Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

This video is a little over 4 hours long, but is broken into 15 segments. This part is covered from 2 hour 35 minutes to 2 hour 39 minutes.

Romans 10

Nevertheless the apostle earnestly desired salvation for them. He owned they had a zeal for God, but yet it was not according to knowledge — the knowledge of the written Word. Did they know that rightly, they would understand how righteous God is. It is because of their ignorance of this that they are seeking to establish a righteousness of their own; but in doing so they are not submitting to a righteousness provided in grace by God. They are in the darkness of unbelief; for, for believers, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness; Christ being received, He is to the believer all that the law can claim (Rom. 10:1-4).

The apostle now turns to explain the difference between the righteousness which is of law and the righteousness that is by faith. The righteousness of the law consists in doing the things it requires. This the law affirms repeatedly, as every reader of the Old Testament Scriptures should know. Now, to show the character of the righteousness which is of faith, he appeals to Deut. 30:12-14. In this chapter Moses is informing Israel that after they have fallen under the curse of the law their only hope will be in the grace of God, who will no longer put them on the ground of their obedience as the way of life and blessing, but will circumcise their hearts to love the Lord (ver. 6). This answers to the prophet’s word in Jer. 31:31-33, where Israel is told that God will in grace establish them under a new covenant — a covenant of a very different character from that of the old legal one. The principle of the new covenant will be faith, not works. Therefore, instead of doing, in order to have God’s law in the heart, it will be having the law in the heart by grace, the doing it being the result. Consequently, when Israel from the heart calls upon the name of the Lord, she will be saved. She will then stand before God in a righteousness not her own, but given her of God — a righteousness which is of faith.

Having thus shown by appealing to Moses the character of the righteousness which is by faith, the apostle now informs the Jew that this is what he is preaching; and if he objects that it should only be preached to the Jew, he shows that the prophets expressly apply it universally: their oft-repeated “whosoever believeth” opens the door of the gospel to the Gentiles (verses 5-13).

Therefore, if the prophets contemplate the gospel going out to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews, it is those who are resisting its world-wide proclamation that are nullifying the word of God. Hearing, whether in a Jew or a Gentile, comes by faith; and faith in the heart is by the power of the word of God. It is by preaching the Word that God reaches the heart. Necessarily then there must be messengers of the Word, and those who seek to carry the message of God’s grace to the Gentiles can justify themselves in doing so by abundant Old Testament scriptures (verses 14-17).

Furthermore, Israel is fully without excuse for resisting Christianity, because, while on the one hand her own Scriptures anticipate it, on the other hand she has been faithfully warned, by Moses himself too, that God would provoke her to jealousy by them that are no people; and Isaiah very boldly declares the turning of the Gentiles to God, and finding Him, while Israel is still a disobedient and gainsaying people (verses 18-21).