I invite you to take your Bible and turn with me to Romans chapter 10. We’re continuing with the study we began this morning. This is Part II, picking up part way through the outline of this study. We’ll read verses 13 through 15 again because in the middle of this passage is the theme of this year’s Global Mission Conference – “How Shall They Hear?” And I’d like you to understand very clearly why that question shapes everything about how we pursue mission. Before we read the text, let’s ask God’s blessing on our reading and study.
Holy Spirit, we come to You knowing that apart from Your divine intervention, these remain words on a page and words spoken by a man. But the promise of Your Word is that this, Your holy Word, is alive and powerful, it’s sharper than any two-edged sword, pierces even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and it’s able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. You alone, Holy Spirit, are the one who sees and enables us to see what otherwise lies hidden. So grant us much grace as we read, as we study, and as we apply Your Word to our hearts and lives. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.
Romans chapter 10, verse 13. The apostle Paul says:
“For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!’”
This is God’s Word.
When my wife and children and I moved to Eastern Europe and landed in a country that spoke a language we did not speak ourselves, did not understand, we purchased a vehicle and I remember the first time all six of us were in the car and I realized the fuel gauge was low and I did what you would have done – I pulled into a gas station. And while I didn’t speak the language at that point, I knew enough about vehicles to understand that it’s really important to put the right fuel in the tank. Right? Because we were driving a diesel vehicle, and I pushed the button, unscrewed the cap, and then stared at the pump. And I stood there and stared because the words written there were “motorina” and “benzena” and I looked around for, “Where’s the diesel?” And it took me a while to figure out that I have no idea what these words mean nor do I know whom to ask. It took hand signals and some getting help from other people to realize that “diesel” in Romanian is “motorina.” It’s really important to put the right fuel in the tank because the wrong fuel and the whole thing goes really, expensively, kablooey!
The same applies with mission. There is the right fuel to mission, and we began talking about it this morning. The fuel is articulated by what Paul defines in these four questions that highlight five components to what is necessary for Biblical mission. And we saw this morning that there are a lot of things we call mission, good things – building buildings, digging foundations, doing dental work, medical work, digging wells, helping alleviate poverty, dealing with the social and societal needs of a culture far from home. All good things. But those are the platform for the key components of what have to be present and active for it to be Biblical mission. And Paul highlights five components to what mission is; the fuel of mission. It is sending, preaching, hearing, believing, and calling upon the One in whom they are believing. Those are the necessary components. They are the sine qua non, without which nothing really changes.
And Paul makes it very clear. We started by looking at two of those five components this morning. We looked at sending and preaching – what they are and why we are so delighted to be part of a church that really is marked out by both. We have sent people to each of the countries represented by these flags, many of which you and I can’t get into today. And yet we have sent people to preach the message of rescue secured by Jesus to these places. This evening I’d like us to look at the third, fourth and fifth components of what Paul says is essential to mission. We are going to look at hearing, believing, and calling on God.
Hearing
Verse 14 then – hearing. Paul asks, “How are they to hear without someone preaching?” You see, the Gospel has to be heard intelligibly and with understanding before it can ever be believed. It’s not a magic formula that if we say the right words people will just automatically understand. It doesn’t work that way. It has to be communicated intelligibly so that it will be understood. Now, the Gospel message does not change. We don’t compromise the message. But the manner in which we communicate, proclaim that Gospel, must be contextualized.
Simple illustration – some of you know that I grew up speaking German, not as a second language but as my primary and only language. Until I was six years old, I had never heard English being spoken. I only spoke German because that’s what we spoke in our household where we lived. And my parents were really committed to their children hearing the Gospel. And so they communicated the Gospel to me and my siblings in German. They contextualized a message that makes sense to you in English; they spoke it in German. That’s all they spoke. My dad spoke eight languages but I only spoke one. But they also contextualized the message to the capacity of a four and five and six year old. They didn’t communicate the Gospel to me on a college level or on a high school level or even on a junior high school level. They communicated the truth of the Gospel in a language I understood and in a context that my young brain could grasp. To the end that, at a very early age, I understood what I heard and called out to God. I made a profession of faith at a very early age. I didn’t understand everything that I would understand when I was in high school or college or beyond, but I understood enough to say, “I need this and I want this as my own.” The Gospel must be heard in a manner where it’s understood and is intelligible. Verse 17 puts it this way. “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ,” the Word about Christ, the Word that explains the rescue that He brought about.
Believing
But from hearing, Paul goes to believing, also in verse 14. “How are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard?” How are they to believe? It’s not enough to hear it intelligibly where you understand. It has to go to believing. Now a friend of mine and I had a conversation last week where he told me about his Sunday School class. He has been teaching the same Sunday School class for decades and he said someone in the class recently said, “What is the bare minimum of what needs to be understood for someone’s belief to be orthodox? What’s the bare minimum that someone has to believe in order for them to be a genuine follower of Jesus? How much do they need to understand?” Right? Good question. Paul in verse 9 of Romans 10 says that, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and if you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” He seems to make it very simple.
And you realize that’s not the first time Paul gave that answer. As a matter of fact, remember when the Philippian jailer was about to take his own life because the earthquake had come and the doors and the stocks of the prison had burst open and he was convinced that he had lost his prisoners and he knew what the Romans would do to someone who let prisoners go free. And as he is about to take his life Paul says, “Stop! No need. We’re all still here. Don’t harm yourself.” The jailer calls for lights, he rushes in, and realizes it’s true – they’re all still there. And he falls on his knees and says to Paul and Silas who he had just had beaten and locked up in his jail, he says, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Remember Paul’s answer? Acts 16:31, he said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household.” It seems very simple, doesn’t it?
As Paul continues to pursue his mission, he continues to talk about what needs to be believed in order for someone’s faith to be orthodox, to be a genuine believer. He talks about this in a letter to Timothy. First Timothy 3:16 he says, “Great indeed is the mystery of godliness.” And then he defines this mystery. “He,” Jesus, “was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, and taken up into glory.” Question – Is that what needs to be believed in order for you to have an orthodox faith? Do you need to believe all that in order to be a genuine follower of Jesus? Let me disrupt you with another question. What part of what Paul just said would the demons also not believe? Think about it. Would the demons believe that Jesus was manifested in the flesh? Absolutely. Would the demons believe that Jesus was vindicated by the Spirit? Yes, He rose from the grave. The demons believe that. Would the demons believe that He was seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world and taken up in glory? Would the demons believe that? Oh absolutely they would. As a matter of fact, James 2:19 says, “You believe that God is one, good. You do well. But even the demons believe and shutter.”
Calling upon God
I think we ought to pause and think about the question, “What separates saving believing from the believing of the demons that doesn’t do them any good, that simply makes them shutter with absolute terror?” The answer, I believe, is in Paul’s fifth component of mission. It’s not enough to lead people to understand and believe. They have to call upon the One in whom they believe. And that’s what we need to think about most deeply as we think about mission, as we think about our own walk with the Lord. The last part of these five components, the fuel of mission, is calling on the name of the One in whom they believe. That goes to Paul’s first question, “How will they call upon the One in whom they have not believed?” He talks about this in Romans 10:13, quoting from Joel chapter 2 – “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” At the end of the day, this is what mission is after – leading people not just to hear and understand or even just believe. Mission is to lead people to call upon the name of the Lord as their own.
The question is, “What does that mean?” What does it really mean to call upon the name of the Lord? If you do a study of all sixty-six books of the Bible, you discover that “calling on the Lord” is repeated fifty-eight times. It is a dominant undercurrent. It becomes one of the clearest description of one who is in right relationship with God Himself. It goes all the way back to Genesis chapter 4, after creation, after the fall, the curse, the banishment from the garden, after Cain the firstborn kills Abel the second born, after the third born Seth is born, he grows up and he has a child. This is Adam and Eve’s grandson whom he names, Enosh. If you go back to the Hebrew, the word Enosh comes from a root that means “delicate, fragile,” or even “soft.” And my suspicion is that Seth, the third born child of Adam and Eve, held his newborn baby boy in his hands and he looked at him and he says, “You are Enosh. You are fragile. You are vulnerable. You are limited. You are mortal. Your life and my life, our lives are transient. They are empty. They are meaningless without God who created us in His image. We need help!” And the very next verse in Genesis 4 says, “At that time, people began to call upon the name of the Lord.” That’s the first time it’s mentioned, but then it’s repeated over and over and over. When God calls Abram, Abram builds an altar and calls upon the name of the Lord. His son, Isaac, does the same.
If you’ll bear with me, I want to take you through a really quick look at what the Bible says about “calling on the name” so you hear it ringing through your ears and see where it applies to us and to mission. You go forward into the Psalms. So many of the Psalms talk about “calling on the name.” Psalm 18:3, David says, “I call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised and I am saved from my enemies.” Psalm 50 verse 15, God says, “Call upon Me in your day of trouble. I will deliver you and you shall glorify Me.” Psalm 135 verse 1, “O give thanks to the Lord! Call upon His name! Make known His deeds among the peoples” – mission. We call upon the name of the Lord so that the mission goes forward. Psalm 145:18, “The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.” Psalm 116 verse 12, “What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits to me?” Answer? “I will take up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.” Do you see the recurring imagery? Calling on the name of the Lord is a way of looking to Him and saying, “Yes, I need You. I want You. I desire You. I cannot live life without You. I have no hope apart from You.” Psalm 116 verse 2, the psalmist says this is not just a once for all calling upon the Lord; it’s a life of calling upon Him. The psalmist says, “Because He inclined His ear to me, therefore I will call on Him as long as I live.” It’s all through the Psalms.
And then you go to the prophets and they pick up the same theme. Remember Elijah on the top of Mt. Carmel confronting the prophets of Baal? He throws down the gauntlet and says, “Let’s find out whose God is real, Baal or the God of heaven. You build an altar. I’ll build an altar. We’ll put a sacrificial animal on each and you call on the name of your god and I’ll call on the name of the Lord.” It was a way of saying, “God, show Yourself to be who You are.” And you know how that story ended, right? Then you go to Zephaniah chapter 3 verse 9. God says, “For at that time, I will change My people that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord and serve Him with one accord.”
Then you shift to the New Testament and it becomes even more clear how this designation is used – “those who call on the name of the Lord.” When Saul was sent out to round up those who were followers of Jesus and he began throwing them in prison, persecuting them, even killing them, standing there as a witness to the stoning of Stephen, do you know who he was after? Acts 9:14, Ananias, who is told, “Go see this man who is going to be my mouthpiece. His name is Saul.” Ananias says, “No way! I can’t go see him! Saul had authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on the name of the Lord!” Acts 9:21, Paul begins to preach and all who heard him were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem on all those who called on the name of the Lord?” Now it’s no longer just an Old Testament Hebrew image, but now that “calling on the name of the Lord” is the specific title given to those who love and trust and follow Jesus and are willing to sacrifice everything for Him. Those who call on the name of the Lord.
And then when Paul writes the letter, his first letter to the church of Corinth, he defines who he is writing to. First Corinthians 1 verse 2, “I am writing to those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus.” Here’s the point. If you look at the whole sweep of Scripture, you discover that being a genuine follower of Jesus Christ is not just to believe on Him. It is to call upon Him. It is to live a life that says, “I need You desperately, like Seth said as he held Enosh, his firstborn. I am frail. I am needy. I am lost without You. And for all of my life I cast myself upon You. I need You. I long for You.” But more than that, it’s also saying, “I delight myself in You.” I get that in how Paul speaks of those who ultimately reject Christ. In 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 10, he talks about those who perish eternally and he explains why they perish. He says, “They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.” He doesn’t say they perished because they refused to believe the truth, because even the demons believe the truth and shutter. He says, “No, they perish eternally because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved.” So to call upon the name of the Lord is to cast ourselves upon Him and say, “You are my only hope. I need You and I love You. You are the truth and You have made Yourself known to me and I love that I belong to You.”
That’s what we are trying to accomplish when we send forth preachers, missionaries, to each of these countries represented by the flags that surround this sanctuary. Paul says it. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Everyone who lives a life of saying, “Lord Jesus, I am lonely. Be near to me. Lord Jesus, I am lost and confused. Will You guide me? Lord Jesus, I am trapped in my addiction and temptation and idolatry. Would You please rescue me? Lord Jesus, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go. Would You direct my steps? Would You be near to me?” It’s a life of calling out to Him.
And it’s not just being rescued in eternity that this accomplishes. It’s being rescued to a life of richness and blessedness and fullness now. It’s a present rescue. Do you know where I get that? Look at verse 12 where Paul says, “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all” – here it is – “bestowing His riches on all who call on Him.” It’s not just a barely adequate rescue and salvation that is ours when we call out to Him. It is a rich and full and, as Paul said, a beautiful salvation that becomes ours and that we make known to others. That’s the structure of mission. That’s the fuel of mission. Sending, preaching, hearing, believing, and calling upon the One in whom we believe.
I’ve thought about this a lot as I’ve watched the news and read the reports of the Russian invasion in Ukraine. I’ve read so many articles. I’ve looked at so many photographs, one of which brought me to tears. And I sent it to my kids because I was so moved by it. I even talked to my son earlier today and he said he’s not been able to stop thinking about this photo. It’s a photo of – you may have seen it – four Ukrainian women sitting in a van and they’re seated there with military assault weapons strapped over their shoulders and they’re holding them awkwardly. And each of these women has a look of fear all over their faces. One of the women in the middle is sobbing. And I couldn’t stop looking at that picture. Emily sent me a video later showing me an interview with these women. One of the women speaks English and the interviewer was asking her, “What are you feeling?” And through tears she said, “I am so afraid.” The interviewer asked her, “Do you know how to use that weapon?” She said, “I don’t know how to use this weapon. I’m a teacher.” Women in their 30s and 40s and yet they’re taking up arms to defend their country, to kill or be killed. And we have missionaries in this country today who have gone forth, they’ve been sent, to preach that people hear and believe and call out to this One in whom they believe.
And I thought about the context in which all of this is unfolding. And think about it, Ukraine is a country like the country where Emily and I served, where roughly 80% of the people in Ukraine would call themselves Christians. Most of them are Ukrainian Orthodox. They would profess belief that the Bible is God’s Word. They would go to church sometimes. And they would profess the same Nicene Creed, the twelve central articles of faith that you and I have professed in this church. They would say, “Yeah, we believe this.” And yet we send missionaries there, and missionaries who we have sent have not bailed; they’ve stayed in the face of an imminent, life threatening attack. Why? Because people in Ukraine, just like so many people in this country and maybe even some in this congregation would say, “Yeah, I believe,” but they’ve never called on this One in whom they believe. They’ve never entrusted their lives on this One to whom they can say, “I don’t have anything. I am nothing apart from You. You are my everything,” as the choir sang this morning. “All my hope is in You, for today and for all eternity.” This is why we do mission even among people who think they already have everything they need from the one they claim is God.
There is sending, there is preaching, there is hearing, there is believing, but there must be calling upon this One apart from whom we have no life. How shall they hear unless we send? Let’s pray together.
Father, I am struck by what my brother Paul said earlier this evening – “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.” There is a beauty in this mission. It’s not simply a matter of duty – doing what we should so we won’t feel guilty for not having done it. But there is a beauty. There is a high calling. There is a delight in making Jesus known, not simply that people believe but they call upon this One in whom they believe; that they entrust themselves to Him, that they find Jesus to be their greatest joy, their most valuable treasure, their deepest delight. Would You please make it so in each of our lives so that we would be those who invite others to feast at the same table in which we have found our greatest joy and deepest delight. Make it so, here, across this city and state, across this nation, and across the world, that we would be those who find our place in finishing the mission to the end that we would see Jesus return to gather up His completed Bride. We long for that day and we celebrate even now it’s certain coming. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.