Know Your Rights

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

And good morning. We are gonna be continuing our series right together. We started our series last week and part of what we're trying to do with our series is to be clear, to see a clear undistorted picture of who God really is and when we can see that, that helps us see everything else more clearly. So to do that, to really get this view, we need to go through some, honestly, some difficult passages in the book of Romans, Romans 9, 10, and 11, and we need to read all of that together, and if we don't, and here's kind of the bad part, if we don't, if we can't see it clearly, if we just take a verse or two and we kind of take those out of context, then what we try to do is we try to define all of God by just a few verses, and we end up forming camps as to who God is or what he's like, and so we end up with this kind of this house of mirrors, this distorted view of God with like a,

you know, he's got like a big head and a little torso. And so last week, whenever we cover that, and by the way, today we're gonna be in your Bibles, we're gonna start in Romans chapter nine verses 30 and 31, and I think we're gonna bring some lights up so that you guys can read the Bibles that are in front of you. And part of what we're dealing with, whenever we talk about, whenever we talk about God being in different, or forming different camps, God being distorted, you get sometimes people, especially when you're talking about sovereignty, right, God being in control of all things, when you are talking about that, it can be frustrating for people, right? Either they take one thing like that or they take the opposite and they form a camp,

and if they're frustrated, they're gonna say, well then look, if God's so sovereign, then why didn't he just, why did he allow this? And we talked a lot about that last week, and so I would encourage you, if you would, if you got more questions, we can talk afterward, we're gonna have a time where you can respond, and I'll be available to you guys, but I would encourage you also to listen to that sermon from last week. And so part of the danger is that we don't have this clear picture of God, so we understood from last week, and we're gonna kinda build on that this week, from last week we understood that God is in total control of everything, right? And that that is both an uncomfortable thought, okay,

that if he's in control of everything, right, then what about bad things whenever they happen, and we kinda walk through that. But it's also, it also should be a source of deep comfort, so that in other words, when we pray, we are hoping God is sovereign. When we pray, we are hoping that God is in total control. Think about the things you pray for. God changed somebody's mind. Well, God better be sovereign if it's gonna change somebody's mind, right? If he's gonna orchestrate events like that, not just changing minds, but like moving things around, making things work out, we are praying to a God who is in total control, right? And so it is a source of deep comfort. Now, the Bible still calls us to, and again, I don't wanna recap too hard from last week, the Bible still calls us to make real choices with real consequences, okay? So in other words, it's not just, well,

we just throw our hands up and whatever happens happens, we're still called to make real choices. What it's highlighting in Romans chapter nine verses one through 29, which is what we went over last week, it's highlighting that we cannot save ourselves, right? That it's not about how hard we work, and today we're gonna explore more of that, and to do that, we need to understand, we need to get into something called righteousness, okay? Now, righteousness is a full-on, I don't know how many letters that is, 12, 12-letter word, righteousness, okay? And sometimes that scares people, throws people off, they're like, what are you talking, well, look, here's a really easy way to think about it, it's just being made right with God, right? Just in right relationship. If you are in right relationship with God, then you have righteousness according to God, right? Like, that is what righteousness is.

If you are married or if you have been in a, any kind of significant relationship, you know the difference between being in right relationship with somebody and not being in right relationship with somebody, right? So, you know, when my wife and I are having just this huge knockdown drag out that I'm sure we have once a year, it's we are not in right relationship, right? Things are off, things are broken, things are skewed, and we need to go and restore that, you know? It's usually where I'm apologizing, and we make it better again, right? Like, that's kind of what it is. So, righteousness is just being in right relationship with God, okay? And so we're gonna continue in Romans nine. We're gonna start in verse 30, and to do that, we have to set up a few things, okay? I'm not gonna explain it too hard. We'll look at the verses then, we'll kind of talk about it.

In these verses, in Romans chapter nine, verses 30 and 31, we are talking about Gentiles and Israel. Now, your translations might have something different, but Gentiles and Israel, and we're gonna talk about those two camps, but it's gonna say something about these two camps right here. So, we gotta think about it. It says, what shall we say then? So, we're kind of resuming what we've been talking about before. That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness, there's that word, Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is a righteousness that is by faith, verse 31. But that Israel, who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness, did not succeed in reaching that law, okay? Here's what you need to know. In the book of Romans, this pops up every once in a while, and you need to understand it. You have two groups in the church, okay? Two coexisting groups that are very different

than one another, and it's really helpful for us today because we're in the first century, and so there's maybe some things we need to translate. We're gonna group them as the religious and the irreligious, okay? The religious and the irreligious. And the religious were insiders. This is Israel in these verses, right? These Jews, these are insiders who, now, according to righteousness, you need to get this. Insiders, religious people, they try to be made right with God by obeying rules, okay? So, what is that today? Well, today, that's somebody who is conservative, they're very courteous, they're very family-oriented, and when you ask them, they may or may not go to church, but when you ask them about a relationship with Jesus, they're going to point to heritage or they're gonna point to morality. So, when you say, hey, tell me about your relationship with Jesus, you're like, well, you know,

like, I'm a member at whatever, I grew up in church, you know, my parents are so-and-so, all right? You know, they'll talk about their history, or they'll talk about their morality. Well, I'm a good person, I keep my notes clean, I pay my taxes, you know, I don't do any bad things. And you almost wanna shake them and say, look, I'm not talking about those things. I'm like, tell me about your relationship with Jesus. That's not your morality, that's not your heritage, that's not your obeying rules. But religious people, and look, spoiler alert, you're in one of these two camps, okay? You gravitate toward up or down, right? You gravitate toward one of these, okay? But in the church here, these are religious people, they're insiders who get the law of God, they understand those things, but there's a way that it kinda tricks them. We're gonna be spending the majority of our time today

on religious people because that's where the verses flow out. Let me just say you've got irreligious people, very quickly, irreligious people are outsiders, and they try, and this is a little different, they try to be made right by finding it, okay? So today, what's that person like? That person's real progressive, that person is very free-spirited, that person typically is kinda brutally honest, and when you talk about their relationship with Jesus, when you ask them, hey, tell me about your relationship with Jesus, they're gonna tell you some kind of non-traditional answer, like, well, organized religion is so restrictive, there's actually many ways to Jesus, and I'm finding my yoga, just whatever. I mean, I'm doing, you know, like, I'm trying to find it, right? They're trying to find it kinda on their own, they're kinda feeling their way forward, or they talk about how authentic they are,

they talk about how spiritual they are, right? So when you say, hey, tell me about your relationship with Jesus, they're like, well, look, you know, I think I can find God in a flower, okay? I mean, no argument, I'm not, but tell me about your relationship with Jesus. And so, irreligious people, they try to be made right by finding it, religious people try to be made right by following rules, okay? Both of them are missing the mark, one is not better than the other. However, in the Roman church, where he's gonna deal with them today, particularly dealing with a lot of religious people, and so in verses 30 and 31, you find two surprising things. In verse 30, it says that Gentiles are pursuing righteousness, excuse me, Gentiles are not pursuing righteousness, right? It says, what should we say? Gentiles did not pursue righteousness, and they've attained it, okay?

In other words, Gentiles, these irreligious outsiders, they are becoming right with God without trying. They're tripping over Jesus and like, oh, okay. That's it. And let me tell you, that happens all the time, all the time. And I want you to consider somebody who's like, truly spiritual but not religious. Like, they really are looking, they really are searching, and because they are truly spiritual, because they are authentically kind of looking for something, they are more open to the fact that righteous needs to come to them from the outside, right? So you're this irreligious person who just kind of, like, Jesus reveals himself to them, and they're like, yeah, this makes total sense. And they're in, right? And sometimes I've heard testimonies of people like that, where they're just like, look, I was looking for something, I was looking for something real,

I was looking for something authentic, I was looking for kind of this true spirituality, and then like, they read the Bible, like, for the first time in their lives, and they're like, I believe this, I'm a Christian now, and you're like, what happened? What, you know, like, okay, let's start going to church, or, I don't know, you know, like, it feels kind of out of order for us, but that happens all the time. Irreligious people find Jesus, they trip on him all the time because they're more open to the idea that something or someone needs to make them right from the outside, okay?

So, irreligious people are finding God without trying, so that's a big twist. Religious people, so verse 31, Israel, it says that Israel pursued a law that would lead to righteousness, but did not succeed in reaching that law. So, you have religious people, despite the fact that they're trying to be made right with God, they are missing it entirely, okay? So, there's a bit of incredulity here in verses 30 and 31. You're saying, are you telling me, okay? Are you telling me that irreligious people who aren't even looking for righteousness are finding it, and you're telling me that religious people who are desperate, who are, I mean, just trying to obey everything they can, they're sweating the details, and they're missing it? Yes, that's exactly what's happening, and it happens all the time.

And what we see, it's what we see in the latter half of verse 32, Romans 9:32, it says why, it asks the question, why, why is this happening? It's because they, the religious people, they did not pursue it by faith. What did they not pursue? Righteousness, they didn't pursue being made right with God by faith, but as if it were based on works. Religious people often are too busy trying to work their way to God, and they miss God's righteousness in the process, and it happens all the time, and here I wanna give you an example.

I want you to consider somebody who is reading their Bible. No, let's step it up. Somebody who's memorizing Scripture religiously, okay? And they are, look, they are desperate, they are on it, right, they are so on it. Okay, now look, I don't want you to suspect people that memorize Scripture, this is not what this is for, but this is a way that you can do it that is not by faith. I want you to consider somebody who's memorizing Scripture religiously, but their motivation is this, and this is the big difference. Their motivation is that if they miss a day, then God's going to get them, right? If I miss one day, then God is going to take away all those good things I've earned by memorizing all that Scripture before. God is waiting for me to just mess up a little bit and just to take all of that stuff away. And so if I wanna somehow secure, if I wanna nail down what God has already given me,

then I need to keep doing what I'm doing. Because you might not think about it this way, but inside, you truly believe that you have earned the life that you have. Because you've been religious, because you've been good, because you've been moral, because you've been whatever, and because you've been those things, you've earned this life over here, and because you've earned that life, you've gotta keep being good because you gotta keep that life that you've already earned. And you will look on the outside like a good moral Christian. You will look like you have fervor for Jesus.

This is, I don't know if you ever watch American Ninja Warrior, okay? American Ninja Warrior's family favorite. We've seen it a few times. We used to watch it a little bit more when the kids were younger, but American Ninja Warrior is super interesting to me, okay? Because if you are familiar, it's this gauntlet of things that, I mean, I couldn't do one of these things, and it's like 10 in a row, you know? And it's like, you gotta go across these monkey bars that are like 30 feet apart, and you gotta do it with your pinkies. It's totally insane. It's really hard to do. And so what you do at the very end, and this is the best part for me, at the very end, there's this huge wall, and it's like this sloped wall. And I mean, it's gotta be 15 feet. I don't know, it's gotta be forever high. And I just think, man, I can't even get up the stairs this morning. I couldn't even get up.

And so what they do, man, they run full sprint. I mean, these men and women, they're just, I mean, so just athletic. And they got all the core strength, right? And they run, and they run against that wall, and then they just, at the right time, they kinda lift off and they catch it just by their fingers, right? And then they get the other fingers up, and then they pull themselves up at something else I could not do. And they pull themselves up, and what do they do with the topic? They hit that buzzer, and their time is registered. And the confetti blows, right? And they're like, yes, I have completed the American Ninja Warrior trial, and the buzzer's gone, there's my time. I'm the champ, I'm victorious. I've made it through this gauntlet. And you know what, we cheered, man, that is good TV. I will watch that all day long, okay? And I'm going, I'll even size the people up, right?

Like some guy gets up there, I'm like, this guy's not making it. There's no way, second obstacle's gonna kill this guy, no way, and he makes it through, you know, best time ever, you know, I'm completely wrong. We watch because we wanna see those feats of strength. We wanna see him climb the wall, right? And this is kinda how we view the Christian life a little bit, right? That there are hard things to do, and that if we train enough, we can do those hard things, and we can climb the wall, and we can hit the buzzer, and our time's gonna be there, and the victory's ours. And when we don't climb the wall, we suffer unspeakable shame and failure. And when we do climb the wall, we build our own self-righteousness, right? This is what religious people do. This is how it's constructed. And here's what happens when we do it, right? Here's what happens, we feel good,

but the whole time, Romans 32b through 33 is happening, right? Romans 32b, the end of 32 in the beginning of 33, it says, they have stumbled over the stumbling stone. That's Jesus. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, behold, I'm laying in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. Look, if you are pursuing a good life without Jesus, okay? If you're doing this, this is your plan, right? If you're doing this religious, good, moral life, and you're doing it without Jesus, if you're just kind of paying lip service to him, but there's no relationship with him, you're not praying to him, you're not asking for things of him, you're not seeking to become like him, you're not growing in his likeness, you don't care about those things, you just care about the checkbox, like yes, church membership, yes,

you know, went mostly to church service this month. Yes, I've read my Bible, you know, 10 days this month. If you are pursuing that good life, and let me tell you, you will trip on Jesus, because when you are chasing morality, when you are chasing your own religious acceptance, Jesus just gets in the way. Imagine that you're running through American enjoy, right? You're going through that, and somebody's just in the way. Jesus is just there, and you're like, get out, you're just like pushing Jesus to the side, you're like, I've got a race to finish. I got, I'm busy, I got stuff to do. Jesus only gets in the way because you believe you are already chasing it.

You believe you are already attaining what Jesus is giving you for free, and it really matters. This is really the stuff of like the difference between somebody who's growing and vibrant in the Lord and has spiritual confidence and is humble and all is growing the likeness of the Lord. The difference between that and somebody who is self-righteous, religious, and only trying to contort themselves and eventually other people into what they think spiritual people should look like. And they'll use any means necessary to contort themselves or anyone else. Shame, that's fine, they'll do that.

Coercion, making something look a certain way, just tricking people into the kingdom. Sure, yeah, they'll do that. Here's another way to say it. It's Romans 10, so just that next chapter, that verse here. Verses two and three, it says, for I bear them witness, and this is religious people still, 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.

Religious people confuse being made right with doing good things. Those aren't the same. They're not even close. Being made right with God, righteousness, it only happens in Jesus Christ. And this is where we absolutely need to see the difference and we need to grab hold of it tightly. And so let's look in verses four through 13. We're just gonna take those chunks and we're just gonna hit it one by one. And what I want you to do, as we do this, I want you to see the difference here between trying to go down American Ninja Warrior Round and then what it is to accept righteousness,

to be made right with God a different way. So in Romans 10, four, it says, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. In other words, in Jesus Christ, you don't need to display your feats of strength to be made right with God. Okay, and if you try, if you try to do that, here's what's gonna happen. Next verse, it says, it says for Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. So Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law. So the righteousness is based on the law is what we're talking about, this American Ninja Warrior. That's, if you're basing your righteousness on the law, then you are saying, I'm gonna be made right with God because I'm good. I'm gonna be made right with God because I haven't done these bad things or because I'm better than most of my coworkers

or because I've never left my church. I don't know, the mind is a weird thing. Human beings will justify themselves with a lot of weird stuff and so I can't pretend to even know all of that but that's what we're talking about here. Righteousness that is based on the law. Moses writes about this, this is Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. That the person who does the commandments shall live by them. In other words, if you try, if you try to American Ninja Warrior your way to being made right with God, if you try to work your way to the Lord, you will begin and you will never stop, ever. You will never reach it. You're never going to attain it. Your goodness, however good it is, will never make you right with God. So think about it this way. If you try to make yourself right with God, okay, what are you gonna do? You're gonna read your Bible?

You might even, look, you might even get on a real big social cause. You might be like, look, if I'm gonna get right with God, if God's gonna accept me, then I need to end abortion in my lifetime. I need to make sure that we have voter reform. I need to make sure that we, I need to make sure that politically these things are realities. I need to make sure, I need to do these things. I need to perform religiously.

And in our minds, when we do that, we might not be conscious of saying it this way, but when we do that, we're thinking like, okay, God's gonna see me do this and he's going to be happy with me. We're gonna be made right. We're not gonna be fighting anymore. And my encouragement to you is don't ever do that, ever. And if you do, you will never stop. You're gonna begin with a lot of enthusiasm. Oh my gosh, you're gonna be so excited to end poverty in your lifetime. You are gonna be, you are, you're gonna be so excited you're gonna watch all the YouTube videos and you're gonna have a head of steam and you're gonna be just like, let's go get it, let's, yes, let's end poverty. Let's fight abortion, let's do all these, look, all those things are good things to do. I'm not saying they're bad, I'm not saying, I'm not even saying there's a waste of time. I'm saying they can't save you, right?

And so you're gonna start with a ton of enthusiasm. I mean, you're gonna be so idealistic, people are gonna be annoyed with you. You're gonna be so happy and then you will be emptied out. You will give everything to that cause and it will not be enough and people won't appreciate you enough. I've met people like this that have devoted their lives to helping the poor but they've done it without Jesus and they're shells, they're awful to be around. They are despondent, they're mentally, they're checked out spiritually, they're hollowed out. They're just like, look, maybe I can do something helpful for one person today but I'm not really making a dent. You will cry and you will wonder what happened. You will wonder why you feel like God left you. You will wonder why the feelings are gone, why the enthusiasm is gone. That is the dead end of the street that begins so flowery and so pretty.

The entrance to that neighborhood is so good, right? It's so nice because you look good. You look religious, you inspire people, you can have a platform, you can be an influencer, you can do all these things but at the end, it's just a dead end. It's where idealists go to die and it's because you had great zeal for God but no knowledge. You tried to live by the rules and you never succeeded because no one does. Jesus does not offer you and I a religious life where we follow rules and we keep up. That is what the Bible calls a righteousness based on the law. This is American Ninja Warrior way into a right relationship with God. Jesus makes us right a different way. Okay, let's go, let's look at it. Jesus makes people right with God apart from the law. That's what Romans 3:21 tells us, that righteousness is that God made available. That righteousness apart from the law.

So we're not dealing with measuring up, we're not dealing with keeping a law, we're not dealing with looking right, being right. Jesus offers us in what we see in verse six, a righteousness based on faith but the righteousness, verse six, six and seven, Romans 10. 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 ascend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ from the dead. This is a very colorful way of saying that Jesus offers us a righteousness that does not ask for the impossible. It doesn't say go into heaven to get your righteousness. It doesn't say find it on your own, go into the depths, go find it there, go do something impossible. And then verse 10, but what, excuse me, verse eight, Romans 10, eight, but what does it say? What does it say? It says the word is near you.

What a comfort. It's in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith that we proclaim. It's so close to you, it's already in your mouth. That's pretty close. It's so readily available. It's literally on the tip of your tongue. That's what righteousness that is based on faith is like. It says the word is near you in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith that we proclaim. True righteousness, truly being me right with God, is not a matter of doing the right things enough. It is not a matter of climbing the wall and hitting the buzzer. It is Jesus boldly and very simply saying, here, I've already done that. I've already climbed the wall. I've already hit the buzzer. Look, my time's up there already. Nobody's gonna beat it, promise. It's perfect. I went through everything perfectly. I did it perfectly. Anybody else who tries to run this is just gonna look dumb, look foolish.

I don't care how athletic they are. I don't care how much they've trained. It doesn't matter. Jesus has run that for us. Jesus has says, I've done all of this and I have made you right with God. This is righteousness that is based on faith. Faith in what? Faith in the fact that Jesus has made you right already. Verse nine elaborates on this. It says, because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart, that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved. Righteousness does not come to those who try hard. It comes to those who confess and believe. True righteousness is not a wall to climb, it is a gift to receive. True righteousness in God, being made right with God, it's not a wall to climb, it's a gift to receive. It is so easily attained. We receive it when we confess with our mouth and believe in our heart. And let me tell you, that makes religious people angry

because they're worried that it's too easy. It's so easily attained that all of the alarms, all the bells, all the whistles that go off and religious people said, and a lot of people said, actually, and they said, look, that's too good to be true. It can't be that easy. It can't be that simple. This should be a little more difficult. Don't you know that anybody, don't you know that anybody can do that, Drew? Don't you know that, I mean, just, you can find a homeless guy and you can tell him about salvation in Jesus Christ and that he can confess with the Lord and believe in his heart that he'll be saved and then he'll be saved right then. Yeah, that's cool, that's good. But don't you know how long I've been working on this? Yeah, I get it. To some degree, it's gonna feel like it needs to be more difficult because to receive this gift, to take charity, I don't know when the last time you got charity was.

My stepdad passed away last week, and so this whole week, yes, passed away last week, this whole week, we've just been accepting charity. And let me tell you, look, appreciation all the way around. Thank you, the church sent flowers, it's beautiful, it's great, so good, so humbling, yes. But that will make you admit that you can't do things on your own. Accepting charity, accepting a food prepared for you, accepting money, somebody's giving you to say, here's just stuff to cover the expenses. If you are checking all of that and you're saying, well, you know, I could have done this myself, I could have, look, you're not gonna be thankful because you're refusing, your pride is getting in the way of you actually understanding what a gift that is. Receiving charity is humbling. Receiving help is humbling. And that's what makes salvation in Jesus Christ. When we're talking about just, it's confessing belief.

When we talk about that, it's so simple, it's so accessible, but it is so hard because it cuts us to the core. We are unable to save ourselves. If anybody is just saying, look, I only need a little bit of help from Jesus, only need, I only need help on this last course of the American Ninja Warrior. I can make it most of the way through, but Jesus just helps me a little bit. No, no, no, listen, none of your time counts, none of your effort counts. It doesn't matter how great you were on stage one, okay? Jesus already completed all of it. And if we are willing to accept that, then true life, true riches, awaits anyone who believes.

And here is where Romans 10 puts an emphasis, like a big emphasis. And remember, we need to read all of these together. Romans 9, 10, 11, we need to read it together. In Romans 9, what do we see? We see God saying, I'm in control of who gets saved. I choose, it's mine. Nobody takes it from me, nobody earns it. It's mine to give. I'm in control. I don't care what anybody thinks. He's not, in other words, he's not being directed. He cares what we think.

But he's not swayed by it. He's not being directed. He's not wondering if he offends somebody by not choosing them. And when we talk about belief, it requires mouth and heart. In other words, it's not a buffet. Look at verse 10, Romans 10, 10 says, for with the heart one believes and is justified and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. Believing with your heart requires a sobriety. Okay, it requires you to be clear on what you're deciding. You can't come to Jesus naive. You can't come flippantly. Following Jesus is weighty. And this is why, this is why as a church, we actually aren't, we actually put a lot of safeguards up in order to not try to manipulate people into making decisions for the Lord. That's not what we do. We don't wanna do that. We want people to be sure. And sometimes that takes time. But we wanna trust the Holy Spirit. We want people to be sure.

And so we give them time and opportunity and conversation. We wanna be sure. Believing in your heart, believing in your heart, the reason it takes so much sobriety is because it's actually giving up, trying to make yourself right or good. And it's just accepting Jesus's free gift. You just, this is it. This is becoming a Christian, right? According to the American Ninja Warrior metaphor, you look at Jesus's time and you say, his time's my time. His victory is mine. He gave it to me. It's mine. I didn't do anything. I was just sitting here on the couch, like cheering him on on the TV. But his time's my time. And it's that simple. It's that accessible. So you need to believe in your heart. You also need to confess with your mouth. And that requires risk, right? Confessing with your mouth requires risk. Following Jesus is a declaration. It starts in your heart, but it comes out in your real life, right?

Like you don't just start like following Jesus and hope nobody finds out. That's not how that works. That when you declare, when you follow Jesus, it is a declaration. And this is what baptism is, right? It's a public declaration of what it is like. I'm a follower. I'm gonna follow Jesus. And that's what the whole church is here for. That's why we bear witness so that we can see you be baptized and we can say, okay, look, this person, you know, Drew Ivey, whenever he was baptized, is like, hey, I'm gonna follow Jesus with my whole life. And the whole church is like, yes, you do that. Drew, you're baptized, right? Okay, good, just check.

Sorry. I'm just picking. It's been a long week. Okay. Baptism is a public declaration. And so when you believe in your heart, when you confess with your mouth, you can be saved. As the band comes up, I wanna end with kinda how Romans 10 flows into that. It quotes two Old Testament passages. It quotes an Old Testament passage in verse 11. It says, first scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. And what that's doing is that's just looking at something very old in the Old Testament according to the law. And it's saying, look, this isn't some new thing that's been happening since the dawn of time. It's easy to follow Jesus. But like I said, it's also very hard to follow Jesus. It requires this humility. It requires this sobriety to follow Jesus. Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. Verse 12, it says, for there's no distinction

between Jew and Greek. For the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. In verse 13, we see it again, we see another Old Testament quotation. It says, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Look, if you are religious or not, and some of you in here, you're kinda all over the place. You're like, I don't even know what I am, it's fine. I'm not looking, I'm trying to put you in a box here. But what I am saying is that we all come to Jesus with a particular set of hang ups. And for some people, their hang up is, it doesn't make enough sense. And for some people, their hang up is, well, I wanted God to do things my way. Sometimes your hang up is, I've got too much to lose. Look, my encouragement to you, your effort previous to this moment, because it doesn't measure up to anything anyway. My encouragement to you is that making your

relationship with God a priority in saying, I wanna be made right with God, that is the best thing that you could do. Okay, it doesn't matter how else you're doing financially, it doesn't matter how else you're doing physically, it doesn't matter any of that stuff. Your relationship with Jesus Christ is the most important thing. It has eternal consequences. It is the most important decision that you can make. And what I want you to do, just write this, I want you to consider, have I done this? Consider, have I soberly said in my heart, I'm going to choose Jesus, I'm gonna follow Him, I'm gonna walk in His ways, I'm gonna let His time be my time, I'm gonna give up trying to look good, I'm gonna give up trying to be impressive, I'm gonna worry about what other people think, and I'm just gonna just put my hand up and just say, I'm yours. As we sing, we have a time where we just respond.

And sometimes I kind of inform you of that at different times, at different times, but what we're gonna do is we're just gonna sing, we're just gonna sing all the way through, and then we're gonna be dismissed. All through that song, all through that time afterward, I'm gonna be sitting right here, right up at the front. And if you wanna pray, if you wanna talk, if you wanna work through anything you gotta work through, I will be there. I'll be there to talk with you, to pray with you, if you got some questions. Like even if you wanna play Stump the Pastor, right? That's fine, we'll play that game, that's cool.

What I want you to do is do business with the Lord. I want you to respond to what the Lord has been putting on your heart to do. And I don't want you to delay that. Because as much as we saw in Romans 9, that God, that it's God's choice, that God's, we see here in Romans 10, this is something that the Lord calls us to decide to do. It takes action on our part. There is our choice here and we have to choose it. Can't be made to choose it, we need to choose it on our own. My encouragement to you is choose it. Let's stand.