Romans 10:1-12
Romans 10:1 – Replace Israel (or
Israelites) with your heart’s desire for salvation. It can be a nation, a
person or group of people. Does your heart have a desire for people, for a
nation, for nations to be with Christ?
Humanly speaking, how can a
nation be saved? Yet we believe in the word and believe in God’s power so it is
possible for God to save a country. Isn’t it God’s plan? Isaiah 56:7
Paul calls the Israelites “My
brothers” (Romans 10:1) despite their rejection of Christ.
He also tells them he’s praying
for them. Even though we pray in the secret place we should tell the person
we’re praying for them, it can be an encouraging thing to say to someone, “I’m
praying for you”.
Romans 10:2-3 – Paul knows they
had a zeal for God; he was among them before knowing Christ – fighting for God
yet against the same God. From here we can deduce 2 types of righteousness:
righteousness of law and faith. They believed in the righteousness of the law
and had a zeal for God but it was a misplaced zeal and that was aching Paul.
They were ignorant; they didn’t
know God’s righteousness. Even Jesus prayed for the ignorant: Luke 23:34. We
should pray for ignorant unbelievers and even ignorant believers!
Paul sees the eminence of righteousness
of faith as above the righteousness of law.
To have a heart’s desire is one
thing; everyone has a heart’s desire whether it is to pass an exam, get a job
etc., but we should bring those desires to God in prayer as Paul does (Romans
10:1).
Paul bears witness to his
countrymen. The unbelieving Jews were the most bitter enemies of Christ Paul
faced yet he gave them a good character as the truth would bear. Paul remembers
the goodness of this people.
Sometimes our bitterness blinds
us to the goodness of those we consider our enemies.
The Jews opposition to the Gospel
was a blind misguided sin. We witness suicide bombings today and they have zeal
for their god’s command. Even some Christians aren’t willing to die for a good
cause! What a strong zeal to die for the cause they fight for. However they
have a blind misguided sin.
Ignorance is the cause of their
unbelieving and their submission to their own righteousness of the law.
The design of the law was to lead
people to Christ (Romans 10:4), this is explained in Romans 8:3. Sadly for the
Jews they don’t realise this and stay on the old side of the law. But they
don’t understand, every scripture leads to Jesus.
Romans 10:5 – to live they need
to live by the law and the law is difficult and hard; thank God for Jesus. We
don’t need to sacrifice a lamb. We don’t need to look for fancy, difficult ways
to be saved.
Romans 10:8 – The word
(salvation) has been brought to us; there are two ways for salvation (Romans
10:9):
- Confessing in the Lord Jesus Christ
- Believing God raised Jesus from the dead
The work to do lies within us
(Matthew 10:32-33). Now it doesn’t cost us anything to confess Jesus is Lord.
But before it could cost our life; Stephen was stoned and Peter even denied
Jesus because of the fear of knowing Christ. Even now is some part of the world
it is still costly.
Thank God here and now it isn’t
costly except for friends and family giving us trouble but it is trouble we can
overcome.
What is the final message we can
draw from this scripture?
Our righteousness should be that
of the Gospel, of God.
Righteousness needs to be
explained; the trend of guilt is that there are different perceptions today.
We have our own righteousness and
the Jews had their own righteousness forgetting the righteousness of the
Gospel.
Nowadays confessions we see on
the Internet or magazines aren’t confessions to repent; most of them are “Kiss
and tell”. These celebrities have their own righteousness. But we need to align
our righteousness to the righteousness of the Gospel, the righteousness of God.
That’s Paul’s message to his
countrymen. We need to pray for our nation; we are in danger of establishing
our own righteousness away from God. It’s good to pray for the government and
world.
Dare to dream that the nation
will be saved, the negative predictions won’t come to pass under God’s power
and that’s faith “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen” (Hebrews 11:1).
Don't forget to check the church website:
Chalk Farm Baptist Church website (chalkfarmbaptistchurch.org)!
God Bless,
Chalk Farm Baptist Church Youth
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