Many Questions (Romans 10:14-21)

Who are some of the wisest people you know? Are they the people who ask questions or are they those who can answer them? It is the case that the ability to answer a question is not always proof of wisdom. We could ask a gambler how much money he is wasting and he could provide the exact figure, but his knowledge is not an expression of wisdom. If he were wise he would not throw away his money.

Of course, questions can be used to make people think in order to discover the reality of a situation or to bring to a person’s attention the seriousness of a situation. We assume that a news reporter has asked appropriate questions before he delivers his details, but those details should cause us to ask further questions. Or we can picture a lawyer in a courtroom asking questions to get to the truth.

Paul uses the method of asking questions in this passage. Did you notice how many questions there are within it? There are at least six, and seven if we include the question quoted from Isaiah 53:1 in verse 17. Paul obviously wanted his readers to think carefully about the items he brings to their attention.

As we have seen, Paul in this section of his letter is explaining to his mainly Gentile readers what has happened to the spiritually privileged race of Israel since the ascension of Jesus. No longer does Israel hold its unique place among the nations as the custodian of God’s truth and worship. Its temple and its rituals are no longer necessary for the worship of God.

In the previous verses, Paul has explained how any person, whether a Jew or a Gentile, can call upon the Lord for mercy. Clearly, he is describing what we could call a universal blessing that is available to all. Yet Paul knows that although the freedom to call is available, it will not automatically happen unless four things take place in order to bring about the call, and he mentions those four features in the list of questions he raises in verses 14 to 17.

(1)          Before a person will call on the Lord, they will need to believe in the Lord.

(2)         Before a person will believe in the Lord, they need to be told about him.

(3)         The usual method of such information being passed on is by preaching.

(4)         Before a person preaches, he needs to be sent.

        

Believing in the Lord

A small word can make a big difference to a sentence. Paul states that the person who calls on the Lord believes in him before doing so. It is possible for a person to believe about the Lord, but that is not the same as believing in him. We can describe a belief about Jesus as a notional faith and it can include an understanding that all that is said about him is true. But such a faith by itself is not saving faith, although it is part of saving faith. To believe in Jesus means to depend upon Jesus. Such faith is not detached from him or merely clinical in its assessment. Instead there is dependence upon Jesus and delight in him. True faith is that of a warm personal relationship with Jesus. When a person has that kind of faith, he will call upon the name of the Lord.

Told about the Lord

Paul uses different words in this passage to describe this necessary information that a person needs to be told. In verse 16 he calls it the gospel and in verse 17 he calls it the word of Christ. The first describes its nature (good news) and the second describes its content (truths about Jesus). Both the nature and content are always present when the message is declared accurately. If a message about Jesus does not contain good news it has not been told fully or properly.

Obviously, a lot could be said about the details of Jesus that are good news. In a sense, this is what Paul has done already in this letter to the Romans, and we can extend this to include the contents of the whole Bible. For now, we can say that the message is good news because it is about salvation from sin and its consequences, and there is salvation because Jesus provided it through his activities on behalf of sinners.

It is important to note that Paul insists that the gospel is a message with authority. We can see that from his comment in verse 16 that many have not obeyed the gospel. It is the case that we believe in what is called the free offer of the gospel, but that does not mean that we are free to reject the offer. The title of Jesus, the one on who we call, is ‘Lord’, and in itself it stresses the authority of the message. In the gospel, there is a call to submission, to accept the terms of salvation laid out by the Lord.

The method of preaching

Paul indicates here that the usual method of conveying the message is by preaching. What is preaching? Lots of books have been written about the topic, which tells us that there are a lot of opinions about it. So what can we say about it in a brief way?

The word Paul uses here means to herald, and a herald was sent to deliver a message of another person, usually a ruler. So preaching is the telling of a particular message by a servant of the Lord. The ruler would want his message explained carefully and straightforwardly. Moreover, the herald would ensure that he had a relevant audience. The herald would be delighted to declare the message and would want his listeners to embrace it and would warn of the consequences of disobeying the message.

Paul gives a description of divine messengers in verse 15 by citing a verse found in Isaiah 52:7 which originally referred to messengers who ran over the countryside to inform people that the Babylonian empire had been destroyed and the captives had been freed. We can easily imagine how glad listeners would have been to hear the message. Perhaps at first it sounded too good to be true as those messengers joyfully told God’s people about the great things he had done for them. Yet once appreciated their message caused great joy and strong praise to the Lord

Preachers are sent

Paul does not say in verse 15 who sends the preachers. Does he mean that God sends them or that the church sends them? In an ideal situation, both would be true and this may be what Paul has in mind. Of course, the mention of sending means that the idea did not originate in the mind of the herald. Instead, the person chosen is selected by the Lord or by the church, and also the place of service at any time is chosen by them as well. What should the effects of this sending be?

One clear deduction from God sending a herald to a place is that he has people there whom he intends to save and bless. God obviously has many heralds, which means that he has planned to work in numerous places simultaneously. A denomination sends individuals to different places and tries to contribute to their work, but their oversight is largely external. In contrast, God works internally in the lives of people as the good news is declared.

Therefore the presence of an authentic herald should create spiritual expectation that God is doing or is about to do a spiritual work in a community. The message of the herald changes lives because the Subject of the message changes the hearts of listeners as they grasp the contents, believe in the Saviour it describes, and call upon him. That is the process we should be expecting and praying for.

Heralds and Israel (vv. 15-19)

As we have observed, Paul is concerned with explaining the place of Israel in the purposes of God and here the apostle writes about whether or not Israel at that time had heard the gospel, how they responded to it, and whether there were any benefits accompanying their response.

The apostle points out in verse 15 that the gospel had been sent to the Israelites. As we noted earlier, he uses a verse from Isaiah 52 to illustrate how the gospel came to them. The message of the cross was first declared to Israelites and we could think about how beautiful the feet of the messengers were on the Day of Pentecost as the gospel was declared to those who had rejected Jesus as Messiah a few weeks before that day. Those who responded in faith discovered that they had been delivered by Jesus from bondage far more severe than the captivity in Babylon to which that verse from Isaiah 52 had referred originally. They had been delivered from the penalty and power of sin, had been forgiven and reconciled to God, when they had called upon him.

But in verses 16 and 17, Paul comments sadly that not all of them responded correctly to the gospel. The apostle moves his eye slightly down the scroll of Isaiah and mentions the first verse of Isaiah 53, a verse in which Isaiah in his day lamented the fact that no one was paying heed to his prophecies about the coming Messiah. It is significant that Paul connects the gospel message to that chapter in Isaiah because it refers to the sufferings of Jesus as well as to his glory. And that helps us understand what Paul means by ‘the word of Christ’ in verse 17.

Paul asks in verse 18 whether or not the Israelites had heard the message and answers his own question by quoting from Psalm 19:4, a verse that refers to how the creation speaks of God all the time and in every place. We should not imagine that Paul is choosing a verse at random, but see instead that he is indicating that in a way similar to how God speaks universally in creation so he speaks to people about the gospel, a reminder of the rapid progress that the gospel can make. After all, the people of Israel had been scattered throughout the world for centuries and often Christian churches came from the synagogues after they gospel had been preached there.

The fact that the Israelites have heard the gospel leads Paul to make three more comments about them and the coming into God’s kingdom of the Gentiles (vv. 19-21). First, he points out that God had judged the Israelites because they had rejected the message after understanding its contents (v. 19). The judgement was that the Jews would become jealous and angry when God opened the door of his kingdom to Gentiles. Is this not what happened frequently in the Book of Acts? Paul is informing his readers that they should not be surprised at the hostile conduct of the Jews because Moses had predicted in Deuteronomy 32:21 when he stated that was how God would treat the Israelites when they rejected his message. So Paul says that the Israelites in general are under divine judgement because of their rejection of the gospel.

Second, he reminds his readers that the refusal of Israel did not mean that the kingdom would be without members (v. 20). Instead Paul cites from Isaiah 65:1 and says that it predicted that the Gentiles, who previously had no interest in God, would become his people. All Paul needed to do was get his readers to look around them and see that the kingdom of God was extending before their eyes, even although the Israelites had rejected the message.

Third, Paul stresses that the judgement on Israel and the ingathering of Gentiles did not mean that God did not want to bless Israelites. Rather the Lord was imploring them continually to return to him (v. 21). Here we see that God desires to show mercy even to those under his judgement. In the next chapter Paul will explain how mercy will yet be shown to disobedient Israel. But for the present we should consider the amazing fact that the Lord desires to bless those whose conduct brings his judgement upon them.