as a result of it.

And at that point, even as a five-year-old child, I realized I’m in big trouble here because the Bible said there was nothing I could do to save myself. See, if you’re a believer, you’ve come to the realization I’m in big trouble when it comes to my sin. I can’t get out of this on my own.

I can’t get back into God’s favor on my own. I can’t get God to accept me on my own apart from Jesus Christ. We confess him with the mouth and I think a big part of that is admitting our need for him and crying out to him as the only one who can save. Now does that mean if somebody can’t speak they can’t be saved?

No. But what he’s talking about here is crying out to Christ throwing yourself on his mercy and shall believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead thou shalt be saved. The reason he talks here about the resurrection is because, as I’ve said many, many times from this pulpit and from others, that if we don’t believe Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, that he was just any other man and he didn’t have the power to save anybody.

Folks, if he couldn’t save himself from death, he couldn’t save us. And yet when I came to Christ, I believed in my heart not only that I was a sinner, but I believe Christ died for me and that he rose again from the dead, proving that he had the power to forgive my sins. For with the heart, man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation.

Now, I’m a firm believer in apologetics. As I’m working on, I’ve told some of you, as I’m working on my classes for this master’s degree, that I may get finished someday. At the rate I’m going, it’ll be when Benjamin’s in college.

But that’s my major, is apologetics, the idea of being able to make and formulate the arguments for Christianity. I’m a firm believer in apologetics and needing to be able to provide an answer to people who ask for one, of why we believe what we believe. What reason do we have for hope in Jesus Christ?

We should be able to provide an answer. But ladies and gentlemen, on the flip side of that, we cannot simply argue people into heaven. If we spend all of our time arguing the facts and the statistics and the history and the texts and all this in order to convince people of something, We miss part of it because it says, with the heart, men believe unto righteousness.

That’s why I love the approach that Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort use with Way of the Master when they talk to people and talk to them about the Ten Commandments, talk to them about God’s law and say, have you ever stolen anything, even something little? What would that make you? And the people always answer, well, that makes me a thief.

Have you ever lied? What does that make you? What makes us liars?

Have you ever done this? Have you ever done that? And as you go through it, people begin to realize, Without you having to tell, see, don’t ever go tell somebody.

You’re a thief and you’re a liar. Folks, let the word of God convict them and lead them to that conclusion. But even as a believer, hearing those questions asked and having to answer them within myself, in my heart I realize over again what I really am, who I really am.

And folks, there’s something about connecting with the heart and the conscience that does the job that answering the head will never do. Sometimes the head is an obstacle that needs to be overcome, and that’s why we do apologetics, and that’s why we give an answer. But folks, it’s with the heart that men believe unto righteousness.

It’s in here that we’re convicted by the Holy Spirit. I don’t mean the physical blood-pumping muscle, but at the core of who we are and what we feel and what we know deeply to be true, that’s where the Holy Spirit convicts us, and that’s where we realize who we are in contrast to how holy and righteous God is. And with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation.

Folks, I realized I was a sinner, and I admitted it. Not a fun thing to admit. As a kid growing up in church, I thought my parents are good people.

I’m surrounded by good people. I’m good people. And the idea of having to admit I’m a sinner, and so are all the good people I know, is not a fun thing to have to admit.

Yet it’s the truth. And confession was made that I was a sinner and needed a Savior. For the Scripture saith, whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

And yet in the admission that we are sinners, there’s no shame toward the world in admitting that. because we’re also recognizing and admitting and confessing that we serve a great Savior. If you’ve seen the movie Amazing Grace, John Newton talks in the movie about, and I think he probably said it in real life too, that he knew two things, that I’m a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.

And folks, in admitting our sin, we also admit the power that Jesus Christ has to forgive sin. And in spite of the guilt over what I’ve done, there’s no shame in admitting the greatness of His salvation. for there’s no difference between the Jew and the Greek for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.

Ladies and gentlemen, it doesn’t matter Jew, Greek, it doesn’t matter American, Russian, Mexican, it doesn’t matter rich, poor, it doesn’t matter black, white, it doesn’t matter any of these things because we have the same Lord over all and he’s rich to all that call upon him. See, the Jews thought they had a special road to God because of their keeping of the laws under the Pharisees and all these things. The Greeks thought they were better because they had reason and philosophy on their side.

And neither of these things, the self-righteousness or the reason, were able to get them to God. They were both on equal ground as far as God was concerned because they had all sinned against God, just as we’ve all sinned against God. And yet God is rich to all who call upon Him.

God gives grace abundantly to all who call upon Him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. It’s not simply saying, Jesus, help me.

Lots of people say, Jesus, help me. Back home, I asked a girl one time if she was saved, and she said, oh yeah, God protected me from a tornado. I thought, that’s not what I meant.

He protected all of us from the tornado, but that doesn’t mean we’re all going to be in heaven. Folks, it’s not as simple as being in a tornado or being in a car wreck and saying, God, help me. That’s not calling upon the name of the Lord.

To call upon the name of the Lord Jesus means to cry out to him in recognition that he is the only one who has the power to save us from our lost and sinful condition. And whosoever does that in simply humbly admitting our sin and trusting that He is the only one who can provide us with salvation will be saved. Verse 14, He explains, and this gets more into the meat of the message, explains how this comes about and it explains our part in it.

I have often wondered, and I still don’t adequately understand why God would leave us here to share the gospel with people. I mean, let’s be real about this. He’s God, and we’re not.

He has infinite power. He has infinite wisdom. And let’s face it, he has a whole lot more credibility and a whole lot more integrity.

And God could very simply show up in somebody’s room late at night as they’re laying there trying to sleep and say, you need to trust me and my son. And I would think, just in my human wisdom, I would think it would be a whole lot more effective than sending me to go talk to somebody. I mean, God’s more impressive than I am.

I readily admit that. and yet he chose to use us. And he tells us to go tell other people about Christ. He tells us to do that and we don’t always do it because we don’t feel like it or we’re afraid or all these things that God is not subject to.

And so I don’t understand and one day I will, maybe I will get the opportunity to ask him, not in the sense that I’m questioning him, but maybe he’ll let me ask a question. God, why did you use us instead of just immediately taking us out of here and you telling people? But folks, whether it makes sense to me or not, the fact is God has left us here for the express purpose of telling other people about the Savior.

And whether it makes sense to me or not, it’s God’s plan and it’s God’s idea, so it’s the best way. And so that tells me we’ve got a job to do. And he tells us why in verse 14.

How then shall they call on him? Remember, it’s those who call upon the Lord who will be saved. He says, how then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?

How can they call on him if they haven’t believed in him? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?

And how shall they preach except they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. But they have not all obeyed the gospel.

For Isaiah saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

He lays out for us what’s involved in somebody coming to that point where they trust Christ and they call on him for salvation. And he starts out by, well, because he gives us the process here, we need to work through this backwards. So we start in verse 15.

We preach Christ because we’ve been sent. We’ve been sent to do it. And how shall they preach except they be sent?

Again, when you see that word preach, I want you to get out of your mind the idea that he’s talking about me. I read this passage, and for years I’ve thought about the pastor or the preacher. And I thought, well, God says some pretty nice things about people in my vocation.

Folks, we need to get it out of our minds, the idea that he’s talking about me. He’s talking about all of us. He’s not talking just about the idea of standing in front of a congregation and preaching.

He’s talking about going and making words to other people. And so he’s called Brother Ray to preach. He’s called Brother Pete to preach, and Brother Brady, and Miss Dolores, and others.

I could have pointed out and named every one of you in here, but that would have taken all morning. He’s called us to preach, and it says, how shall they preach except they be sent? There would be no point in us going and trying to convince people of the gospel.

There would be no point in us going and trying to tell people the gospel if God hadn’t sent us to do it. Because I don’t know about you, but sometimes I run short of the words. The words fail me.

And I’m probably not as convincing as I could be. But, you know, I’ve learned more and more over the last year that the Holy Spirit works in amazing ways. and the Holy Spirit empowers us to share things that we might never have thought of.

And the Holy Spirit uses our words to penetrate people’s hearts in ways that we could never have imagined if it was just me arguing my point of view from intellect to intellect. And I’ve told you many times before, and I’ll probably tell you many times again, that I thought for years it was my job to argue people into heaven. And I thought it was my job to tell people about Christ and get them to make a decision right then and there.

And ultimately, yeah, that would be a nice thing. But in the last year, last year and a half, maybe two years, I’ve seen more people come to Christ days and weeks after I talk to them about Christ as a result of talking to them about Christ than I’ve seen in my entire life people make decisions right when I talk to them. It’s been incredible to talk to people about Jesus Christ, share the gospel with them, and have them nowhere near ready to make any kind of decision, have them nowhere near understanding what I’m talking about, understanding the spiritual truth of it all, and having to say, well, you know, I’ll pray for you.

And praying for them and having them come back days or weeks or even months later and say, I trusted Christ. Really? I wasn’t there to twist your arm. How did you get saved if I wasn’t there to twist your arm?

Because the Holy Spirit used the words when the gospel was preached to work on. And folks, I didn’t do that. It was God who sent me, and it was God who empowered the presentation of the gospel, and it was God who used the gospel on people’s hearts.

And that’s not, I’m not bragging to you. I wish I could say I’d done these things. And it’s not just me.

I’ve talked to others in our congregation and outside our congregation who I think are learning this same truth, that God works behind the scenes even when we’re not there. And it’s God who sends us. It’s God who empowers us.

It’s God who works in the people. And he just chooses to use us to be the mouthpiece. but we go because we’re sent.

We go because we’re sent. That ought to be reasoned enough for us to share the gospel, the fact that God has commanded it. Amen?

If we claim to be Christians, which means Christ followers, we want to do everything he’s commanded us to do, that ought to include telling other people about Christ. That ought to be reasoned enough. He sent us, and he’s provided the Holy Spirit to work in and through us to share the gospel with people. But we preach the gospel, first of all, because we’re sent.

How shall they preach except they be sent? Well, he says back in verse 14, how shall they hear without a preacher? So we go and preach because we’re sent, and we preach because they need to hear.

We preach Christ because others need to hear about Christ. The gospel is not intuitive. You can’t just sit there and come up with the idea of the gospel. Nobody ever would.

The gospel is so simple, but it’s also so brilliant that God would devise a way to provide mercy through his justice by paying the penalty himself. It’s incredible. And we can’t just sit there and on our own reasoning think, you know what, I ought to trust Christ. And we can look at the world around us and we can see evidence that there’s God.

I can look outside at the trees and the birds and try to figure out what in the world keeps the birds up there. And I can reason my way to understanding that there is a God through looking at nature. But looking at nature, using my own reason, looking at other things around me, I cannot come to the idea and to the realization that I have sinned against God and that I’m in need of a Savior and that Christ is just that Savior.

Folks, nobody gets saved who hasn’t heard the gospel. I know that’s a hard question because there are people in parts of the world today who may be good moral people and have never had the opportunity to hear the gospel and will die and spend eternity in hell apart from God. And folks, on one level, it’s not fair.

It’s not fair. I’m not saying God is not fair. The fact is they’ve sinned against God just as we all have, but it’s not fair that we haven’t told them because they can’t believe if they don’t hear.

Folks, the world needs to hear. There are people around us even in Fayetteville today. We like to think of Arkansas as the Bible Belt.

There are people even in our community today who know that there’s a Jesus. They may even believe that there’s a God. They may even believe that he’s the only begotten son of God, but this idea that he died to pay for their sins, they’ve never heard, hard as it is to believe.

People out there often believe Jesus died for the world, but they don’t know what that means. And they don’t understand and they’ve never heard that when he died, it was to pay for their sins. And we preach Christ because the world needs to hear.

He says further up in verse 14, how then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they’ve not heard? Well, they’ve got to, when they hear, they’ve got to believe.

We preach Christ because others need to believe. It’s not simply enough for them to hear the message. If that was the case, we could just kick down the doors of people’s houses and storm in with a bullhorn and make sure everybody in America heard the message of the gospel and they’ll be all right.

They don’t earn their salvation, but there is a response that God commands on their part. It says in Acts 17, the times of ignorance God winked at, the times of men’s depravity and sin God winked at, he overlooked for a while, but now commands all men everywhere to repent. There’s a response that God commands on our part after hearing the gospel.

The gospel isn’t just heard, it’s obeyed. We believe the gospel. People hear the gospel all the time who don’t believe it.

We recognize that there’s a difference. Believing the gospel is a step further. And we preach Christ because there are people out there who need to believe.

We need to be the conduit through which the Holy Spirit speaks to their hearts. And they realize that, yes, what they say is true. that Jesus really did die for my sins.

Jesus really did pay the punishment, the penalty, that I was due from a holy God for my sin against him. And folks, our lives and our testimony are some of the best evidence that they will ever see of that. You can argue with theology.

People argue with theology. People argue with the Bible. It’s hard to argue with a changed life.

And we preach Christ. And I’m not saying don’t use the Bible. Folks, I believe as a Christian, in terms of credibility, The Bible trumps our experiences every time. But in the eyes of the world, they may not believe the Bible.

They may not even believe what we have to say, but it’s hard to argue with a changed life. And we preach Christ, and we continue to tell them, and we continue to let them see the difference in us so that they will believe and know that the gospel is true. We preach Christ because others need to believe.

And folks, I’ve even heard militant atheists, not believers, not people who question, but people who are hardened, militant atheists, who not only believe there is no God, but try to convert others to that opinion, who have said, if they don’t believe as we do, but if they believed as we do, as we do, they wouldn’t do anything but try to convert other people. They wouldn’t do anything but share the gospel. Because if they believed as we do, that there’s a heaven, that there’s a hell, that sin is real, that sin will be judged before a holy God, and that there’s only one way out, they said they couldn’t not tell everybody they heard.

And we need to question from time to time how deeply we really believe what we profess to believe if we’re not compelled to tell everyone we hear about the only way out of the burning building that’s about to come crashing down on mankind. And finally this morning in verse 13, as we looked at a moment ago, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. We preach Christ. We preach Christ because others need to call on him for salvation.

Others need to call on him for salvation. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve not ever heard it before, there is no other way. I know in this day and age it sounds arrogant, it sounds judgmental to say there’s no other way but Jesus Christ, but folks, I didn’t say that.

I didn’t come up with that. Jesus Christ himself came up with that when he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by me.

I heard on the radio yesterday that according to some studies and polls they’ve done recently, as much as 57% of members of evangelical churches believe there may be another way to God. what that’s that’s one of the marks of what they call an evangelical you believe jesus christ is the only way that’s like saying 57 percent of baptists think there should be a pope I mean that’s kind of that’s antithetical to who we are to say as an evangelical I believe there’s another road to god folks I didn’t say it billy graham didn’t come up with it billy sunday didn’t come up with it john wesley george whitfield any of the any of the preachers who’ve ever lived didn’t come up with it, it was Jesus Christ himself who said, I am the only way. And folks, the world needs to call on him and be saved.

We possess something incredibly precious, this message of salvation, this way, this direction of the only way out. And it is cruel if we do not share it with people. If people were standing in a burning building and we knew the only way to get out of that burning building alive and we walked out ourselves and didn’t tell them, they ought to bring us up on some charges.

Folks, we don’t share the gospel because, and we don’t say he’s the only way because we’re cruel or because we’re judgmental. It’s a compassionate thing to say there is a way out of God’s fiery judgment that’s coming. There is a means of escape, and God himself has provided it, and it’s the only one, and it’s Jesus Christ. And it is as simple as confessing your need for him and trusting in him to be the only Savior.

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