As I read from God's Word, the book of Romans chapter 10, I'll begin reading in verse five. Romans chapter 10, beginning in verse five. Pay careful attention in the reading of God's Word. You can follow along with me in your copy of the scriptures if you have one with you this morning. For Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law. The man who does those things shall live by them. But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way. Do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven? That is, to bring Christ down from above. 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 which we preach. That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture says, whoever believes on him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon him. For whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Thus far, the reading of God's word. You may be seated. Let me pray now for the blessing of the preaching of God's word. Lord, we come to you this morning In our hearts, longing and desire is that we might not be those who seek to live by works of the flesh, to not put confidence in that which is not able to bring us up or to raise us from the dead, but to believe upon the one who has come low who has become like us in every way, yet without sin. And in light of his perfection, the grave could not hold him. And so it is to you, O Christ, we bring our prayers. And we devote ourselves. For you are not so high, and you do not remain in the grave any longer. but you are near to us this morning. You are near to us by the ministry of your spirit and your table and the prayers that we offer and most particularly in the word of the gospel as it is preached. And so may we let go then of our vain striving to seek to make peace with you through our vain fleshly efforts. but with our mouths confessing and our hearts believing that Christ is the stone upon which we should build our lives. O Lord, by your word, work in us salvation, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Paul has labored already to show the distinction between Jew and Gentile. He has actually done this throughout the book of Romans and it began in the beginning of his epistle where he speaks of the Gentiles as those who predominantly exchange the truth of God for a lie. This is the formation and the ground of all false religion. All false religion is an expression, it is a longing, it is a desire An inevitable reality that if we do not build our lives upon the stone who is Christ, we have to invent some other stone upon which to build our lives, and yet that stone is no stone at all. It is ever-shifting sand. This is why Christ in the Gospel says, if you're going to build your house, build your house upon the rock. Romans 3 and 4 is the one who has, by and large, entered into the system of God's revelation and said, in my own strength and by my own effort, I can ascend the hill of the Lord. But the problem with that is no man can do this. In Romans chapter 9, we read of the purposes of God's election. that not all of Israel was Israel, for there remains, even in God's covenant of grace, a remnant, a people, a church within a church, a people whom God had called out of his own electing purposes. And so the present condition of Israel, the end of Romans 9, is that, by and large, the vast majority of them had rejected Jesus Christ, who is the end of the law. the end of striving. He is the sum and substance of all the promises of the covenant. And if you get to the finish line and you don't cross it in Christ, you stumble over Christ, who is the stone of stumbling. And in light of this, Paul mourns the spiritual state of his brothers. And in verses one through four, he speaks of this. His desire is that his countrymen His Jewish brethren would not, in the zeal that they possessed, the religious zeal, run in the opposite direction of Christ, made evident by their crucifying of Him, but to embrace Him and to build their lives upon Him. And then here in Romans chapter 10, having looked at the distinctions, we read of that which unifies Jew and Gentile. It is not something that is ethnic in nature, It is something that is covenantal or spiritual in nature. That whoever believes upon Christ, whoever confesses Christ, it doesn't matter whether you are Jew or Gentile, that there is a spiritual covenantal reality that is over all of this. Christ is near. And if we are to be reconciled to God the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, we must be reconciled through the one who is Christ Jesus. And so Paul puts the question again. Is it of law or of faith? Is it of law or of faith? And not only that, but the clear and faithful testimony that Christ is near, to men in a way that the law is not. Two points then that I want to make this morning. The first, of law or of faith. And then second, a true testimony. A true testimony. Let's look at the first point this morning, of law or of faith. As it relates to this distinction, this dilemma, Whether man chooses by law to seek sanctification or justification before God, or by faith, Paul has an answer here. And in fact, in the covenant of Moses, both law and faith are proclaimed. Look at verse five. For Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law. Here is the summation of righteousness by law. It's a quotation. The man who does those things shall live by them. And then there is a summation or a response to God's revelation that is a faith. Verse six, but the righteousness of faith speaks in this way. Do not say in your heart who will ascend to heaven that is to bring Christ down from above or verse seven, who will descend into the abyss that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But here is the testimony of faith as well. What does it say? The response of faith also says the word is near you in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith which we preach. So we see two responses. Two responses to the revelation of God's entire system of righteousness. This contains the system of righteousness. In fact, if you were to join Reformation or any OPC church, the first vow, many of you may know by heart, many of you may have forgotten it, but you're still supposed to live by it. And the first question or vow if you're going to join a true Christian church is, do you believe the Bible is the word of God and it's doctrine of salvation to be the only perfect and true doctrine of salvation? So we have to believe that what is in here is God's word. And that the primary central content of revelation focuses upon the way in which you and I can be saved. And at the center of God's plan of salvation is Christ. Christ is Lord. Christ is Redeemer. Christ, the one who took upon himself flesh and blood. Christ is the one who became one under the law, who suffered under the wrath of the Father, who died and was buried but was raised again. unto His justification. That is to say, His resurrection is the testimony of His righteous intercession for us. That's the system. You need to buy into that system. But the first response to God's system of righteousness in Scripture is to jettison the Messiah and say, I will do what God has said apart from the Messiah. This is what he means in verse 5, the man who does those things shall live by them. What is them? Well, in Leviticus chapter 18, Moses writes, you shall observe my judgments and my ordinances, my here is the Lord, Yahweh, to walk in them. I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them. I am the Lord. Romans chapter seven, I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me and by it killed me. Therefore, the law is holy and the commandment holy and just and good. Now, what does all this mean? It's a good question. What does it mean to live by them? That is the law. It means this. There are two tracks, or two sets of tracks. One track is the by living according to the words of the law, I will endeavor to meet with God upon his holy hill. And I will endeavor to be free from the shackles of sin and death. The problem with that particular set of tracks is there is a strong, hard, dead end, and that dead end does not lead to heaven. The end of law, the end of seeking to be made righteous by works, is the stone of stumbling. And so if you look at the cross of Christ in terms of a historical revelation, the whole system of Judaic righteousness that was in error gets to the cross of Christ and the tracts cannot continue on. It stops. And those who seek righteousness on those set of tracts will not find it. The cross is folly to them. Law responds a certain way. Whatever God says for me to do, I will do it, and that will be my righteousness. But here's the problem. As Leviticus 18 continues, what we find after verse 5 is a list of, really, sexual sins that were being practiced in the land that Israel was not to engage in. And some of those things are pretty bad. Things that you probably would never think about doing. And so why does God say these things to Israel? Because once Israel got into the land, guess what they started doing? They started watching R-rated movies with sex scenes, right? They started engaging in the kinds of filth that even you in a culture like ours would say, I'll never do that, but I may kind of saddle up next to it a little bit, right? There is a problem, not only with this set of tracts that ends in Christ the stumbling stone, but seeking righteousness by the law has three predominant weaknesses. The first is the draw of sin is quite strong. And this is where you say amen, right? The draw of sin is quite strong, and it is often difficult to separate ourselves from the filth around us. And we may not do the things that we see others doing and say, that's pretty gross. But we are compromised nonetheless if we are not careful. And this is why it is significant that God lists these sins. It's because corruption is contagious. if you do not have the full armor of the Holy Spirit on. That's the first reason. The law will inevitably condemn you if that is the system you're hoping in. The draw of sin is quite strong. The law itself, as Paul says in Romans 7, that is a command not to do something, incites you to do the thing that it says not to do. Children, Perhaps even in your own home, you're just sort of blissfully going about your day. Things are going well, and then your parents come to you and say, don't do that. And then all of a sudden you go, oh, I didn't plan on choosing violence, but now that I know, now that I know that if I do this, I'm in rebellion against my parents, I kind of want to do it. The law incites us to rebellion. Why? Because we love sin. We love sin. And then thirdly, ever before you or I live a day and make a conscious decision as we grow older, we are conceived in iniquity. That's enough, isn't it? It is out of this original sin that actual sins flow. We have a corrupt nature. So here's the problem. Those tracks will only ever be a dead end for you. Don't get on those tracks. Do not respond to the system of righteousness wherein God says this is how you will be saved and seek to do so of your own accord. Instead, by faith, do what? Do not see that it is your work to go up to heaven or to raise yourself from the dead knowing that in your flesh you are condemned in your sins, but instead do what? See that Christ is the one who has come down, verse six, who will ascend to heaven? Why would we need to go to heaven if Christ has come down? You cannot go to heaven. Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Only the one with clean hands and a pure heart. That does not describe you and that does not describe me. Only in Christ are we made pure. And so here is the problem of a religion that does not have at its heart Christ the fulfillment. You still have to go up that hill. You must ascend that hill apart from Christ. But the response of faith says, I receive Christ who has come down. And not only does the response of faith say, I receive Christ who has come down, verse six, but also verse seven, who will descend into the abyss? This is what Christ means when he says, I will give you no other sign than the sign of Jonah. Where was Jonah? dead in the belly of a fish for three days. And then he was spat out, brought to life, and then confessed and sang to God of his resurrecting power. That is the sign of Jonah, that God not only brought Jonah from the dead, but Christ is brought himself from the dead. If you trust in your own works, what will you do of death? Do you have a remedy for that? Can you deal with the separation problem between God and man? And can you deal with the death problem? And the answer to both of those questions is no, you cannot. You cannot do anything about that. Your works do not have the ability to make you holy so that you might ascend or living so that you may not die. But instead, what does the response of faith say? Christ is here. Christ is present. Christ has been revealed as the one who came down from heaven, who destroyed death and hell forever, and in Christ, the fulfillment of the system of righteousness becomes mine by the free gift of grace. Do you see? And that set of tracks goes all the way to heaven. It runs all the way to the throne of God. And in Christ, we are brought into the presence of God, having been wholly reconciled to him, and we are made perfect in righteousness forever. I could probably stop there. There's more text. But I think this is enough. If you wanna know how to preach the gospel, if you wanna know how to talk to someone, there it is, right there. It's in verses five, six, seven, and eight, and yet nine is what? We have the offer and the content of the offer, but then there is the response. Now, we'll get to the response in a moment, but I need you to see the glory of what we call Immanuel God with us. And I know that there is some hotly debated idea of to what degree should Christians celebrate Christmas? And there's a lot of things about Christmas that are just crass, even if you're not a Christian, right? The gimme, gimme, gimme, I won, I won, I won, and all these catalogs are now coming to my house, and I just don't even open them because there's things that I want. Of course, when you're an adult, what happens with the prices of the things that you want? All the toys you want are too expensive. And so what do you do? You just throw the catalog right into the trash. But children, here's the tendency, to think too much of yourself, right? And we often avoid or miss the forest for the tree, right? That is the Christmas tree. But the beauty of God with us, Emmanuel, is that Christ is the fulfillment. He is the strong and sure promise of verse eight. But what does it say? The word that is the revelation of God is near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart. Do you come to worship on Sunday? Children excited to sing the praises of God? Do you close your eyes? In fact, oftentimes one of the worst things that you can do on Sundays is close your eyes when you pray. In fact, this is what I want you to do. I want you to keep your eyes open and I want you to think about everybody in the room while we're praying and ask the Lord, while we're praying, Lord, would you help the person next to me worship well? to look at the beautiful things that God has made. Maybe not that building. Look out this window. There's the sermon illustration that just popped into my head. There's a set of tracks. And you wonder, what has God done for me? Is he not everywhere? Not God is in everything, the way the Eastern mystics say. but that God has revealed himself clearly to us as the son of God, Emmanuel, who has come to take away our sins. The word is near you. There is no other religion that confesses this, that the end, the sum and substance of all salvation and reconciliation with God has been revealed. And so you don't have to worry about working your way up that hill. Or the death problem. You can go to your grave rejoicing with every confidence that the transition from this life to the next in Christ is smooth because your sins are already paid for. This is the way in which the word is near to us. And it is not only made near in the incarnation of Christ and in his resurrection, but the word is made near to us through the preaching of his word. And this is why the church must get the word out there. We, as a church, must make the word near to the nations. We must bring it to bear on the hearts and minds of every man and woman and child, so that they may know they don't have to go up the hill on their own, and they don't have to worry about death, that in Christ those problems are solved. That is the beauty of the gospel. This does not mean that we are not obedient, but the system of righteousness that God has revealed that culminates in our justification is not accomplished through these hands. That's good news. That is very good news indeed. And this is what forms the heart, secondly, of a true testimony. Let's continue to look. Let me read verse nine again. that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. This is what the preaching of the word is after. It's not after well-dressed Christians. It's not after Christians who live righteously before other Christians on Sundays so that they may have a good reputation. It is after salvation. at its core. That is, to be transferred from the kingdom of darkness and brought into the kingdom of light. To become sons and daughters of the true and living God. To be brought into union and sweet fellowship with the Godhead. That is what we are after. So what then is a confessing mouth? Well, what is the mouth? In summation, I would say the mouth is the organ of genuine faith. It says what is true that God has revealed to us. It is the organ by which we confess what is true. But we know that with the mouth, it speaks what? It speaks out of the overflow of the heart. Now this can be a problem at times, right? At times our mouths say crass or perverse things. And they betray what? a crass or perverse heart, that there needs to be a little more work done by God in us. But here the mouth is that instrument whereby publicly we say Christ is Lord. And it's not just that one thing, Christ is Lord. But the mouth is the organ that represents the entirety of our lives lived out. and with it we confess. And not just our mouths, and we'll get to the content of these things in a moment, but what is the heart? We're looking at the heart, with all your heart, and I learned some things from the first chapter of that book. that the heart is the sum and substance of our entire affection center. Who we are as a person is represented with our hearts. In fact, John Murray, when he writes on the heart, in his commentary on this section, writes this, the heart is the seat and organ of religious consciousness and must not be restricted to the realm of emotion or affections. It is determinative of what a person is morally and religiously and therefore embraces the intellective and volitive as well as the emotive. Those are fancy words that means our minds, our actions, and not just what we feel, Murray writes. Believing with the heart that God raised Jesus means that this event, with its implications, respecting Jesus as the person raised and the exceeding greatness of God's power as the active agency, has secured the consent of that which is most decisive in our persons and is correspondingly determinative of religious conviction. Did you get all that? Can you recite that from memory? No, I can't. And I'm reading it slowly just so I'm like, God, do I understand all of that after I've read it five times already this week? The heart is that part of you that lays hold of and therefore motivates everything in relationship to what the heart wants. If the heart wants money, then your entire life will be focused upon, like the rich young ruler, the amassing of much wealth. The heart is a very powerful organ, as it were. I don't mean your physical heart. But when Christ has your heart, he has everything that you are. That is what it means that your heart believes. And so a heart that is at rest in Christ is one that is resolved not to endeavor to seek to climb up that hill by works done in the flesh, or to fear death. Can you imagine living your life unafraid of death? Can you imagine how much more of an effective missionary, husband, wife, child you would be if your heart was not made afraid by death? I don't mean the kind of thing where you just jump out of an airplane window parachute and say, c'est la vie. If the Lord is sovereign, maybe I'll land in a lake, but that won't work. We're not talking about untimely risks or dangerous risks. We're talking about ourselves in relationship to a righteous God. In fact, when elders interview people for membership, and especially our children, What we are after is a faithful confession that is evidence of a heart that is bound up in love for Christ, who is their salvation. Does this describe you? Is this how you respond to the gospel? Is this how you respond? You say, not the tracks of the law that will run me into a dead end and I'll stumble over the stone that is Christ, but the kind of tracks that are founded on, built upon, that I'll build my house upon the rock who is Christ Jesus. What then are the cardinal elements? What are the primary elements of this true testimony that we speak and know that Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Lord, and that he has been raised from the dead. Those two things connect to his coming down as Emmanuel, the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings, and that he has been raised from the dead, the resurrection. The content of a saving profession must contain the Lordship of Christ and belief in the resurrection. If you do not believe those things, you do not have faith. You do not believe the true gospel. You do not have a saving faith. For those are the things that Christ has done to redeem us. He became like us so that he might destroy the power of death in us. Who gets that then? Look at verse 10. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For, verse 11, the scripture says, whoever believes on him will not be put to shame. There is a kind of covenantal determinism that often creeps into our minds when we deal with the haves and the have-nots, especially when it comes to Jews and Gentiles. Who is the gospel for, is the question. And Paul makes the answer very clear. The Jewish problem that is presented in Romans 9, chapters 9 and chapter 10, is not one of mere ethnic determinism. It is that they did not believe in Christ. It is not that they had a certain kind of blood or a genetic shared type. It is that the Jews in wholesale, aside from a handful, denied Jesus to be the Lord. It was a covenantal spiritual problem. And you know how that covenantal spiritual problem is solved? You stop rejecting Christ and you embrace him as the only true Lord. And that is a very simple gospel to preach. And it doesn't matter who you're going to, it matters what you're going with. And so when I go to the people of Gaston County and I'm interacting with them, I don't bring them a gospel for Gaston County that is sort of only for Gaston County, in the same way that if I were to go to China or Africa or Asia, or any of these other places, with all these people that speak a variety of languages, that have adopted all manner of different cultures, that believe in all of these wretched religions, it is one gospel that saves them, and it is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And whoever believes it, they will not be put to shame. Where does shame come from? Our shame is connected to our standing before God, thinking that having climbed the hill on our own, thinking that we can solve the problem of death on our own, we can stand before God and say, I've done it. And he looks at you and says, you have not. You have not done enough. You have not done enough. And such is the indictment of all the human race. Perhaps you've heard it said, the ground is level at the foot of the cross. That is an indictment to our unworthiness. We all come unworthy, but in Christ, whoever believes upon him are made worthy. So here's my encouragement to you as it relates to interacting with other people. Stop putting people in categories that puts them beyond the gospel. Now in time and space, tribes, nations, languages, those things have real effect. And if I'm gonna go take the gospel to a foreign land in a language I cannot speak, I cannot be effective, can I? So what do I need to do? I need to learn that language. And the reason I learn their language primarily is not so that they can just have a written alphabet if that's what they need to work on, something like that, and Christians have done this for centuries. But these missionaries who have, in times past, gone to places where there is no written language, they have done so for the purpose primarily of what? So that they can read Jane Austen, right? I mean, who wouldn't want to read Jane? No. So that they can have a copy of this. in their hands. And when they begin to open the pages or when someone preaches through an interpreter, what do they hear? They don't just hear the communication of another Western white religion. They hear what? Christ, the Savior of sinners. And no one has a monopoly on that. And what has happened in many of those countries, let's say we go to the Philippines or South Korea, is that the word of God has so transformed those societies that they send missionaries, guess where? Here. Or to China, or places where our white faces would never allow us to go. Why? because it is whosoever believes on him will not be put to shame. And in this, there is no distinction. There are distinctions that matter, but for the throne of God, there is only one distinction that is made. Are you in Christ or are you not? Do you believe? Do you confess or do you not? And then he brings it to a beautiful resolution. Verse 13, whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And here is where we get into the will of God. We know something of the decreed will of God that which He has decreed, which is clear to us. God has made it known, and there is something of God's will that is secret and hidden to us. And when we pray to God, we pray to His as a sovereign over all creation. And we ask, Lord, would you, kids, I'd like a bike. Pray and ask God for a bike. But you don't know if that will be his will, if you'll get a bike or not. Maybe you'll get a scooter or a skateboard, I don't know. Or Lord, would you heal this family member? Would you give us children? We ask all of these things. And there are times where God does not answer in accordance with the way we ask. But in verse 13, God always answers when we ask this way. Will you save me? Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Now, there may be insincere calls. There may be those kinds of calls that are themselves works of the flesh. or you're just afraid because something tragic has happened, and it's not a sincere response to the gospel of Jesus Christ? But when you, by faith, lay hold of Christ's work, and you say, Lord, forgive me, the answer is yes. It's yes. And it doesn't matter who you are or what you've done. Take Paul. Paul himself in his own testimony said, I was a Pharisee of Pharisees. Paul himself had just gotten finished licensing the murder of Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian church in the New Testament. And Christ came to him and called him and said, you have caused much suffering for my sake and now you will suffer much for my sake. And Paul said, okay. Right? He removed the blinders from off his eyes. And Paul walked forth a free man. There are people right now who are saying, never ever ever will I endeavor to walk in Christ and believe upon him. and then the Holy Spirit gets a hold of them through the preaching of the word. And all of a sudden, that hard heart melts away, and through the work of the Holy Spirit regenerating them, they walk forth seeing, hearing, singing, living in a way that only Christ can provide. And so, dear saints, as a congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ at Reformation OPC, this is the theme of our ministry. that as it relates to Christ, there is no distinction. If you are in Christ, you are of the body. And if you are not in Christ, well then we're just gonna preach harder. Because our ambition is what? To take the gospel so that men and women and children might believe and they might be welcomed in his presence. Let's pray. Oh Lord our God, we ask that even now having heard the word preached, and now coming to your table that you might, by your spirit, continue to work that salvation in us that you have begun. That we ourselves might not doubt, that you would put an end to our doubting, that you would even this morning assure us of our share, our union, our participation in this glorious salvation that you are so graciously revealing in our midst. Oh Lord, help us to believe that you are near, Lord, even this morning, you are in our mouths. Oh, Lord, would you be in our hearts. We might confess you and seek salvation in none, but you alone. This we pray in Jesus name. Amen.