Romans 10:16-21: An Open Invitation

Romans 10:16-21: An Open Invitation

Please turn with me in your Bible to Romans 10. If you’re using one of the Story Bibles we provide, that’s on page 784. We’ve been working our way passage by passage through Paul’s letter to the Romans, and this morning the next passage we come to is Romans 10:16-21.When I was in college, I worked at a summer camp during the months of June, July, and August. And one of the things we loved to do at this summer camp was go repelling. We had a spot not too far away from the camp where we could repel down a cliff that was about 100 feet high. And whenever we repelled down this cliff, we were always very diligent to make sure that our repelling gear was in good condition—because obviously our lives depended on it. And one of the pieces of equipment that we had to be very careful about was the carabiners we used—those metal hooks with a clip on them. Our camp leaders told us that if we accidently dropped a carabiner onto a hard surface, even if it was only a few feet from the ground when we dropped it, we had to retire that carabiner and not use it any more. Apparently, dropping the carabiner and having it hit that hard surface could actually create tiny hairline fractures, causing the carabiner to break the next time it was under pressure. So we had to be very careful that we didn’t drop our carabiners and to replace one if we did drop it—because it was critical that we were able to trust our equipment. Our lives depended on it. 

And that’s also very much the case when it comes to Christianity. Christianity is about entrusting our eternal destiny to God. Just like my friends and I entrusted our physical welfare to our repelling gear, we who are Christians have decided to entrust our eternal welfare, our eternal destiny, to God. We’re trusting that he’ll come through on the promises he’s made—specifically his promises about salvation and heaven and things like that. 

But there was apparently a question in the minds of the people to whom Paul was writing the letter of Romans about whether God had failed to keep some promises he had made to his people Israel. You see, God had promised the Israelites that they would experience amazing blessings with the coming of the Messiah. However—both at the time of Paul’s writing and even today—most of the Israelites have rejected their Messiah Jesus and therefore aren’t experiencing the blessings he offers. So the question is whether God has failed to keep his promises to Israel. And here’s why that should concern us. If God failed to keep his promises to Israel, how can we have any confidence he’ll keep his promises to us? How can we have any confidence we’ll get to experience the things God’s promised us in heaven? So if we’re going to have even a shred of peace or joy in our lives, we have to be thoroughly convinced that God can be trusted to keep his promises. 

That’s why Paul spends three whole chapters in Romans—chapters 9, 10, and 11—explaining how God hasn’t failed to keep his promises to Israel. First of all, as we saw a few weeks ago in chapter 9, Paul explained that God’s promises, when there were originally given, weren’t directed toward every single person who was ethnically a part of the Israelite nation. Rather, God sovereignly chose certain individuals from among the biological descendants of Abraham to be what we might call “true Israelites”—Israelites who were true to God in their hearts. And it was only to these true Israelites, who had been sovereignly chosen by God, that God’s promises were directed. So God hadn’t failed to keep his promises to the Israelites of Paul’s day who had rejected Jesus. God’s promises were never directed to those people in the first place. They were directed to the true Israelites—to those who had embraced Jesus and who were enjoying the benefits God had promised. All of that was covered in chapter 9. 

Then we come to chapter 10. And in chapter 10, Paul demonstrates that even though God is indeed sovereign in choosing which Israelites are saved and which aren’t, the Israelites that aren’t saved are still fully responsible for their present condition. It’s not God’s fault that they’re not saved or that they’re not enjoying the benefits he had promised. No, the responsibility for them not being saved rests solely on their shoulders. And that’s the point we see Paul making in our main text, Romans 10:16-21. Romans 10:16-21: 16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. 18 But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for “Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” 19 But I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says, “I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation; with a foolish nation I will make you angry.” 20 Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, “I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.” 21 But of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.” 

So here’s the main idea of that: Israel has stubbornly refused to obey the gospel despite God’s open invitation. Israel has stubbornly refused to obey the gospel despite God’s open invitation. And I’d like to look at that under two headings. Number one, the response God requires. And number two, the stubbornness Israel displayed. 

The Response God Requires

So first, the response God requires. We see in this passage that it’s not enough just to understand the gospel. It’s not enough just to understand that we were sinful and that Jesus died to take the punishment for our sins and that he victoriously resurrected from the dead on the third day. Those things are all true and form the very foundation of Christian teaching, but it’s not enough for us to just understand those gospel truths. God requires that we also respond to them appropriately. 

And this really is the companion truth to what we learned about God’s sovereignty back in chapter 9. In chapter 9, we learned that God sovereignly chooses some people to be saved and passes over others. But we never want to take that truth and go in some fatalistic direction with it. We never want to fall into the fatalistic error of thinking that we don’t need to do anything since it’s all up to God anyway. That would be a very serious distortion of what Paul was saying. And so, the companion truth to God’s sovereignty in chapter 9 is human responsibility in chapter 10. You can think of Romans 9 as the left leg and Romans 10 is the right leg. You’ve gotta have both legs to get somewhere. I mean, have you ever stood up after you were sitting down for a while and discovered that one of your legs is asleep? It’s kind of hard to walk, isn’t it? You’re probably not going to get very far. There was a time several months ago where I almost fell down the stairs because I was too stubborn to wait a minute for my leg to return to normal after it had fallen asleep. So don’t try to do that theologically. Don’t neglect either Romans 9 or Romans 10. You need both of them in order to have a healthy view of salvation. So Romans 10 complements Romans 9 by making it clear that, yes, God is sovereign, but we still have a responsibility to respond appropriately to the gospel. 

And we’ve already read a lot in Romans 10 about the kind of response God requires. In Romans 10:9, as we saw two weeks ago, Paul talked about confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing in your heart that God raised him from the dead. Then Paul said in verse 13 that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” But notice what Paul says in our main passage. In verse 16, he talks about obeying the gospel. He says, “But they [the Israelites] have not all obeyed the gospel.” Hmm.... That’s an interesting phrase isn’t it? Obeying the gospel. Then in the second half of the verse, Paul quotes Isaiah as asking, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” The implication there is that believing is the appropriate response to the gospel. And with that we’re back to more familiar terminology—believing the gospel. But what about that first phrase—obeying the gospel? What exactly does Paul mean by that? Well, he seems to be using it almost interchangeably with believing. To believe the gospel is, in large part, to obey the gospel. We can see this also in John chapter 3. In John 3:36, it says, Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. So notice that believing in the Son is used synonymously with obeying the Son. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life. 

So here’s what we can take away from that. If you think that you’re a Christian and that you’re going to heaven because you “believe” the gospel, but there’s no obedience to Jesus in your life, then I’ve got news for you: you don’t really believe the gospel. There’s something missing from your “belief.” Because if you really believed, you’d be striving to obey as well. It would affect the way you live. 

I remember traveling to Bosnia several years ago on a mission trip. And one of the things that stuck out to me about Bosnia was all of the visible indications of the war that had taken place in that country. Even though the war had ended over a decade before I went there, I still saw buildings that had been bombed and never rebuilt. I also saw minefields that had never been de-mined. These fields just had red tape around them with a skull and cross bones telling you not to walk in that field. And so all of us on the team were obviously very careful not to go on the other side of that tape. We believed that tape was there for a reason—that there really were land mines on the other side of it. So our belief affected our behavior. And that’s the way true belief always works. I mean, if you were in Bosnia and saw someone go beyond that tape, you would conclude either that they didn’t value their life very much or that they didn’t really believe the tape was marking off a real danger. Because anyone who believes the tape is marking off a real danger and values their life would not go on the other side of that tape. True belief always affects your behavior. And belief in the gospel is no different. If you truly believe the gospel, it’s going to affect the way you live and cause you to obey the teachings of Jesus. So that’s why, back in Romans 10, Paul can write about obeying the gospel and believing the gospel and use those two phrases interchangeably. Belief in and obedience to the gospel are inseparable. And those together form the response God requires. 

The Stubbornness Israel Displayed

But in our passage, we see not only the response God requires but also, point number two, the stubbornness Israel displayed. The stubbornness Israel displayed. And Paul quotes a lot from the Old Testament to describe the stubborn response of Israel. Look again at verse 16: But they [the Israelites] have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” The implied answer to Isaiah’s question is, not many. Not many of the Israelites have believed. Then verses 17-18: So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for [quoting Psalm 19] “Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” So it’s not as though Israel didn’t hear the gospel. They definitely did. Paul quotes Psalm 19 as a way of arguing that. And it is a bit tricky to determine exactly how Paul’s using Psalm 19 here, because in its original context, Psalm 19 was talking about the general truths about God revealed in nature rather than about the more specific gospel truths revealed only in the Bible. So apparently, Paul’s thought is that the truths of the gospel are now being proclaimed in New Testament times on a scale and with a scope that’s roughly comparable to the worldwide availability of the more general truths about God back in Old Testament times. But whatever you make of Paul’s use of Psalm 19, the point is clear: no one can claim that the Israelites haven’t heard the gospel. They absolutely have and have had plenty of opportunity to believe it. 

Then on to verses 19-20: 19 But I ask, did Israel not understand? In other words, did they not understand that salvation would come to the Gentiles after the Israelites themselves rejected it? First Moses says, “I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation; with a foolish nation I will make you angry.” 20 Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, “I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.” So these quotations make the point that God had predicted from the beginning that Israel would stubbornly reject him and that he would therefore offer salvation to Gentiles—to people outside of Israel. Moses said that. Isaiah said that. Then verse 21: But of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.” And that’s the climax of this indictment against Israel. God says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.”

Notice here how clearly human responsibility is taught. Remember, we need two legs: God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. So notice how clearly we see human responsibility here. Paul doesn’t say that these Israelites aren’t saved because God hasn’t chosen then. Not at all. God is presented here not as keeping people out of heaven in his sovereignty but as holding out his hands to these Israelites, eagerly and passionately inviting them to be saved. God’s not rejecting the Israelites. The Israelites are rejecting him. You might compare it to a rebellious teenager who’s just turned 18 and moved out of his parents’ house and wants nothing to do with mom or dad. He knows so much more about life than they do and has no interest in keeping their silly rules any longer. So he moves out and won’t even pick up his phone when they call him. Now, assuming his parents are like most parents, they’re going to miss him dearly when he does that. They’re going to grieve over his departure. And they’re going to eagerly desire his return. Perhaps they’ll even write letters to him telling him that he’s welcome to move back in any time. “The door is always open,” they might say. “Your room is just the way you left it—and it’s just waiting for you.” That’s the attitude God has toward Israel and toward anyone who’s unsaved. He hasn’t locked them out of the house by not choosing them. No, they’re the ones who refuse to come. They’re the ones who stubbornly persist in their rebellion. And so, they’re the ones who bear full responsibility for their sinful condition and who will rightly experience God’s judgment one day—unless of course they repent. And if they repent, God stands ready to receive him. In fact, God yearns for them to do that. He wants to be merciful to them. As 2 Peter 3:9 states, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise [that is, his promise to return] as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” So God doesn’t wish that any should perish but that all should reach repentance. He yearns to be merciful. And as we see back in Romans 10, that yearning wasn’t diminished in any way by Israel’s rebellion. No matter how much they rebelled, God still yearned to be merciful. Again, verse 21: “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.” He was burdened for them. 

And it’s for that reason that we also should be burdened for the people around us who are far from God. Just like God is burdened for those who are far from him, we also should be burdened for them. So often, it’s unfortunately quite easy for us to become numb to the fact that people all around us have never received the salvation God offers. And as a result, they’re headed toward an eternity apart from Christ where they’ll suffer under the wrath of Almighty God forever. That’s their destiny. And that destiny is so tragic that, honestly, it’s a lot easier for us to just not think about it.  But if we really care about people, we will think about it and we will share God’s burden for their salvation. Do you feel that burden? Let me ask you something: when was the last time you wept for someone who hasn’t yet been saved? When was the last time you were praying for them and tears just started to flow because you wanted so badly for them to be saved from the wrath to come? Do you have that kind of burden for the unsaved people around you? God does. Verse 21 says that he’s holding out his hands to them “all day long.”