July 19, 2020 Rom 10:1-3
What is the most important thing in the world? We are in church, so, if I were to actually call for answers, surely someone would answer, “God!” or, “Jesus!” or, “The Holy Spirit!” And of course, that is true, God, in the person of either the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit is the One transcendent, all powerful, all knowing, all loving, all righteous, all just – infinite Creator and Sustainer of the Universe.
But other than the One True and Living God that fills the universe… Other than the Judge of all the Earth, before whom we must all, one day, stand and give an account… Other than a personal relationship with Him, by grace, through faith in the shed blood of Christ, what is the most important thing that people can possess?
Perhaps we can answer that by first answering the opposite question: What is the most dangerous thing? What is the most debilitating thing? What is the thing that God said caused the destruction of the nation of Israel and the exile of the nation of Judah?
Speaking of Judah God said, in Isa 5:13, “…My people go into exile for their lack of knowledge…” and of Israel He said, in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…”
Lack of knowledge, ignorance, is the most dangerous thing in the world. Why does a small child drink drain cleaner or eat rat poison? They aren’t fed up with the world and trying to end it all, they are just ignorant, and some of them die for lack of knowledge!
Why are people across America calling for the dismantling of the police? Why did the peace activists of the 1960’s call for the unilateral disarmament of the United States while the Soviet Union had a thousand nuclear warheads aimed at us? Why do so many people think that the government and
“big corporations” can (and ought to) take care of everybody? Why do they think that socialism or communism will work, when we have seen it fail, utterly and miserably, a dozen times in the last century? Why do people think that they can change a person’s gender just because some man’s confused mind suddenly decides he wants to be a woman? Because they are ignorant; they have no knowledge of history, they have no knowledge of economics, and they have no knowledge of the natural depravity of fallen humanity, and apparently no knowledge of genetics or anatomy. But mostly, they have no knowledge of God.
So what is the most important thing? Knowledge, wisdom understanding. Prov 4:7, “The beginning of wisdom is: Acquire wisdom; And with all your acquiring, get understanding.” And Prov 16:16 says, “How much better it is to get wisdom than gold! And to get understanding is to be chosen above silver.”
And what we are going to see here in chapter 10 is the supreme importance of knowledge and understanding – and we are going to see that in the unbelief of the Jews, in the unbelief of national, ethnic, religious Israel. Their unbelief was (and is) the result of a willful ignorance. Now we saw this all through the Book of John when we studied that a few years back, over and over Jesus confronted the Jews, but they simply refused to believe. We are going to see here in Romans that the Jews of Paul’s day (and even up to the present time) are following in the footsteps of their ancestors.
We will see that:
1. they had an ignorant zeal for God (vs 2);
2. they were ignorant of the righteousness of God (vs 3);
3. they were ignorant of the work of Christ (vs 4a);
4. they were ignorant of the requirement of faith in salvation (vs 4b-10);
5. they were ignorant of the scope of salvation (vs 11-18); and
6. they were ignorant of the prophecies of Scripture regarding salvation (vs 19-21).
Now, this is a scathing indictment. Some people may find it objectionable. Over the past 150 or so years much of the visible church has adopted, what I believe to be the thoroughly non-Biblical position of a pre-tribulation rapture of the (largely) Gentile church and a restoration of the earthly kingdom of Israel. I believe it was Keith Mathison in his book From Age to Age who pointed out that
this doctrine gives heaven to the Gentile church while the Jews, “God chosen people”, get a little strip of land across the end to the Mediterranean Sea and the responsibility to rule over the fallen world.
But those who subscribe to that doctrine, who believe in the restoration of the earthly kingdom of Israel, and the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem and the reinstitution of the sacrificial system may be offended.
Charles Spurgeon, who was, perhaps, a bit more blunt than I am, once said, “God gave me this great book to preach from, and if He has put anything in it you think is not fit, go and complain to Him, not to me. I am simply his servant, and if His errand that I am to tell is objectionable, I cannot help it.”
But this chapter is a scathing indictment of the Jewish religious system, finding fault with the Jews in the very area in which they thought themselves to excel. And Paul recognizes that, which is,
perhaps, why he begins the way he does.
Verse 1, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation.” Of course, you know that the chapter divisions were not in Paul’s original manuscript, so we should not be surprised that the antecedent for the pronoun “them” is back in verse 31 of chapter 9, which begins, “but
Israel…” The “brethren” addressed here are the believers at Rome, both Jews and Gentiles – on equal footing in the gospel.
But it is a moment of tenderness from the Apostle – a moment to remind us “brethren” not to be arrogant, not to feel or act superior – a moment to remind us that there is a world of people out there, billions of them today, who, like the Jews, are held captive by their unbelief, are held captive by their ignorance, and, according to Scripture, it is our bounden duty to pray for the salvation of the lost, but their salvation ought to be – as Paul says it is for him – our “heart’s desire”.
Now, Paul is not talking about his friends and family back in Judea. He is talking about all the Jews, scattered all over the known world. He is talking about those in Jerusalem who hate him, who see him as a traitor to Judaism; he is talking about the ones in Damascus that plotted to kill him
immediately after his conversion, and the ones in Lystra that stoned him, he is talking about those he’s never met who live in places he’s never been. And, yes, he has a special tenderness for them, as we might have for fellow Alabamians, or fellow Americans, but I really believe that the foundation of this is that Paul’s heart was aligned with God’s heart, Paul’s desires were aligned with God’s desires and 1 Tim 2:4 says that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
And I will confess to you (and I don’t think that I am alone in this), that most of the time, I am so angry with the wickedness of this world, so angry with their rejection and hatred of the gospel, so angry with the way that they attack the Bible and the church and the way that they try to remove any public recognition or mention of the true and living God (while venerating any and every humanistic and paganistic false religion) that I fail to pray for the lost as I should, and honestly, at times, probably desire their destruction more than their salvation.
But, if God desires their salvation, ought we not also to desire it, from the heart?
And Paul did. Remember what he said back in chapter 9, verses 2 & 3, “…I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh”. Paul is saying that he would have been willing, not only to die, but to suffer eternal separation from God, to spend eternity in hell, if that would have in any way procured salvation for his fellow Jews. And that was, if you remember, couched in terms that indicated that Paul knew that he was speaking hypothetically, that he understood that neither his death nor his eternal condemnation could or would save even one person, let alone his whole nation.
But this is not hypothetical – this is, as the kids say, “for real”. This is about a genuine desire and a genuine prayer to God, regarding the salvation of lost, spiritually dead, rebel sinners. We walk this fine line between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility, and we try to maintain some kind of balance. Now, some folks don’t want to talk about God’s sovereignty because they are afraid they
will discourage someone, some so-called “seeker”. That’s not really a problem, because the only people who are genuinely seeking God, are the ones that God has already sovereignly sought out and called to Himself. And they will come. Other folks are afraid to talk about man’s responsibility because they are concerned that people may think that they can save themselves, whenever they want to… you know, live it up, sin like the devil himself and then accept Jesus just before your die.
Again, if you understand the sovereignty of God, that’s not a problem either.
But, Paul suffered no such evangelical paranoia. He taught the sovereignty of God, he emphasized the divine prerogative – we’ve just gone through that in chapters 8 & 9. But when Paul stood up in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch or went to the riverside outside Philippi or stood among the sages on Mars Hill in Athens or on the street corner in Corinth or in the marketplace in Berea or taught from house to house in Ephesus – He taught Jesus Christ and Him crucified and he called all people to faith and repentance. He said, (1 Cor 9:22) “…I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.” But he also said, (2 Tim 2:10) “…I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory.”
And so Paul does what God called him to do, (Act 20:21) “…solemnly testifying to both Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.” And he prayed that God would do what only God can do: take lost, spiritually dead, rebellious sinners and make them “alive together with Christ”
and give them a new heart and put a new Spirit within them and make those who are not the people of God into “sons of the Living God”. I read this week that someone once challenged Spurgeon and said, “If you believe in the election of God, why don't you just preach to the elect?" He replied, "If you'll pull up their shirt-tails so I can see if they have an E stamped on their back, I will. Otherwise, I'll preach to everyone."
And the fact that Paul prayed for them, indicates that he certainly did not consider all of them, as individuals, to be reprobate or eternally condemned. As a nation, as a people, as a religious group, they have been set aside, they have lost their privilege, but as individuals they are no different from any other individual, and Paul prays for their salvation, just as he prayed for the salvation of the Gentiles. From a personal standpoint, he may have prayed with more fervor; their lost condition may have caused him more emotional pain, just as the lostness of members of our own families causes us more pain, but he understood that they had to come to God by grace through faith in exactly the same way that the Greeks or the Romans or the Samaritans did. He understood that God had to change their hearts… God had to grant them faith and repentance… God had to effectually call them to Himself… So he prays, earnestly, for their salvation. He does not give us any details of his prayers, but I am sure that he prayed that God would open their eyes and unstop their ears and reveal the truth to them – because as important as teaching and preaching are (and Paul will discuss that in depth later) no one was ever “taught into the kingdom” – people are born into the kingdom by a supernatural work of God, wherein He reveals Himself savingly to them. Until then, all the teaching, by all the best teachers in the world, cannot and will not save anyone.
I. An Ignorant Zeal (vs 2)
Nothing demonstrates that better than the nation of Israel. And, humanly speaking, this ignorance of Israel is all the more appalling because of the privilege that they had been given. They were called out, redeemed out of Egypt, given a name and a land, and the temporal blessings of God. “…they were,” Paul reminded us in 3:2, “entrusted with the oracles of God.” We saw in 9:4-5 that they “…are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons, and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises, 5 whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh…” Awesome privilege, awesome opportunity – they had held in their hands for 1500 years the very word of God. They had copied it and protected it and studied it, and they had used it: to show themselves superior to each other, individually, and to show themselves superior, as a race, to every other race of people on the earth. And they had come to worship the Scriptures and trust in the Scriptures rather than worship and trust in the God of the Scriptures. Jesus said, (John 5:39) “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; 40 and
you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.” In Matt 15:7-9, He said, “You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you: 8 This people honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far away from Me.
9 But in vain do they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’”
Oh, they were zealous. We pick that up in verse 2, “For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God…”
They were zealous – Paul says, “I can testify to that!” And well he could, first hand, first person, and he does so in Gal 1:13-14, “For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it; 14 and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions.” He testifies again in Phil 3:5-6, “circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.” He actually testified about the Jews’ zeal, and his own, to the Jews at Jerusalem in Act 22:3, “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated under Gamaliel, strictly according to the law of our fathers, being zealous for God just as you all are today.”
They were zealous, “For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but,” he continues, “not in accordance with knowledge.” “Knowledge” translates epignosis, 1922, ep-ig'-no-sis; the Greek word for knowledge that has to do with true, deep, and exact knowledge gained by experience; it has to do with discernment and insight. They knew about God, but they had not experienced God. They had no personal relationship with Him.
As you read and study the Gospels (and Acts) you will find that the most zealous among them were the most wicked. They were the ones who gave Jesus the most trouble; they were the ones who had Him crucified. They were the ones who persecuted the church.
Paul understood their zeal for God, he had shared that same zeal, he can testify to their zeal, and…
he can testify to the ignorance of that zeal, which he also shared. In 1 Tim 1:13, he speaks about his misguided zeal and says, “…I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief.”
And his own experience tells him that there is hope for some of his countrymen – the Jews have not been rejected totally – they can come to Christ. Paul did! He knows, personally, not only the
ignorance of the zeal, but the power of God to overcome that ignorance and the grace of God to call them in spite of their ignorant zeal. But at the current time, their ignorant zeal holds them in bondage, and the very thing that they think will save them, assures their condemnation.
II. Ignorant of God’s Righteousness (vs 3)
They have an ignorant zeal and they are ignorant of God’s righteousness.
Verse 3, “For not knowing about God’s righteousness…” You know I love the NASB, but I think they sort of blew it here. ESV is better, “For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God…”
Weymouth has it right also, “Ignorant of the righteousness which God provides…” NASB makes it sound like they do not get the idea of the personal holiness and righteousness of God Himself, as though they did not know that He is perfectly holy and righteous in all His works and ways.
Now, it seems patently obvious to me that Paul is, in fact, talking about that “righteousness which God provides”, as he has throughout the book. In Rom 1:17, he said that the gospel reveals “the
righteousness of God”. You may remember this is the verse that caused Martin Luther so much
anxiety, until one day, the light of the glory of the gospel of Christ shone in his heart and in a moment he understood that the “righteousness of God” that is revealed in the gospel is the very righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ, imputed by faith to the account of a truly penitent sinner. We saw it again in Rom 3:21-22, “But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction”. Then in chapter 4, verse 3, Paul reached back 1500 years, back to
Gen 15:6, to show us that this was nothing new, this has always been God’s way, “For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’”
Now, some people, at least one of whom I greatly admire, believe that Paul is saying here that the Jews failed to understand the righteousness of God, Himself; that is, His divine attribute of perfect righteousness which makes even the smallest infraction of His law totally abhorrent to Him and
deserving of divine and eternal retribution. In other words, they think that Paul is saying that the Jews thought that God was easier on sin than He really is. While that attitude does seem to appear from time to time in the OT, in post-exilic Judah it is much less so, and in 1st Judaism, as seen in the pages of the gospel, such a thought was non-existent.
That was the point of the very, very rigid system of legalism. That was why you couldn’t carry a pencil with you on the Sabbath, lest you sin by writing something. That was why they tithed the garden herbs and did a thousand other things that made their religion so tedious, so difficult that Peter (in Act 15:10) called it, “a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear”.
They knew about that righteousness – they stoned people over that righteousness – they threw people out of the synagogue over that righteousness. They worked diligently for that righteousness and were, in fact, continuing in verse 3, “seeking to establish their own…” personal version of that
righteousness. They sought to establish their own righteousness because that was all that they could see: “We’ve got a Law, we better keep it, or God will crush us!”
This is a little painful to me – because I see here, in the legalism of the Jews, in this effort to establish a righteousness of their own, a reflection of the legalistic tradition that I was raised in. I see that perfectionism (that belief that to be a Christian you have to keep all the rules, without exception) as a perversion of the gospel, as a legalism that crowds out grace; that discounts, or maybe even ignores, the imputed righteousness of Christ.
I read this week that Charles Spurgeon did not participate in the holiness movements popular among late nineteenth-century evangelicals in both England and America. He had a strong doctrine of sanctification, but he was quite scathing about perfectionism. He said, “Though they persuade themselves that their sins are dead, it is highly probable that the rest of their sins are only keeping out of the way to let their pride have room to develop to ruinous proportions.” And in no place and among no people was that more true than in 1st century Judaism.
We’re saved by grace, and we are kept by grace… And the Jews understood neither. They thought that they were saved by genealogy and kept by works and so, continuing in verse 3, “they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.” They didn’t need Christ’s righteousness – they didn’t need imputed righteousness, they had their own, thank you very much! They had worked for it, they had earned it, and don’t you dare question it!
The problem wasn’t that they discounted or misunderstood or downplayed the personal
righteousness or justice or purity of God, the problem was that they gave themselves far too much credit for their ability of keep the law of God perfectly. They “did not subject themselves to the
righteousness of God” because they had no sense of themselves as sinners, they refused to
acknowledge themselves as such. In Luke 9:23, Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” When we looked at that a few years ago, we noted that “deny himself” means to admit that there is absolutely nothing about you worth saving, that there is absolutely nothing that you can do to merit or earn salvation, it means to totally and completely throw yourself on the mercy of the court – and that is exactly what Paul is talking about here; that is what it means to “subject [yourself] to the righteousness of God (the imputed perfect
righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ)” and trust in that, alone, for salvation.
But the Jews couldn’t do that; they wouldn’t do that, because they were ignorant of Christ. And, if the Lord tarries, and if the Lord wills, we will look at that next time.
