All through Romans we have been learning about God’s wonderful way of salvation through grace in Jesus Christ. We have heard many times about how God offers to put people right with Himself through the death of Christ on the cross. And we have heard many times what human beings have to do in order to receive that free gift of God which is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. We don’t have to obey the Jewish Law – nobody ever could. We don’t have to earn our salvation by good works – nobody ever could.
We simply need to receive God’s gift by faith. To put our trust in Jesus Christ. Paul repeats that again here in verse 10.
10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved! That’s all you have to do. Well in fact, that isn’t all you have to do. Because Paul goes on to explain that a person has to declare that faith, to confess it publicly, in order to be saved.
10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.
Not just believing with your heart but also confessing with your lips!
9 That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.
In Paul’s understanding the believing and the confessing are inseparable. If a person has saving faith in Jesus Christ, it is inevitable that the person will speak about that faith.
In today’s world and even in some parts of the church, that idea has been rejected. You may hear preachers say, “as long as you truly believe in Jesus you will be saved.” I certainly hear Christians say about friends or even members of their family, “He lives such a good life, I am sure he believes inside, he just doesn’t like to talk about it, but I am sure he is really a Christian, deep down inside.”
As far as the apostle Paul is concerned, just believing deep down inside isn’t enough. 9 That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
We need faith in our hearts. But we also need the word of confession. The outward declaration of our belief in Jesus Christ which is our confirmation and witness to the world that we are saved!
11 As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” 12 … the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13 for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

That calling on the name of the Lord is necessarily open and public. You can’t be a secret disciple. Either the secret will kill the discipleship or the discipleship will kill the secret.
In this passage Paul is assuming two things:
1) it is vitally important for as many people as possible to be saved because without Christ they all face God’s judgment and a lost eternity, and therefore
2) Christians should be doing everything we can to make it possible for people to be saved

The start of the process of salvation comes as people respond in faith to the gospel of Jesus Christ. But before anybody can ever respond comes the prior stage:-
HEARING THE GOSPEL
14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?
If people are to be saved they have to believe in Jesus Christ. And if they are going to believe they first have to HEAR the gospel. So far in Romans we have heard about God’s call on people’s lives.
Romans 8 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
Salvation is the free gift of God according to His Sovereign election and call. But back in the 18th Century our Baptist Ancestors the Particular Baptists fell into an error called hyper-Calvinism. The Particular Baptists argued that since God is going to save whoever He chooses, God doesn’t need our help for that so we don’t need to tell anybody the gospel. Even worse, they argued that telling people about Jesus might even get in the way of God’s election and call. So for the Particular Baptists it was actually wrong to tell people the way to be saved! Predictably, because nobody was being saved in Particular Baptist churches, they all died out!
But it seems that churches today have their share of closet hypercalvinists. There actually are Christians who make the mistake of thinking they don’t need to tell their friends and neighbours about Jesus because God can save them without any help from us. How wrong can they be!! Of course people need to be told about Jesus! People need to hear the gospel.
There is a lot of fuss being made today about Missionary Congregations – churches oriented towards reaching out into the community. The fact is you cannot have a true church which is NOT a missionary congregation. A church which is not proclaiming the gospel of Jesus is not a church at all! People need to hear the gospel!
The Swiss theologian Karl Barth was quite possibly the greatest evangelical thinker of the 20th Century. He wrote, “The church exists to preach the gospel. The life of the one holy Universal Church is determined by the fact that it is the fulfilment of the service as ambassador enjoined upon it.
Where the life of the Church is exhausted in self-serving, it smacks of death; the decisive thing has been forgotten, that this whole life is lived only in the exercise of what we called the Church’s service as ambassador, in proclamation. A Church that recognizes its commission will neither desire nor be able to petrify in any of its functions, to be the Church for its own sake.
The “Christ-believing group” … is sent out: “Go and preach the gospel!” … In it all the one thing must prevail: “Proclaim the gospel to every creature!” The Church runs like a herald to deliver the message. It is not a snail that carries its little house on its back and is so well off in it that only now and then it sticks out its feelers and then thinks that the “claim of publicity” has been satisfied. No, the Church lives by its commission as herald. The Church … must ask itself whether it is serving this commission or whether it is a purpose in itself. If the church becomes a purpose in itself, then as a rule it begins to smack of the “sacred,” to affect piety, to play the priest and to mumble.”
You cannot have a non-missionary church. The church exists to preach the gospel.
Romans 10 14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?
PREACHING THE GOSPEL
In the New Testament the word “preach” appears just 6 times in the context of preaching sermons in church. But the same word preach appears 106 times with the meaning of announcing or proclaiming the good news, acting as a herald or delivering a message. Preaching is essentially proclaiming or announcing – a preacher is simply God’s messenger.
Preaching can take many forms. From Billy Graham in his great rallies to ordinary ministers in their pulpits week by week. From open-air preaching to evangelistic courses like Alpha and our own “Meet Jesus” course. From delivering leaflets and scriptures and booklets to concerts and dramas to radio and TV programmes. Paul said to the church at Ephesus,
Acts 20 20 You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. 21 I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.
Wherever and whenever it happens, preaching is proclamation and announcement. We can be witnesses to our faith by compassion and healing. Mission can be expressed in actions in teaching or agriculture or medicine or caring. But it is only preaching if the gospel is proclaimed in words. If the way of salvation is announced.
Let us be clear about what the Christian gospel is. The gospel is not an offer. The gospel is not an invitation. The gospel is not a debate. The true gospel is simply an announcement that Christ has come, and that Christ is Lord of all. And that announcement is so earth-shattering that it demands a response from every one of us who hears it. JESUS IS THE CHRIST! So repent and believe!
And preaching is simply the announcement of that gospel. The message has to be in words people can understand. It has to be relevant and practical and speak to where people are at! But the message has to be delivered!!
Have you noticed how the verb “to preach” has acquired a negative connotation nowadays? For more than 1900 years “preaching” was welcomed by everybody as a worthwhile and noble activity. But now we live in this post-modern world where truth is relative and the only thing you are allowed to be certain about is that you aren’t allowed to be certain about anything any more. So preaching is seen as something bad. “Don’t you preach at me!” “We don’t want to be preached at!” As if warning people about a terrible danger is a bad thing. As if telling people the way they can escape that danger is a bad thing! We must not be ashamed of proclaiming the truth of the gospel, of declaring that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that Jesus Christ is Lord of all and that people must repent! Very sadly, anybody who preaches the gospel in these days can expect trouble. But we must not be afraid – we must be obedient! Remember that preachers are not making up the message they are delivering. They have been
SENT WITH THE GOSPEL
Paul had his own personal experience of being send out on his missionary journeys by the church which sometimes supported him, the church at Ephesus.
Acts 13:1 In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. 2 While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” 3 So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.
4 The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus. 5 When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. John was with them as their helper.
Every evangelist and missionary and preacher needs an experience of being sent by God. That is one of the things which keeps us going when the going gets tough.
But evangelists and missionaries and preachers also need to be sent by churches: churches which help in practical ways and sometimes with money but always most importantly with prayer.
You will remember how in the letter to the Ephesians Paul asks that church to pray for him. But listen to what he wants them to pray for.
Ephesians 618 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. 19 Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.
Those who preach the gospel need the support of sending churches. We should pray for the missionaries we support. Jerry and Ruth in Nepal. Esther Townsend in Zambia. Other missionaries we may know personally.
I hope you also pray for your minister in the different opportunities he has to share the gospel. For our Sunday Services as we have visitors and guests who may not know Jesus. But there are other opportunities as well. For example I will be speaking at three assemblies for Harvest for the Hungry next week – all opportunities to share the gospel. And this Friday evening between 8 and 10 pm I will be the guest on Phoenix FM, the local radio station for Brentwood and Billericay which you can also hear in most of Chelmsford, talking about Harvest for the Hungry.
We need to pray for those sharing the gospel at Toddler Group tomorrow and Drop In on Friday and Impact Youth Group on Saturday. It would make such a difference if every member of the church took a special interest in one of our outreach activities, found out what goes on and prayed week by week and especially as the activity is taking place.
But each one of us has our part to play in sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. God has sent all of us to announce his good news. By telling our friends and neighbours that God loves them!
Romans 10 15 And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
All of us share in this privilege of telling people the way they can be saved!
John Wesley used to ask young Methodists who wanted to become a minister two questions about their preaching. Did anybody get converted? And did anybody get mad? Unless the preacher answered yes to both questions, Wesley would not ordain them as a minister.
“How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”
How can they hear? May it never be the case that anybody in North Springfield could say, “We never heard the gospel because North Springfield Baptist Church never told us!