This morning, we looked at the covenant of redemption in Sunday school. We looked at the covenant of works in the morning worship service. And so this evening, what we wanna do is we wanna look at the heart of the covenant of grace. And so to that end, if you would please open your Bibles to Romans chapter 10, Romans chapter 10. And this evening's text for the message is gonna come to us from Romans chapter 10, verses one through 13. verses one through 13 of chapter 10. So let's give our attention to the reading of God's word. Romans chapter 10, beginning in verse one. Hear now the word of God. 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 a 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. May God add his blessing to this reading from his holy and inspired word. I once read a story of a man who was traveling on a flight and he fell asleep on that flight. And as the airplane arrived in its destination city, he still slumbered away. They pulled into the gate. Everyone disembarked from the plane. The cleaning crew came onto the plane. He still didn't awake, and the cleaning crew didn't see him sleeping, which makes you wonder how well the cleaning crew was cleaning. Nevertheless, they got the cleaning crew off. They taxied the plane off into another part of the airport away from the gate. Meanwhile, the man still slumbered. They locked up the plane, and then they left. And this man finally awoke and realized, where am I? And not only did he start to ask, where am I? But he realized, I think I'm the only one on this plane and I can't get off. They've locked me in. He had to get his cell phone. He had to call his wife and say, call the authorities. I'm stuck on the airplane. Send somebody to let me out. So here was this man. He was asleep on the plane. and he didn't realize that he had arrived at his final destination. I think that's a way that we can describe the Jews in Paul's day and in Jesus's day, is that the end of the journey had arrived because Jesus Christ had come, he had brought salvation, but they were still slumbering in their sin and in their unbelief. They were fast asleep and they failed to realize that Christ, the end of the law, had finally come. In the days of Moses, all the way going back to Deuteronomy chapter 29 and Deuteronomy chapter 30, God told the people that the Israelites would enter into the land, that they would disobey God's law, that God would carry them into exile, but that God would eventually bring them back. And he would, according to Deuteronomy 30, verse six, that he would circumcise them in their hearts, as well as in the hearts of their children, so that they would love the Lord their God with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength. In other words, what they were incapable of doing on their own, believing in the promises of God, God himself would do by enabling them to believe in those promises. What Israel couldn't do, God would do. And in fact, we can say that this is the same promise that God later issued through the prophet Jeremiah. in Jeremiah chapter 31, verses 31 and following, when he told the people through the prophet that he would make a new covenant with the house of Judah, as well as with the house of Israel, that it wouldn't be like the covenant that he made with their fathers on the day when he brought them out of Egypt, the covenant that they broke, but rather he would put his law upon their hearts and that he would be their God and they would be his people. So what the Apostle Paul has been doing here is he has been drawing upon these ancient promises that go all the way back to Moses and in fact they go all the way back to Genesis 3.15 that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. And what Paul was saying is that the fulfillment of that promise was finally here in their midst. Jesus Christ, the seed of the woman, was in their midst. He had brought salvation. And what Paul was trying to do is he was trying to shake His fellow Israelites awake. He was trying to awake them from their slumber in sin to recognize you cannot fulfill the law on your own. It's an impossibility. As we saw this morning, you're weighted down by your own sin. You're weighted down by the sin of Adam. It's only by trusting in the promises of the covenant of grace, in other words, trusting in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and by believing in all that he has done to fulfill the law on your behalf. In other words, what Paul is saying is The gospel promises have come in Christ, trust in him and be saved. And so this is what we wanna see as Paul unpacks this truth, as he contrasts doing the law with believing in the promises of the gospel. And we'll see how he does this, first of all, by seeing that Christ is the end of the law. And then secondly, by seeing how Paul contrasts The two paths of salvation that are available, it's either salvation through works or salvation by faith. And what the overwhelming message of the scriptures is, is we cannot be saved by our works. which means if we cannot be saved by our works, then the only other option is to be saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. So let's first look at this, what Paul has to say about Christ, the end of the law. And we want to note how Paul opens here his statements in the 10th chapter in the first verse when he says, brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them, that is the Israelites, is that they may be saved. So here Paul is the sense in which he's opening up his heart and he's letting everyone know that reads this letter that it was his heart's desire that the Israelites would be saved. If you go back to the ninth chapter, and the first five verses of the ninth chapter, the apostle Paul, in a sense, rends his heart because he says there in those opening verses of the ninth chapter, I'm telling the truth, I'm not lying, the spirit bears witness with me that if I could consider myself cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers in the flesh, I would do so. In other words, if I could somehow stand in the breach and bear the wrath of God on behalf of my brothers in the flesh, on behalf of my fellow Israelites, I would do it." In other words, what God was making manifest in Paul's heart was the very heart of Christ. He was wanting to lay down his life for his fellow Israelites. But what Paul also knew is that he couldn't, in the end, lay down his life because he would be an imperfect sacrifice. He knew that he himself was a sinner. He knew that he himself was weighted down by Adam's sin. So what does this mean? Paul naturally, therefore, points his fellow Israelites to the only source of hope that they have. which means it is hope in the salvation that comes through Christ. And so what Paul here is saying is that he is essentially diagnosing the heart of unbelief. So often it's the case, I think, that we want to try to soften the blow of the gospel. We want to try to soften the diagnosis of sin. You know, we don't want to offend somebody, so we say, well, yes, you know, you've got some sin. Or yes, it's very difficult for you to save yourself. instead of being just forthright and honest with a person and saying, no, it's impossible for you to save yourself. And not only do you have some sin, but you are hopelessly lost in it. You know, think of it, if you were to go to a doctor and you were to ask the doctor for a diagnosis and that you had a terminal disease and yet the doctor would soft pedal the diagnosis and say, well, it's not so bad. It'll all work out. Meanwhile, what he hasn't told you or what she hasn't told you is that you have a life-ending illness. You would wanna know what's gonna happen. I need to make plans. I need to make arrangements. So here what Paul is doing is he's being, in a sense, it may seem as if he's being brutally honest, but remember, it's not so much brutal honesty as much as it is loving honesty and the desire for his fellow Israelites to see how terrible the bad news is. because it's only when they see how terrible the bad news is, namely that they are sinners and they are bound for hell, that it is then that they can see how wonderful the good news is and how amazing the free gift of salvation in Christ is. So notice how Paul goes here to diagnose this problem with his fellow Israelites. He says in verses two and three, 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. Notice what Paul is saying here is he's saying, hey, they have great zeal. They really wanna serve God. But zeal, apart from knowledge, is like a boat without a rudder. It's like a race car without a steering wheel. You can have all of the zeal in the world, but if it's not pointed in the right direction, it does you no good. Think, for example, of Paul's great zeal that he had for God. Paul had such great zeal that he was persecuting the Church. It wasn't until Christ confronted him on the road to Damascus that the Lord turned him around and pointed his zeal in the right direction so that he would serve Christ. And so what the Jews were doing is that they had an incorrect knowledge of God. They did not fear the Lord because as Paul says, they did not submit to God's own righteousness. They did not submit to God's own righteousness. They were trying to establish their own. They were trying to establish their own. In other words, they looked at the Everest, the Mount Everest of the law of God, and they said, I think we can make it. I think we can make it if we give it a good try. Instead of recognizing that throughout all of God's covenant promises, throughout the Old Testament, the New Testament, the overwhelming message is that God was saying throughout, You are incapable of doing this, and so I will do it for you. Think back to Genesis chapter 15, when God made the covenant with Abraham. In the ancient Near East, there was a common practice as to making covenants. And what you would do is you would take animals and you would cut them in half. and you would divide them, and if you will, make an aisle between them. So just as we have an aisle down the middle of the church here in the sanctuary, imagine an aisle that is between severed animal halves. And it was the common practice in the ancient Near East for people, as they made a covenant, as they made an agreement, They would say, let us two, the two of us who are making this agreement, as we cut this deal, if you will, walk between the severed animal halves. Of what significance was this? What it meant is that each person in the covenant was saying, if I fail to keep my word, what has happened to these animals will happen to me. Likewise, the other person was saying the same thing. If I fail to keep my word, then what has happened to these animals? May it happen to me. Notice what happens in Genesis 15. God tells Abraham, create the aisle between the severed animal halves. And then what does he do? He puts Abraham fast asleep. And who is it that walks alone between the severed animal halves? It's God himself represented by the flaming oven. Think of the pillar of fire over the tabernacle in the desert. Think of the tongues of fire as they were resting upon the heads of the disciples at Pentecost. This oven was the very representation of God's own presence. And what he was telling Abraham as Abraham was fast asleep is, Abraham, if I, God, break my word, may this May this curse happen to me. But if you, O Abraham, break your word, may the curse fall upon me and not you. It was pointing forward to the fact that God in the flesh would come and suffer the curse of the covenant on our behalf so that we would not have to pay the penalty, so that we would have the blessings of salvation. It is Christ who fulfills every requirement of the law, every jot and tittle. What does Jesus say in Matthew 5, 17? I have not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. Every single jot and tittle. Moreover, as it is foreshadowed the oven going between the severed animal halves, not only does Christ fulfill the law in every jot and tittle, but he also bears the curse upon himself on our behalf. The Israelites were not aware of this. They didn't have faith in the promise of the gospel. As Paul says, they did not submit to God's righteousness. They did not submit to God's promise of the gospel. And instead, they tried to establish their own. It's like I once saw this video online. It's like sometimes I get to the point in my day where I have read so much that I don't think I could read anymore. And I feel as if the words are falling out of my mind because I've reached my limit, so I have to take a mental break. And so I'll watch some videos online just to distract myself for a few minutes. And I watched this video of these four-wheel drive dune buggies. as they were trying to get up this massive hill that was a sandy incline, and you would see them starting way back over here, and they would go full throttle, pedal to the metal, all the way to the floorboard, and they would go, and you would see them try, and they would start sliding back and forth as they were trying to get to the top of the hill, and they couldn't, and they would slide back down. I think that's the way the first century Jews were with the law. They thought, if I just get a big enough lead on it, and if I put my foot all the way to the floorboard, I can maybe get to the top and have a sufficient amount of obedience in order to secure my salvation. But what did they fail to see? They failed to see what the Apostle Paul says in Romans 10, 4. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. What does it mean to be righteous? It means to be in perfect conformity to the law. It means that when God looks upon you, he sees perfect obedience. And so what is Paul saying? He says the Jews sought to establish their own righteousness. and they failed to submit to God's righteousness. And how has God provided his righteousness? Through Jesus Christ. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. To everyone who works? No. To everyone who believes. To everyone who believes. And so this brings us to our second point. which is the two ways that Paul sets forth. There's either salvation by works, or conversely, there's salvation by faith. Now to prove this point, he goes all the way back to the Old Testament to show the relationship between obedience, righteousness, and the law. He says this in verse six, Sorry, verse five. For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. That the person who does the commandments shall live by them. So what Paul is saying is this, and I want you to note the stress that I'm about to put on this one word. If, if a person can fulfill the law, he will gain eternal life. I tell this story to my students, I tell it to people in Sunday school, and what I'm about to tell you is an utterly true story. And that should the Lord ever give me a filthy amount of wealth, I mean like tens of millions of dollars, I've told my wife this, and she looks at me and going, yeah, keep on telling yourself this. But I tell her, I say, I'm going to buy a fighter jet. I promise you I will do this. I will buy a fighter jet. And what I'm going to do when I buy this fighter jet is I know a used F-16 costs, oh, say $25 million. So it's going to have to be a lot of money. $25 million. I'm going to need flight license. That's probably going to be about $2 million. I'm going to need gasoline. That's going to be several million dollars. I'm going to need a place to park this thing. I don't think the Madison Airport would fit. So it's going to have to be a relatively big place. I'm going to need a mechanic. I need somebody to work on this thing. So we're looking at, I don't know, by the time it's all said and done, $40 to $50 million. And in fact, I've already been shopping for this because my wife sometimes, she'll ask me as she comes into the room, what are you looking at? And I'm like, I'm looking at used jets. And she's like, and exactly when do you think you're gonna buy this thing? And I'm like, oh, you never know. You never know. What's that all predicated upon? If I can come up with $50 million. That's a big if. There's not enough change rolling around in between the couch cushions to come up with that kind of money. That is a huge if. An even bigger if is if you can obey the law, then you can be saved. This is what Moses says about the law. Again, Romans 10, five, for Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. Now, what Paul would want us to remember is remember everything that he has said from Romans chapter two all the way to Romans 3, 19, the sinfulness of all human beings. Remember everything that Paul has said about the sin of Adam that hangs around our neck. So that it's like saying, if you can obey, but don't forget you are weighted down by all of this sin. So for us, it is an impossibility. So if you can be obedient to the law and perfectly so, then you will live. But what does he go on to say in verses six and seven? And notice the huge contrast here. He says, 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. So the fact that Paul begins verse six with the word but, It's a huge contrast that's coming up. And he's making a hard differentiation between what has preceded in verse five with what follows in verse six and seven. If the law requires obedience or doing, then the gospel rests on faith and believing. You do the law, or you obey it, and you believe the gospel. And so to highlight this point, Paul draws all the way back on Deuteronomy chapter 30, verses 12, 13, and 14, and he says essentially this, I can ascend to the heights of heaven by my own obedience. If I think I can do that, if I think I can ascend into heaven through my obedience, then that is to bring Christ down. That is to denigrate Christ by saying you think you can do what only Christ can do by coming down from heaven. Or conversely, if you think by my obedience, I myself will conquer death, that is tantamount to saying that I can do what only Christ has done, which is to raise myself from the dead through my own obedience. And what Paul essentially is saying here is we can't do either of these things. It's Christ alone who has done both, who has descended out of the heavens to save us, who has ascended from death itself. And this is why Paul says back in verse four, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. It's Christ who silences the law's loud thunder. and he does so through his obedience and his suffering. This is why in the covenant of grace, salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, by trusting in his perfect work. This is why in our justification, faith and works stand in absolute antithesis to one another. And this goes all the way back to the very opening words of Paul's letter in Romans, in verses 16 and 17 of the first chapter, when Paul says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of salvation for all who believe, first for the Jew and then for the Greek. For in it, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. And so, Paul takes this same truth, salvation by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone, and he restates it in a different manner in verses eight and following, when he puts it this way. The word is near you, in your mouth, in your heart that is the word of faith that we proclaim. He says don't look at the mountain of the law. He says just Say the words that you believe, 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. You will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, that is, declared righteous before the throne of God, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. Here, What Paul emphasizes is he's emphasizing the utterly free nature, the utterly free nature of the gospel, which is why Paul elsewhere, for example, in Romans chapter three, calls salvation a gift, an absolute gift. There have been a few times in my life where I've received unexpected gifts. I can remember there was a time when my brother and I We got in big trouble. And we got in trouble because we were told, if you bring home bad grades, don't expect any Christmas presents. And so, well, we brought home bad grades. And when they opened up the report cards, we thought, okay, maybe our parents will relent. And they didn't. They were like, okay, that does it. No Christmas presents this year. My parents played hardball. They were tough on us when they needed to be tough. And I can remember the tree going up that year. And I can remember watching each and every day I get up every morning and look under the tree and think, okay, yeah, there's still no Christmas presents under there for either my brother or for me. Then of course we thought, well, if we put our Christmas presents under the tree for my parents, maybe that'll soften them up a little bit, right? And maybe that will make other presents miraculously appear under the tree. So we put our presents under the tree, still no Christmas presents. And then it got to Christmas Eve. And in our house, when I was growing up, we typically opened our presents on Christmas Eve. My parents were smart that way. They're like, that way you don't get up early in the morning and disturb us in our sleep. We can just sleep all morning long, and you guys have your presents the night before. And so there we were, Christmas Eve, and we had finished dinner, and my brother and I looked wistfully under the tree, and still no presents. And so then when it was time to open presents, we're like, well, here, Mom and Dad, here's your present. Here's your present. And we gave them their presents, still no presents. And we thought, okay, I guess that's it. No presents this year. And my parents told us, you know, you don't deserve any presents. You know that, right? We're like, yes. You know that you disobeyed us and you got bad marks at school. Yes, we know that. All right. And so my mom said, I'll be right back. And she went into the bedroom and came out and had two tiny little boxes, two tiny little boxes. She gave one to my brother, gave one to me. And they said, go ahead, open these little boxes. And we opened the boxes and inside was a wallet. And inside the wallet was some money. And it was a nice amount of money. Maybe after the service, you can convince me to tell you how much it was. But it has always impressed upon me in that moment, didn't deserve it, but we received an utterly free gift of grace that we otherwise should not have received. Multiply that gift by an infinite fold. And that's where you can see the utterly free nature of the salvation, the gift that we receive through the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is why, again, Paul says, believe, confess with the mouth, do not do because you cannot do. You are too sinful for Christ is the end of the law and his righteousness for everyone who believes. Trust in what? Christ has done for you, and you receive the free gift of salvation. And so this is why Paul goes on and says in verses 11 and following, for the scripture says everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew or Greek. For the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. There in that last statement here, Paul is quoting from the prophet Joel, Joel 2.32, and it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of Yahweh, the Lord, will be saved. And now here he applies that very same promise. to the Lord Jesus Christ saying, Jesus is the incarnation of God's gospel promises. And in fact, that's what Jesus means. The very name of Jesus comes from the Hebrew Yehoshua or Joshua, which means Yahweh saves. This is the way that he has done it through the free gift of salvation that comes through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Think about this amazing gift. The creator has become creature. The Lord has become servant. The source and creator of all life subjected himself to death. He who reflected the fullness of the divine glory, it was veiled, his glory was veiled beneath a shroud of shame. He who gave the very law was the one who suffered the curse of the law. He to whom all praise is due willingly suffered the curses and insults of sinners. He suffered all of these things to redeem and save you. To redeem and save you. When the smoking oven passed between the severed animal halves, who could have fathomed the depths to which God in the flesh would condescend to save sinners? In the words of Isaac Watts' well-known hymn, alas, and did my savior bleed, and did my sovereign die, would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I? Was it for sins that I had done he groaned upon the tree? amazing pity, grace unknown, and love beyond degree. When you think about, therefore, the gospel of Christ, the gospel of our salvation, and the importance of grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, we're not splitting hairs. We're not simply trying to figure out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. We are distinguishing the only two paths to salvation, either perfect obedience to the law, which we cannot render because of our own sinfulness and because of Adam's sin credited to us, or trusting in the gospel promises of Christ. This means that we should always look to Christ for the source of our salvation. We should always look to Christ for the forgiveness of our sins. We should always look to Christ for greater conformity unto his image. To preach such a message, to teach such a message, to share such a message, isn't being overly dogmatic or hard-headed, but rather it is to be faithful to the truth and to herald the all-sufficient work of Christ to save sinners. My prayer is, and our prayer should be, is that we would never be asleep on the plane of salvation, failing to see that we have arrived at our destination, salvation in Christ. Remember Paul's words, for Christ is the end of the law, for righteousness to everyone who believes. I close with the words of a poem written by a 16th century Anglican theologian by the name of John Donne. He says, we think that paradise and Calvary, Christ's cross and Adam's tree stood in one place. Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me. As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face, may the last Adam's blood my soul embrace. Let's bow together in a brief word of prayer. Let us pray. Father God, we give you thanks that you have not left us in our sin, that you could have justly condemned us in Adam, but rather, oh Lord, you have given us the free gift of salvation that comes through Jesus Christ. Moreover, you have given us, and undeservedly so, the free gift of faith so that we can trust in the gospel promises of Christ. O Lord, when doubts grow in our hearts, when our sin seems as if it is overwhelming to us, when it seems as if, O Lord, that you may have forgotten us, we pray that you would make the promises of the gospel ever more true to us and ever more sure to us as we look by faith alone, by your grace alone, to the salvation that comes to us through Christ alone. Oh Lord, help us to remember these truths. Help us to teach these truths to our own hearts and to speak of these truths with everyone we meet, whether they be under our roofs or in our communities or wherever we happen to find people who still do not know the gospel promises of Christ. We pray and ask all of these things in Christ's precious and holy name. Amen.