Sunday 03 • 18 • 18

Romans 10:1-17

Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?' That is to bring Christ down. Or 'Who will descend into the abyss?' That is to bring Christ up from the dead." But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth, and in your heart. That is the word of faith that we proclaim." Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, "Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?" So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Let's pray together. Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. You're our rock and our fortress and our redeemer. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

The Story of Nabil Qureshi

One of the biggest news stories of 2017 in the Christian world was the death of Nabil Qureshi to cancer at the age of 34. Nabil was one of the foremost evangelists and apologists to the Muslim world, primarily because of his radical conversion from the minaret to the cross. So I'm going to read you his story. I don't usually read something this long, so just hang in with me. It's really worth listening to this. This is his story. He wrote this several years ago.

"We are Qureshis, descendants of the Quresh tribe, Muhammad's tribe. The words of my ancestors passed down to me were more than any ritual. They came to define my life as a Muslim in the West. Five times a day, I stood behind my father as he led our family in congregational prayer. By age five, I had recited the entire Quran in Arabic and memorized the last seven chapters. By age 15, I had committed the last 15 chapters of the Quran to memory in English and in Arabic. My grandfather and great grandfather were Muslim missionaries to unbelievers in Indonesia and Uganda. My genes carried their zeal. By middle school, I had learned how to challenge Christians whose theology I could break down just by asking questions. Bolstered by every conversation I had with Christians, I felt confident in the truth of Islam. Islam was my identity, and I loved it.

It was there atop the minaret of Islamic faith that Jesus called me. As a freshman at Old Dominion University in Virginia, I was befriended by David Wood. Soon, I found him reading a Bible. Incredulous that someone as clearly intelligent as he was would actually read Christian sacred text, I launched into a barrage of apologetic attacks—from questioning the reliability of Scripture to denying Jesus's crucifixion to challenging the Trinity and the deity of Christ. But David didn't react like other Christians I had challenged. He did not waver in his witness nor did he waver in his friendship with me. Far from it, he became more engaged, answering questions he could respond to, investigating the questions he could not, spending time with me through it all. Even though he was a Christian, his zeal for God was something I understood and respected, and we quickly became best friends.

After three years of investigating the origins of Christianity, I concluded that the case for Christianity was very strong. David then challenged me to study Islam as critically as I had studied Christianity. I had learned about Muhammad from imams and parents, not from historical sources themselves. When I finally read the sources, I found that Muhammad was not the man I had thought. Violence and sensuality dripped from the pages of the earliest biographies, the life stories of the man I revered as the holiest in history."

I was overwhelmed and confused by the evidence for Christianity and the weakness of the Islamic case. In the summer after graduating from Old Dominion, I began imploring God daily, "Tell me who you are. If you are Allah, show me how to believe in you. If you are Jesus, tell me. Whoever you are, I will follow you no matter the cost."

By the end of my first semester in medical school, I couldn't walk through the door of Christian faith yet. How could I betray my family after all they had done for me? By becoming a Christian, not only would I lose all connection with the Muslim community around me, my family would also lose their honor as well. My decision would not only destroy me, it would also destroy my family. I began mourning the impact of the decision that I knew I had to make.

So on the first day of my second year of medical school, it became too much to bear. Yearning for comfort, I decided to skip school. And returning to my apartment, I placed the Quran and the Bible in front of me. I turned to the Quran, but there was no comfort there. For the first time, the book seemed utterly irrelevant to my suffering, irrelevant to my life. It felt like a dead book.

With nowhere left to go, I opened up the New Testament and started reading. Electric—the words leapt off the page and jump-started my heart. I couldn't put the Bible down. I began reading fervently. Matthew 10:37 taught me that I must love God more than my father and my mother. But Jesus said, "Accepting you will be like dying. I will give up everything."

But the next verses spoke to me:

He who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for my sake will find it. — Matthew 10:38-39

I knelt at the foot of my bed and gave up my life. To follow him is worth giving up everything.

His story is an amazing story. Nabil's conversion is not only a picture of how a person comes to faith, but it's a picture of the compelling nature of Jesus—the compelling nature of what it is to know Jesus. And Nabil was really in many ways like a modern apostle Paul to the Muslim people. His death is a great loss. He is actually a brother-in-law to one of our members, and we grieve with their family.

Now, here's why I mentioned Nabil. This is why I'm telling you this story: this passage is such a great missionary passage—Romans 10. And it follows up on what is one of the hardest passages in the Bible—the electing grace of God. And yet Nabil's story seems to fit both of those categories. It just seems like God grabbed him. Like God picked him up and said, "You are going to be mine against your best wishes and desires and your family orientation and everything about you. I'm going to grab you." And also, God works through the people who are his mouthpieces to call other people to faith. Both Romans 9 and Romans 10.

God's Electing Grace Fuels Evangelism

Now, let me review with you where we've been. We just finished Romans 9 last week, which goes over the idea of election—that God chooses, God elects, God predestines people to himself based on nothing in us before we're born, before we've done anything. It's a hard subject for us to grasp. It's hard for us to get our heads around that God does this by sheer grace. I know that this has been hard for some of you. I heard a friend say last week, "You know, when a lot of people read Romans 9, they wish that was the perforated page in the Bible. Like, we could just take that one out." That one's very uncomfortable. And yet, we would lose so much if we did so.

A lot of people want to skip from Romans 8, which is all about God's love, to Romans 10, which is all about his missionary calling. And yet Romans 9 is right in the middle on purpose. Paul didn't wake up and have a bad day and write that one out. Because God's love leads Paul to this sense that God's love is from eternity past and based on nothing in us. And that calls us as his believers, therefore, to hope for the salvation of other people and to open our mouths for the salvation of other people.

So here's my big idea for today: Rather than robbing us of all motivation, actually, the idea of God's divine election, of his choosing, of his sovereignty in salvation is the jet fuel for Christians to share our faith. For us to actually believe that what we're doing when we share the gospel is we're not selling popsicles to Eskimos. We're not trying to persuade people to buy VHS tapes when they have on-demand. We're not offering something to people that they don't want. In fact, it's been the Christians throughout history who've had, in many cases, the highest view of God's electing grace that have been some of the greatest evangelists. Can I give you some names?

People that you may or may not know like John Elliott, an early Puritan in New England who took the gospel to the Native Americans, David Brainard who did the same in the eighteenth century. Other people like William Carey and George Whitfield and Charles Spurgeon and David Livingston and so many others. So let's try to understand why, and here's my outline. It's really easy: means, means, means. That's all you gotta remember.

Here's what I'm going to ask. Here's what we're going to look at. God uses means. God uses means. And God means you. Means, means, means.

God Uses Means

Given the witness of chapter nine, of all this stuff about how God elects people and chooses people before their births who would become Christians, isn't it a little bit surprising, maybe even jarring to read the words here in verses 14 through 17?

Paul asks these questions in verses 14 through 17:

How will they call on him who they have not believed? How are they gonna believe in him if they'd never heard? How will they hear of him without somebody preaching? How are they to preach unless someone sends them?

He's asking cause and effect questions. And his answer is not what many people seem to think when they hear about electing grace. Well, who cares? Let God sort them out. Have you ever heard that? That comes from hyper Calvinism. That kind of teaching says things like God delights in the death of the wicked. He enjoys sending people to hell.

If you've heard that kind of teaching, I want to apologize to you as a pastor of the gospel of Jesus Christ who believes in election. As we looked at last week, we never talk about electing grace unless we learn to do so as Paul does here. In Romans 9, he begins this first bookend on one end of the shelf with tears in his eyes saying, "I wish that I could be damned so that the Israelites could be saved." He begins chapter 10 of this passage saying the same thing. He longs for the salvation of his countrymen. And then the other end of the bookend of that shelf, he says, missionary zeal for the lost.

If we don't have both of those in place, in our hearts as we wrestle with this, we're doing something wrong with this doctrine. Romans 9 should always lead us to Romans 10.

Paul's answer to the "how will they" questions is you. Is me. Is in Nivelle's case, David would, his friend at ODU. God uses means. God doesn't just have a gigantic ray gun up in heaven zapping people who come to faith on their own with no Christian witness.

In all of scripture and in all of my experience, I can think of one person in the Bible who came to Christ without another witness speaking to them. That would be the apostle Paul. And I could think of one person in twenty plus years of ministry as a pastor who I know who came to faith in Christ just by reading the Bible with no Christian friends. One person.

How many of you had someone else who showed you what the gospel was like, who talked to you about the gospel, who taught you the gospel, who shared with you the gospel? That's a lot of people. God uses means to bring individuals to faith in Jesus. God almost never saves people apart from this.

This is not unique to Romans 10. In Matthew chapter nine, Jesus looks out at the crowds and he says:

Look, the fields are white like grain at harvest time. Ask the Lord of the harvest to send harvest workers.

Ask God for more means for evangelism and outreach and missions. Throughout the Bible, the whole of the Bible, this is what we find. Jesus shows us that God somehow and for some reason waits on the prayers of his people for the sending forth of harvest workers into the world. If we listen to Romans 10, God somehow waits on our sharing of the gospel for people to come to faith even in part of his electing plan. That blows my mind.

So my favorite story, and you knew this was coming, my favorite story about the Philadelphia Eagles, the Super Bowl champions. You knew it was coming sooner or later. Is actually not what happened on the field on February 4. It's what's been happening in the locker room all year. If you've heard any stories, I encourage you to go back on YouTube this afternoon and look up what's happening.

Starting in the fall, the substitute quarterback Nick Foles, along with the main quarterback Carson Wentz and Zach Ertz, began a Bible study on humility. Lots of people started joining in with the Eagles. In November, they released a video on Facebook called "The Locker Room's Binding Force," which looked at what was going on behind the scenes all season.

Carson Wentz describes what was happening: on every Monday night, they have a couples' Bible study. On Thursday nights, they have a team Bible study, and on Saturdays before games, they get together and pray, confess sin, and talk about what they're dealing with.

The great story of what's happened in the Eagles locker room is that as they've traveled around the country later in the season, they've been using hotel swimming pools for baptisms. There's been an enormous coming to faith on the Eagles team. This is the story—not the Super Bowl as much as I love it. Like, we've been waiting for that one a long time. Fly Eagles fly. But the real story, the better story for the Eagles, is all these people coming to faith. All these big, super strong guys who look so tough, crying as they're being baptized in hotel pools. It's frankly amazing.

How does that happen? God uses means. How do we hold Romans 10 together with Romans 9?

Listen to Jesus in John chapter 10. Jesus is talking about himself, and he says, "I'm the good shepherd, and there are sheep that will follow me." He's describing us who come to faith in him as sheep who follow the good shepherd. But he says this line that I just love, and I want to share this with you this morning:

I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also and they will listen to my voice. There will be one flock, one shepherd. — John 10

What does that mean for us? It means that God guarantees results when his people share the gospel. He doesn't say "might" in any of those statements. They will hear. They will come. There will be one flock with one shepherd. Will, will, will.

Rather than robbing Paul of any motivation, he's like, "This is why I'm excited about this." God guarantees that when his people open their mouths—that he elects and that he uses us—people will come to faith. This is so encouraging.

If you ever hear someone say, "Well, God's going to save them anyway. Doesn't matter what I do."—that is from the pit of hell. That is garbage because it cancels out what Scripture says about how God in his election uses his people for salvation.

And it's so encouraging to me because it tells me that I don't have to be the Bible answer man. I don't have to know all the data. I don't have to have the best charts or graphics or Jesus films or presentations or know that much about Jesus to be able to share the gospel with other people. God does this. God works through normal people like you. I'm talking to you. He uses normal people.

When I meet a Christian who has really taken in all the stuff we've been teaching about God's electing grace, I know it two ways. One is that they're so humble, and the other is that they're so hopeful.

They're so humble. They're surprised, even a little self-deprecating. Like, "Who would have thought, you know, me, a Christian? Who would have thought?" There's this playfulness, this lightheartedness. It's like, "I don't take myself so seriously." Hell is filled with people who think they deserve heaven. Heaven is filled with people who know that they deserve hell. That's why it humbles us, but it also makes us so very hopeful.

I know when I meet a Christian who's internalized this idea about God's electing grace because that person is like, "Man, if God can save somebody like me, I could save anybody." They look around and they don't discount their RA or that guy at work who's so obnoxious or your dad. They look and say, "If God can work in me, then God can work in anybody." And so they pray and they encourage and say, "God can save Muslims like Nabil. God can save wide receivers like Marcus Johnson. God can save anybody."

God uses means. That's point number one.

The Question of Fairness

Point number two: Isn't it mean? The second way I'm using the word "mean"—if God has already determined everything, then isn't it mean? Isn't it unfair for us to invite people to something they don't have any chance of getting into?

Isn't it mean for us to say things like, "Hey, come to Jesus" when we honestly can't say that everybody's gonna come to Jesus? Doesn't it seem disingenuous?

But listen to the simplicity of what's offered to us in Romans chapter 10, verses 9 through 13:

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. For there's no distinction between Jew and Greek, the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who come to him. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Did you hear that? What were the operative nouns in that? Everyone. All. Everyone. There is no asterisk there. No fine print. No guy on the car commercial who's like, "Terms and conditions may apply. Don't do this in the month of April and August." No legal ease.

Paul has just finished saying salvation is entirely a work of God, entirely. "Jacob have I loved. Esau have I hated." A lot of us choked as we read through all that stuff. Hard stuff. And yet these words say that the gospel message is for everyone, for everyone. How do we reconcile this?

The Free Offer of the Gospel

Here's the answer: it's called the free offer of the gospel, and it comes from a guy named John Murray, a great theologian from the beginning of the twentieth century. He was a Calvinist through and through, but listen to what he says.

First, it's a genuine offer by God. It's genuine because it reflects the heart of God and the need that people most have. We read the scriptures over and over and it says things like, God does not delight in the death of the wicked. God rejoices in the repentance of evildoers. God is loving and kind to all that he has made. That's God's character, and his gospel reflects not only his character but our greatest need. The reason there's a genuine offer is because it comes from the genuine heart of God and the genuine need of people.

Second, sinners don't come to Christ because they realize they're elect. They come to Christ because they know they have a need, and he's a great savior. No one comes and thinks, "Wow, I really think I have this weird tattoo between my second and third toe that says I'm elect." It's like, "Man, Jesus is what I need." That's how sinners come to faith. It's a genuine offer.

Third, we can't know who is who. The Bible never tells God's people, "Hey, you're supposed to go out and distinguish between sheep and sheep and goats and wheat and tares." We have no idea, so we go out and we are liberal and generous in sowing the seed everywhere. We don't know who, so we're going to ask everybody in. We're going to invite everyone to the party.

If you've ever heard somebody say, "You can't tell everybody Jesus loves them"—no, sorry, that's wrong. The Bible tells us to sow the seed. Can we preach John 3:16? "For God so loved the world?" Yeah, we preach that. We scatter the seed. We don't hold this out because we don't know, but we believe that God will bring the results.

This is why I pray like a Presbyterian and I preach like a Baptist. And I say that just a little bit tongue in cheek, but I think anybody who's faithful to the Bible should do both. Pray like a Presbyterian—"Man, God is sovereign in salvation." I believe that. But I preach like a Baptist because I am sowing the seed. This is why we do altar calls in our church. I know it makes some of you hardcore Presbyterians really uncomfortable. I don't care. Because we're asking people to come to faith. We're calling them to a point of decision-making that is biblical for us to do. And it's also biblical for us to pray big prayers for the salvation of people.

God Means It

God means it. This is the third use of the word "means." God means you.

How are they to preach unless they're sent? As it's written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. But they've not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?" So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

It is impossible for us to duck these words.

If you're a Christian, it's really hard for us to say we have a hall pass. This means we have to speak it. We can't spiritualize this. We can't subcontract this out to our church planters and our missionaries. This is a call for us. God is calling you.

I know how this hits you. There's that collective sigh, that deep belly sigh that goes out in the congregation because I know it's like, "Man, really? Evangelism again?"

One of the best conversations I've had about this in the past couple years is with Preston Hunt. So many of you know Preston, a member of our congregation, went to be with the Lord on January 25th after twenty months battling glioblastoma—really aggressive brain cancer. When Preston started coming to our church, he was like, "You know, I just love the freedom of the Presbyterians. Y'all are just not guilting me into evangelism all the time, just beating me about the head." He'd grown up in a context where it's evangelism, evangelism, evangelism—all you do. And he was just like, "I'm so glad for the freedom. I can drink a beer, and I can not share the gospel all the time."

But one of the funny things that happened, because he was so exhausted from it and detoxing at CTK, was that over the course of his illness, he went from viewing evangelism as "have to" to "get to." In the weeks before he died, losing motor skill, he's saying, "Who else can I tell about Jesus?" The most fruitful evangelist I've probably ever been around in one of my congregations. He went from "have to" to "get to."

Three Callings

See, the call for God's people in Scripture is threefold, and you get to choose two out of three this morning. You don't get to choose none and you don't get to choose one. So I'm going to give you three options. You pick two. God calls His people to be prayers, bringers, and goers.

Prayers. Pray for the salvation of other people by name, regularly. That means you're asking God over and over for the salvation of other people. Why do we do this? I think one of the reasons God allows us into this, God invites us into praying for the salvation of other people, is it softens us. When you pray for someone, it does several things for you. One is it makes you go, "Oh, yeah. God actually could do that." It helps our unbelief. It reminds us that it's God who does the saving and not us. We're just called to open our mouths and be faithful in that. The third thing it does is it means that in theory, you're looking for God to answer that prayer through you. It actually opens you up to being willing to be the conduit through which that person hears the gospel.

Bringers. Bringers bring someone to a place to hear the gospel. You bring them to church. You bring them to a community group. You bring them to someone and something where they can hear the gospel. I have always said, and I'll say this over and over again, I will always make time in my schedule as one of your pastors to have lunch with one of your friends who has questions. Every day, I will do that. Please give me that chance. Somebody here, you're thinking, "They're asking lots of hard questions. I don't know what to do." Don't just sit there. Can I come in? Can you bring me or someone else into that? Can you bring them to church? You need a definition of bringers? Bringers bring.

But let me say this in all seriousness. If you are a regular part of our church community and for the last twelve months you haven't brought one person to our church service or to a community group or to meet with someone, you're being unfaithful. You are sinning because this is the Great Commission. It's not optional. God calls us to this.

Goers. Goers take the gospel to the lost, and there is a tremendous need for you to go. Our conviction at CTK is that we don't send out our leftovers. We send out our best people. It is the privileged in our congregation who get to go be part of church plants and being sent out to the mission field.

Let me just say this: it's very in vogue right now for people, okay millennials, to be like, "I love traveling, and I'm going to send myself." No. You're sent by a group of people. That's the biblical model. So would you give us a chance?

The needs are right in front of us. They are right in your face. You don't even have to move or get a passport. Let me give you a couple of examples. Wake County is growing by 65 people every day. Seven of those people are moving here from outside the US. There is an incredible opportunity for our church to be a sending, going church, to planting churches.

We could plant a church our size every week that would just flatline—keep up with population growth in Wake County. That's all it would be: maintenance. Church planting is always the best way for new people to become Christians. Statistically, that's been proven over and over again because established churches like us get to be about maintenance. New churches have to be aggressive about going out and bringing people in.

Our church plants that we have—we've sent out two of them now—both of them have been like, "How do we reach this community?" That's their number one question. Not "How do we keep going?" but "How do we reach this community?"

Look, we've just actually engaged our next church planter. He'll be here on April 8 to preach to us. We're gonna keep going with this. But here's our problem: we can't get anybody to go. Our daughter church renewal up in North Raleigh has an ESL class that they can't keep going. They don't have enough people to keep that moving. They need people that go, take care of kids, set up chairs, love people, and pray for the lost. And if you would go for a year, that would be awesome.

Here's my point: we need you to leave CTK. This is the bye-bye sermon today. We need some of you to go. Look, some of you are here because you love our music, and we have awesome music. You love our kids programs—we have awesome kids programs. You love my preaching. Really? You can podcast me. You can still hang out with your friends. But we need you to be obedient to the Great Commission and go. The world needs us to go.

The Global Need

It's estimated that there are 7,470,000,000 people in the world. 3,150,000,000 of those are in unreached people groups with no or little access to the gospel. Missiologists look at a population and they say: if less than 2% are Bible-believing Christians, that counts as an unreached people group. After about 2.2% of a population, the thing begins to pick up some momentum. The church does. But under that, it's really a struggle fest, and there's a great need.

There are approximately 16,800 people groups in the world. 6,900 of them still have no access to the gospel. Most of those are in the 10/40 window. Look that up when you get home. That's a certain area of Asia and the Middle East that's really unreached—radically unreached. The job is far from over.

A few weeks ago, I was having a bad day and I went out for a long walk. When I have a bad day, I go back to my old wells—Christian music from when I was a teenager that used to remind me of what's true. So I'm listening to Keith Green, who I love, and he has this song that comes on. I never heard this one. And it's like:

Commands us to go. It should be the exception if we stay.

I was just blown over by that. Isn't it that Jesus commands us to stay and it's the exception that go?

If you're doubtful about this, in your lifetime we have seen the greatest missionary influx in many, many years—hundreds of years—in church history. China has become this enormous, explosive growth of the church. If you're like, "I don't know if Jesus is really working today," please go home and read up all of what's happening in China. It's unbelievable. God is doing this in your lifetime.

Our dream—if you go on the other side of the little curtain, there's faces on the wall of people who we've sent out and we're praying to send out more. We really would love to fill up that wall. I think some people in this room are supposed to have their picture over there, to be missionaries that we're sending out to these places. I think God is knocking, and some of you are resisting. I believe God is calling.

I wonder how many more Nabils are out there that are waiting for someone like you to talk to them about Jesus. The next great apostle Paul to the Hindu community, to the Buddhist community—they're probably sitting around us. Not just in Raleigh because the nations are coming here, but also going to other places.

What Is Required

Praying Christians. Bringing Christians. Going Christians.

Brothers and sisters, how will they call on him in whom they've not heard? How are they to believe in him whom they've never believed? How are they to hear without someone preaching? How are they to preach unless they are sent?

As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.