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| Hearts and Mouths I was listening to the radio one afternoon this past week when Terry Gross, a journalist on NPR interviewed one of the founders of the Neo-Conservative movement, a movement composed primarily of Jews who have left their traditional stronghold, the Democratic party, and became Republicans mostly on the basis of perceived ‘values.’ You could tell by the tenor of her interview that Terry was pretty hostile to the whole concept politically; but I confess that my ears pricked up not because of the politics (we don’t talk about those in church), but because at one point Terry decided to bring up the topic of religion. What she said was something like this: “Now, you know Mr. Housman (at least I think that was his name), a large part of the political base of the Conservative movement is made up of the Christian Right?” And he said, “yes.” Then in a negative tone and with an obviously high level of skepticism, she gave what was a kind of summary of Basic Christianity. She said, “You know that these people believe that Christianity is the one true religion and that you have to accept Jesus in order to be saved.” And not taking the bait he answered, “yes, I know that.” And then she went on and started to explain the Christian view of the end times and the rapture and the fact that only Jews who accepted Jesus as their Messiah would be able to go to heaven and she did all of this in an offhand and flippant way.” You could tell that Mr. Housman was getting impatient with her line of questioning and he interrupted her and said something like, “I’m not sure why we are talking about all of this.” And she said (as if it were quite obvious), “Well, isn’t this offensive to you?” By the way that she asked the question, you knew that it wasn’t really a question. It was more like, “if you had any sense, then you would be offended.” But Mr. Housman gave her a good answer. He said, “I’m not offended! (and he turned the tables) I don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah, but I don’t expect my lack of belief to be offensive to them either.” Good Point! It was a breath of fresh air for me; because you see increasingly the attitude of this world toward Christianity has become the attitude of Terry Gross. It isn’t just that in their eyes Christians are misguided, or naïve adherents to an old-fashioned faith; the truth is that in the eyes of many, the most basic tenets of Christianity are wrong-headed, even immoral. For them, one law has come to supersede all others; one commandment has overtaken everything. That one law is simply this: “There are no absolutes! There is no right! There is no wrong! There is no such thing as spiritual truth – there is only what is true for you or true for me… and no one has any right to try and convince me otherwise.” In this construct, anyone who believes in any exclusive truth in the spiritual realm, is automatically wrong! What a strange idea, but there it is! In this twisted world today the only thing that is wrong – the only sin -- is to believe that something is really true! The only sinners then are people of conviction! And the greatest evil is to tell others about what we believe! It’s a horrible reality! Can you imagine what the world would be like if we tried to run everything that way? Can you imagine me sitting on the tenth story of a skyscraper downtown and saying to a visitor, well you can either take the elevator down or you can step out of the window over there, whichever you feel might be the best way to get down.” Can you imagine going to the doctor and having him say, “You can either take this Clarinex or this little blue cyanide bill– whichever you feel would make your allergies go away? Can you imagine a parent saying to their five-year old child, “Well, you can either play on the lawn in the backyard or in the fast lane out there on Highway 805 – whichever you fell will be most fun.”? All of these ideas are LUDICROUS. And yet this is how we are being told that we ought to deal with the most important questions of life – the eternal questions, the spiritual questions, the real matters of life and death. Someone (D. Sutten) once said that “…There's nothing more irritating than a Savior when you aren't ready to be saved.” And it’s true. There is nothing more annoying than truth when you don’t want to hear it. There is nothing more aggravating than to meet a person of conviction, when you have nothing but your own wants and desires. Somehow the world wants us to take the Lord out of Jesus Christ. They are happy with his cheerful aphorisms like “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Or “Turn the other cheek” (as long as it’s not their cheek you are talking about). But when its get down to truly BASIC Christianity, the doctrine of repentance and salvation and new life in Christ, these people bridle. They want to get rid of that other Jesus; the one who said, “I am the way the truth and the life and no man comes to the Father but by me.” (John 14:6) The one who said, (John 12:24), “… unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. ….” they want to get rid of the Jesus who saves. The truth is that Basic Christianity is offensive to this world; so offensive that people are even upset when we suggest it should even be investigated. The idea of the need for a Savior has annoyed people from the very beginning. It has been the cause of many a martyrdom. It has been the seed of many a persecution. In Gal 5:11, Paul called it the OFFENSE of the Cross. When Jesus said, “All men will hate you because of me…” (Luke 21:17), he was predicting this future. The truth is that Christianity is not bigoted or intolerant – in spite what the world might say. And in fact, this truth is borne out by present history. Look around you! Virtually, the only countries in this world where there is any kind of religious freedom today are countries where Christianity has been or is the dominant force. In fact, it is only in those places where Christianity has been banned that religious intolerance has reached its peak. Millions of people of many faiths died at the hands of the Communists during the twentieth century. Even today, they are being persecuted in Cuba and in Vietnam and in China. Christianity and all other faiths outside of Islam are also banned from most of the Muslim countries of the Middle East. Just try passing out Bibles in Saudi Arabia or witnessing in Yemen. If you are lucky, they will deport you. If you are not; you will die! And don’t fool yourself, as the influence of Christianity declines here in America or elsewhere in this world, the specter of persecution will loom again. It’s already happening in Canada, where it is now illegal to read certain passages of the Bible over the waves and in Sweden. It has always been this way! If you are here this morning and you are NOT a Christian, we’re not going to kick you out. In fact, we are glad that you are here! We are happy you are willing to come and listen. We will not try to force you or manipulate you or intimidate you into believing the way that we believe – that would be anathema to our faith. But at the same time we relish the opportunity to lay the truths of Christianity before you for your consideration! You see, as Christians, we believe that there IS such a thing as truth and that it is exclusionary – that two contradictory things cannot be true at the same time no matter how good it might feel. As Christians, we also believe that the truth is worth investigating and that it is worth sharing… but that it is impossible to stuff down anyone’s throat. Basic Christianity is SIMPLE. In fact it is its very simplicity that offends many. It could be boiled down to just two words really; two words that sound like music to the Christian’s ears and yet two words that offend many – Jesus Saves. That’s it! And that is the subject of our Scripture for this morning as found in Rom 10. Now, I know your Bulletins all say Rom 10:5-13. But, I’d like to get a running start at these verses by beginning in verse 4. Here we go:
In these verses, the Apostle Paul sets forth Salvation in its most basic form. He strips away all of the unnecessary baggage; he boils off the unnecessary steam; he breaks it down to its simplest pieces. He says in verse 9, “if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved!” It’s simple. It’s direct. And it’s true. It is so simple and so direct and so true that a lot of people have had trouble believing it at all! That’s why Paul surrounds this great verse with a very interesting explanation of Salvation. He wants to make sure that his readers understand what he means and so he sets forth Salvation in Three Parts. Let’s look at them one by one: First, Paul sets forth the Prospect of Salvation in verses 4-8. Now, keep in mind that for hundreds of years, the Jewish people had looked forward to a Salvation that would come by works. They had taken the Law of Moses and converted it into a complex Operator’s Manual for a ‘worthy’ Life. But in doing so, they had missed the entire point of the Old Testament. They interpreted the law as a means of codifying their relationship with God – but that was never God’s intention. From the beginning, all God had really wanted was their hearts! And it makes sense. The truth is that no real relationship can be codified, it can’t be set down as a system of rules and regulations or laid out as a list of commandments. A real relationship has to come from the heart. Let me see if I can give you an example. Take the relationship of a husband with his wife. Suppose that I said to you husbands here that I had created the Seven Laws of a perfect marriage. I said, “Husbands, listen to these rules and obey them and things will go well with your marriage: Rule #1 Buy her flowers once a week. Rule #2 Do the dishes four times every week Rule #3 Put down the toilet seat. Rule #4 Pick up your own socks. Rule # 5 Take her on a date every Friday Night (even if she likes the Ballet). Rule #6 Never play any games that involve keeping score. Rule #7 Presents. At Christmas and Valentine’s Day and Birthdays keep just one word in mind… ‘jewelry.’ Some of you ladies are saying, “Hmm! This sounds pretty good! It might even work! But let me point something out to you: you can’t legislate the heart. You can’t make enough rules to convey love. The truth is that this ‘perfect’ husband could obey all of these rules and still miss the point. He could come into the house once a week and toss a bunch of flowers on the table and say, “Huh, there you go.” He could slam the dishes around in the sink with a scowl on his face and not wash them very well and then complain. He could take his wife out on Friday night, but then canoodle with his secretary at lunch every day. He could even buy his wife expensive jewelry for presents, but if all of these things were done with a hard heart and an ugly attitude it wouldn’t matter. If that husband never really shared from the soul; if he never really talked to his wife about what matters; if he never really went out of his way to make HER feel valuable, then all the rules in the world wouldn’t make any difference at all. In fact, we could add thousands of other items to this list of perfection, we could turn the whole marriage into a system of rules and regulations and do’s and don’ts; but the trouble is that if the husband’s heart is not in it, if he’s just going through the motions and getting away with what he can, if there is no real LOVE, then all the rules will be for naught. It’s the same with our relationship with God. It can’t be converted into a system of rules. It can’t be boiled down to twelve steps or ten commandments or four laws, because it’s the heart that matters. The Old Testament was never intended to be the end all of God’s relationship with us. The Old Testament laws were never intended to be our ticket into heaven. Instead, they were intended to be a picture of what was to come – of Jesus, the Jesus who saves. Take the Old Testament system of animal sacrifices. They were never intended to ‘pay’ for the sins of the Israelites. If they could have paid for their sins, then they wouldn’t have had to go on and on year after year and Jesus wouldn’t have had to come. Instead, they were intended to be a symbol of the repentance of Israel, a symbol of the forgiveness of God, a symbol of the sacrifice that was to come.. Without a true heart of repentance these sacrifices, even though completed in accord with the Law of Moses, were worthless. God says as much in Isa 1:11 “What are the multitude of your sacrifices to me? “I have more than enough of burnt offerings… I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.” NIV Why? Because those offerings did not come from the heart of a people in love for God! You could compare the Old Testament sacrifices to the flowers that a husband brings home to his wife. The joke, of course, is that husbands only bring flowers when they are in trouble; when they have done something to upset their wives. But if that is the case, then let me tell you something: those flowers only have real value if they come from a heart of repentance. If you come home to your wife with a dozen roses and you say to her, “Look, I really didn’t do anything wrong. If you weren’t so picky and unreasonable we wouldn’t have had a fight at all but just because I’m such a nice guy, here are some flowers.” Do you think that would help the situation? Of course not! Even though he followed the rules! In fact, he’d be lucky if he didn’t get those flowers thrown in his face, vase and all. It’s the same with God and the Old Testament Law. All too often the Israelites came to him in their own sufficiency. They said, “Sure maybe we’ve oppressed a few widows and twisted justice for a few shekels, but hey, nobody’s perfect. Here have a goat… be happy!” That’s not obedience! That’s not a relationship! That’s not justice or mercy or repentance; the things that God loves! And it could not bring about forgiveness. It was certainly not the intention of the Old Testament. The Sacrifices were never meant to be an unlimited supply of “Get out of Jail Free Cards” for the Jews. Instead, they were intended to be a symbol of the Messiah who was to come. Paul makes this clear to his readers in Rom 10:4 when he says, “Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” Did you get that? Jesus finished the Law. He fulfilled it. He completed it. His arrival spelled the end the sacrificial system and Paul continues his explanation of the Prospect of Salvation, the real intention of the Law by reaching back to the Book of Deuteronomy. In fact, verses 5-8 are taken almost verbatim from Deut 30:11-14. I think it’s worthwhile to turn there and read it together, because this is really an Old Testament passage about salvation by faith . This is what it says:
Now, Deut 30 is really a chapter about a heart relationship, a love relationship with God. You can see this already in verse 2. There Moses talks about the People of Israel obeying God not with all the rules in the rulebook, but instead with all their heart and soul. Then in verse 4 he says, “Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the LORD your God will gather you and bring you back.” and in verse 6 “The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.” See how “heart” is written all over this passage? Heart is what matters to God. That was his intent even way back in Deuteronomy. And the truth is that what Moses commanded them to do that day wasn’t all that easy. In fact, it was beyond their reach. The Chosen People failed to obey the Law again and again. So abysmal was their failure that they WERE banished to distant lands! But still Paul points out there is good news in these verses! Why? Because Christ is the end of the Law! Because a relationship with God has become even MORE simple with the coming of Jesus Christ! All too often people try to make Salvation into something complex and difficult. They want it to be something that requires secret knowledge or elaborate ritual, or special passwords. They want to believe that they can accomplish an extraordinary work like walk to the Ganges on their knees, or flagellate their backs, or contemplate their navels for months at a time and that somehow those things will make them one with God. But it doesn’t work that way. God is not susceptible to secret knowledge or elaborate ritual or self-centered works of supposed righteousness. As Moses and Paul both put it, “it’s not like you can climb up to heaven and bring Christ down!” He’s already done that! It’s not like you can go down into the sea and dredge him up from the dead!” He’s already risen!” Both the Incarnation, when Jesus came to Earth, and the Resurrection when Jesus rose from the Dead have been accomplished without us! These are the two components of Salvation and there is nothing that we can do to add to them! We cannot map out our future plans in order to bring about salvation. We cannot set a certain standard for our GPA, and do just the right amount of community service and extracurricular activities and get letters from the right teachers and then submit our application to God and be sure of a scholarship to heaven – or even admission! The Prospect of Salvation lies before us – but the challenging
thing about it for many people is that it has already been accomplished!
We don’t WANT to believe that it can be free. We WANT to climb up
into the heavens and forcibly bring it down. We WANT to wander across
the sea and drag it back with us. We want to deserve it! The word, the logos of John 1 is Jesus, and Paul says the ‘word’ of Deuteronomy 30:14 is also Jesus. He is the end of the Law and He is near us – in our hearts and in our mouths, we need only obey his call! And that brings us to our next point. After the Prospect of Salvation, Paul deals with the PROCESS of SALVATION. This is Rom 10:9. Paul says what I have already said, “Salvation is not a matter of the Ten Commandments. It is not a matter of the Twelve Steps or even the Four Spiritual Laws. Salvation,” says Paul, “ is really a matter of just two thing, two things set forth already by Moses in Deut 30:14. Salvation is a matter of the MOUTH and of the HEART: “..confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved!” Salvation is a matter of confessing and believing! It’s that easy! (and that hard!) The word that Paul uses here for ‘confess’ is an interesting word. It is the word homologeo in Greek. Like many Greek words, it is composed of two parts. The first part, homo, means the same. The second part logeo means “word.” You can see that in a sly way, Paul is referring back to the logos, the word in verse 8. Paul says, “Listen, Salvation is a matter of saying the same word about Jesus that God says.” It is a matter of saying the same word that God revealed to John the Baptist in John 1:29: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” It is a matter of saying the same word about Jesus that God revealed to Peter in Matt 16:16 “You are the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” Nothing less than saying the same thing about Jesus as God does will do. I read a story this week about a young pastor during the 19th Century who had gone off to a liberal seminary and unlearned the wonder of who Jesus really was. There, he had been trained that Jesus was a great teacher, full of wonderful sayings – but not Lord. He had learned that Jesus had a great deal to say about how we ought to live our lives – but not that he had the power to give life. He had learned that Jesus has done a great job of showing us how we should act – but not that he had risen from the dead… and so he had gone about his duties as a pastor preaching this lightweight Gospel – a Gospel of Goodness. But that all changed one night when late at night a little girl knocked on his door. She asked immediately "Are you a minister?" And when he said yes, she went on breathlessly. "You must come with me quickly. I want you to get my mother in." At first he thought that her mother was drunk on in the streets, and he said, "You must go and get a policeman." "No," said the girl, "My mother is dying, and you must come and get her into heaven." So the pastor got dressed and followed her for a mile or so through lonely streets in the middle of night. He said, he knelt beside the woman’s bed and he began to tell her about the Jesus he knew, how he was good and kind and how he'd come to show us how to live. And finally the desperate woman cut him off. "Mister," she cried, "that's of no use to me. I'm a sinner. I've lived my life. Can't you tell me of someone who can have mercy upon me and save my poor soul?" The pastor said he stood there in the presence of a dying woman and he realized that on his own strength he had nothing to tell her. In the midst of sin and death, I had no message. In order to bring hope to that dying woman, he had to go back to his mother's knee, to his cradle faith!” He said in that moment that he told her the story of the Cross and of a Christ who is able to save us all to the uttermost." He said, the tears began to run down the woman's cheeks, and his too. And she said, "Now you're getting it, now you're helping me." And the pastor said, "I got her in, and Praise God, I got in myself, too." It isn’t enough to acknowledge Jesus the teacher, or Jesus the great example, or Jesus the kind man. In the presence of sin and of death in the world, the only thing that matters is to “say the same word as God,” “to confess with our mouth that Jesus is LORD!” And with the mouth must come the HEART! With the verbal confession must come the heart’s desire. Mouthing meaningless words like mantras about Jesus is useless unless we understand and believe from the center of our being. I find it interesting that Paul mentions specifically only one fact about Jesus that we are to believe. He doesn’t mention that he was born in a stable or that he lived a perfect life or that he walked on water or even that he died on the cross. He mentions just one thing… that “God raised him from the Dead.” The entire work and ministry of Jesus Christ is summed up in that one divine act! The fact that he was raised from the dead infers that he was then also born and that he also died! The incarnation and the atonement culminate in the resurrection. It is the centerpiece of our faith. Without the resurrection, says Paul, we are the most miserable of men. If this life is really all there is, then who in their right mind would choose to become a Christian? Especially in Paul’s day, it would have been madness. Outside of the reality of the resurrection the entire record of Christianity is nonsensical. Peter and James and John (and Paul) become nothing more than dupes or liars. The fact that Christians would die by the tens of thousands for this sort of faith is beyond belief. Real salvation isn’t a matter of believing in God – the demons believe and tremble (says James). It isn’t a matter either of acknowledging the existence of Jesus at some time in the distant past or of recognizing the wisdom of his sayings. Millions of crooks and miscreants have quoted Jesus admiringly and to great effect. Salvation is recognizing Jesus as savior of the world. It is recognizing the price that he paid for our sins and acknowledging his victory over death for all time! Verse 10 “… it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.” That’s it! It’s simple! It’s easy! And the benefits are out of this world! Paul has spoken of the Prospect of Salvation and the Process of Salvation. But he concludes in verses 11-13 with what you might call the Perks of Salvation – the benefits of confessing and believing in Jesus. So often, people concentrate on the things we have been saved from – like death and sin! And that’s all well and good, but it is far more significant and wonderful to meditate on the things that we have been saved TO. And that’s what Paul does in Rom 10. In the next three verses he gleans three wonderful truths about Salvation from the Old Testament. I have put them in the form of three “B’s.” The first, I have called BOLDNESS. Look at verse 11. It says, “As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame." This really is one of the most wonderful things about Salvation. If you are truly a Christian, then your Salvation is NOT based upon your record. It has nothing to do with who you are or what you might have done. It has everything to do with who Jesus is and what HE has done… and if you are honest with yourself that’s a relief. One of the duties that Satan has taken upon himself is the job of ACCUSER. He stands before God the judge like a prosecutor in a court setting forth the crimes of humanity and demanding each person be turned over to him for punishment. It’s a frightening thought. But the wonderful thing about Salvation is that God already knows the details. He’s heard all the stories. There is no need for a cover-up (as if that were possible). There is nothing the prosecutor can say. God has seen the crimes and paid the price and ready to set us free! We can stand before God in boldness, because there is nothing about us that can be revealed that has not already been forgiven! There IS no possibility of shame for the believer. That’s Perk number one of Salvation. But there is more. There is not only BOLDNESS for the Believer, but also BELONGING. As Paul puts it in verse 12, “… there is no difference between Jew and Gentile-the same Lord is Lord of all…” For centuries God’s Family had been limited almost entirely to the Children of Israel. Sure, there had been the occasional ‘believing’ Gentile. There is the City of Nineveh and the possible last minute faith of King Nebuchadnezzar. There are even a few believing Romans mentioned in the New Testament… but for the most part, the Word of God had come to the Jewish People. God had dealt with humanity primarily through the agency of the Israelites. This truth had been so ingrained into the hearts of a significant segment of Jewish Society – the Pharisees – that many of them had a hard time becoming Christians because it meant they would have to associate with those pesky un-chosen Gentiles! But the beauty of Christianity is that in the Incarnation, Jesus became one of us… one of all of us! He died for the sins of the whole world, not just the Jews. When we become believers, we become a part of his family; we become part of a group of people that stretches out into every corner of the earth. As Christians, we never have any reason or excuse to be alone. We are called to gather together and to be together and to belong together and to belong to God! And this is a wonderful thing. We are saved into Boldness and Belonging and lastly into BLESSING! Look again at verse 12. It says, “There is no difference between Jew and Gentile- the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him! The Christian life, says Paul is a life of RICH BLESSINGS… Jesus had another name for it. He called it the ‘abundant life.’ The truth is that Salvation is like eternal life (perhaps even another name for it). Salvation isn’t something that happens when you die. It is a reality that invades your life the moment you believe. Someone once said, (Helmut Thielicke) that judging by the glum and sour faces of many Christians, you would think that rather than coming from the Father's joyful banquet, they had just come from the Sheriff who had auctioned off their sins and now they are sorry they can't get them back again.” The joy of salvation is that our sins have been removed from us as far as the east is from the west. The joy of salvation is that we can approach the throne of grace with the boldness of those who have been forgiven. The joy of salvation is that we have been and will be surrounded with millions and millions of other believers from all over the world. These are Blessings beyond price; benefits beyond understanding, and I say to you this morning “HEED THE CALL”. If you are here this morning, then you have heard the simple Call of Christ laid before you. At this moment, you know the way of salvation! you know that the price has been paid! You know that life and death have been set before us as Moses says in Deuteronomy 30, and I say to you as Moses did, “Choose life.” Don’t make the mistake of making it all too complicated. Don’t try and find heaven with tolerance or lack of conviction. Don’t try and bring Christ down with your righteousness, or up with your rules. As Paul says in verse 13 (quoting the Old Testament prophet Joel no less). “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." Heed the Call and make the call. It’s simple! It’s Easy! It’s Free! There was an article in the Reader's Digest a few years ago about the late Harvey Penick: "For Harvey who was 90-year-old success came late. His first golf book, Harvey Penick's Little Red Book, sold more than a million copies, which his publisher believes makes it one of the biggest things in the history of sports books. His second book, And If You Play Golf, You're My Friend, has already sold nearly three-quarters of a million. But listen to the story of the book. "In the 1920s Penick bought a red spiral notebook and began to jot down observations about golf. He never showed the book to anyone except his son, until 1991 when he shared it with a local writer and asked if he thought it was worth publishing. The man read it and told him yes. He left word with Penick's wife the next evening that Simon & Schuster had agreed to an advance of $90,000. "When the writer saw Penick later, the old man seemed troubled. Finally, Penick came clean. With all his medical bills, he said, there was no way he could advance Simon & Schuster that much money. The writer had to explain that Penick would be the one to receive the $90,000." Don’t make Penick’s mistake! It IS hard to believe that God does the giving and we do the receiving. It does seem too good to be true. We keep thinking that it’s us that has to give the advance to God. But it isn’t. The word is near us. It is in our hearts and mouths. We must only call upon the Lord to be saved! |