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00:27 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:31 Welcome to the cafe, Pastor Clark Covington here with another episode of KJV Cafe. I’m so glad you joined me. It’s such a blessing to be here.
00:40 If you’re tuning in for the first time, thank you for joining us. You can find out more about us at kjvcafe.com. And if you’re a regular listener, thank you so much for your support, for listening. That means the world to me, amen.
00:53 And hopefully this program has been a blessing to you. I know today will bless you because I’m going to tell you what God finds beautiful.
01:01 Do you know the Bible tells us what God finds beautiful? And the beauty is in sharing the gospel.
01:12 I’ll start with our text verse. I’m going to give you a little illustration and then we’re going to look at some more verses. Our text verse here is Romans 10:15.
01:22 And how shall they preach except they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things.
01:33 That idea of how beautiful are the feet or those that are traveling. Of course, you think of the missionary traveling to share the gospel, but it could be someone doing social media evangelism.
01:51 It could be someone traveling to school or to work. It could be someone texting someone, sharing a testimony.
01:58 How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things.
01:59 I’m so thankful for the gospel of Jesus Christ. It saved me, changed me. God saved me.
02:09 God changed me by what Christ did on the cross. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today is how God finds it beautiful and how we too can see the great beauty in sharing the gospel when we think about it. But let’s start with this illustration.
02:21 The holiday season is here. At least it is now. You may be listening to this later on.
02:25 Trust me right now. It’s peak holiday season. We’re all so busy.
02:31 I go to different places. You know, we have packages to mail and go to the grocery and so forth. And it’s just people said to my wife, it wasn’t so much because we live kind of in a rural area.
02:44 It wasn’t so much that there was more people in the store than normal or more people at the post office, though maybe there were, but just that there seemed more busy, that people were moving faster and they had more things to do.
02:57 And we’re all so busy in this holiday season. So imagine you have a family, a godly family that got very busy, just like anyone else would in this time of year.
03:09 You know, dad got a promotion at work, which means more money, which is great. But there’s more time away from the family because you know what? Oftentimes they pay you the big bucks. They want you to do a little bit more work.
03:18 Amen. And mom, she is busy. She’s keeping the house and she’s going to school at night to become a teacher because she wants to contribute to the household with inflation and everything.
03:29 And she says, I’m sick of seeing these grocery stores with these prices so high. I’m going to go back to school and become a teacher and make me some extra money for the family.
03:39 So mom is busy keeping the house and going to school.
03:44 Dad is busy with his new promotion. The son there in that family is studying all day and practicing soccer and basketball all the time when the phone is not available, of course. And the daughter, she’s trying out for the school play.
03:55 She’s keeping up with her schoolwork. She’s even learning to code, to program on the computer. She’s so busy.
04:03 And Sunday rolls around and they attend church faithfully. And that’s it. That is their their commitment to the Lord.
04:09 They’re going to church faithfully. That’s it. So my question for you is, what has this family done to spread the gospel?
04:17 Now, if in all these places they go, they’re talking about the Lord, they’re testifying to who God is, there’s a chance they could be spreading the gospel.
04:25 I don’t know in this example, but let’s say they’re not. Let’s say church is kind of in that silo or in that bucket, so to speak. They go to church and that’s that.
04:34 They check that off the list and that is that the Bible comes out of the trunk of the car for a church and goes back in the trunk of the car if it even comes out of the car at all.
04:42 You know, nowadays the app gets opened at church, the app gets closed and the app won’t get open again until the next church, whatever it may be. This is all they’re doing now.
04:53 They may in fact be a godly family. They may in fact be representative of many godly families in this country here today. But they are not spreading the gospel.
04:59 They are trying to survive and thrive in this culture, in this world. If anything, they are representing a culture that is so focused on materialism and achievement. That would be like exceptionalism and all of these things.
05:17 Education. Nothing wrong with achieving great things. Nothing wrong with education.
05:23 Nothing wrong with having a car that runs or a house that’s nice and warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
05:32 There’s nothing wrong with these things, but there is something wrong when it takes away from the main thing and the main thing is sharing the gospel.
05:44 And that in fact is what’s beautiful to God.And how it must grieve a holy, loving God to have saved us by his gospel and to see us squander an opportunity to be fruitful for him.
05:45 So now I just want to get into Romans 10. You know, the entire chapter of Romans 10 is about the gospel.
05:53 Paul references the gospel in every verse in Romans 10. I’m going to show you in a minute how. Romans 10 is also one of, it is the chapter where we got our founding verse from, verses from Romans 10:9-10.
06:08 That’s the founding verses of Heartland Ministries and our little church. Amen. Romans 10 is often used in Romans Road and Romans 10 has won countless souls through the Lord.
06:17 And Romans 10 is a beautiful chapter. And here Paul is mentioning how beautiful the Lord finds those that spread the gospel. And he actually mentions again, the gospel in every verse.
06:32 Let’s start with verse one. Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. Well, amen.
06:36 So verse one of Romans 10, Paul’s telling us he desires his people, the Israelites, God’s people to be saved.
06:45 That, that is the end result of the gospel. So Paul here in his knowledge and wisdom through the work of the Holy Spirit is writing the end result of the gospel at the very beginning.
06:55 And we should think of the fruit of the gospel from the very beginning. We should start our day thinking about how we can spread the gospel and serve the Lord instead of ending our day thinking how we could do that. Well, that’s, you know, that’s no good.
07:03 You think about going on a trail on a hike and you say, I want to see this tree. I want to go take a look at this Creek. I want to go ahead and have a campfire over here.
07:11 You don’t think of those things after your hike is over. When you’re at home, you may think, oh, I wish I could have, or I wish I would have. But the idea is the plan in advance.
07:20 But when it comes to spreading the gospel, if it doesn’t, you know, if an opportunity doesn’t just smack us in the face, we hardly ever think about it. Paul says verse one, his desire is for people to get saved.
07:30 How about verse two here of Romans 10, for I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.
07:37 And so we see here, they are aware of God. They’re zealous to God. The Israelites were, but not accurately.
07:44 And they were in need of a saving gospel. And how many people here today are aware of God are thinking that they’re doing God a wild favor by going to church on Sunday morning, uh, are thinking that,
07:55 Hey, uh, that God has favor towards them because of some good works they’re doing. All of this is, is antithetical to the gospel.
08:02 The gospel is all about God’s love and grace and mercy. It has nothing to do with works. It has nothing to do with earning our, our salvation.
08:08 It has nothing to do with being idle, right? And so people can be zealous toward God. You can have people that say, Oh, I don’t get into the biblical stuff. I just go for praise and worship and they may be in there and they may be sweating that they are just screaming and thanking God and singing and dancing and all.
08:25 But if that isn’t grounded and rooted in a biblical understanding of what God did for them at Calvary, who God is, and if that’s not rooted in a deep desire to go share the gospel, then that isn’t any good. Amen. It’s not productive.
08:39 It’s not fruitful. Uh, you don’t worship the deepest spirit in the, in, in our universe, God with the shallowest emotion of just screaming and yelling, right? We worship him with our heart, which we’ll get to in a little bit. And that’s the deepest part of us.
08:55 And that’s here in Romans 10 as well. But let’s go to the third verse here for they, this is Israelites being ignorant of God’s righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.
09:08 And so what they’re, what Paul’s saying here is they, they were still under the law, not understanding they couldn’t keep the law.
09:15 They kept thinking they were doing enough playing church, so to speak, to try to keep the law, not recognizing or fearing God. And they were practicing and sharing a false gospel. The idea here, the Bible word would be vain.
09:28 Vain means improper use, right? Improper use. Um, you know, I always use the example of a car and I love cars, but if you have a car, what is the point of your vehicle?
09:39 It’s to get you from point A to point B safely. Right? And so if you have a, a trip to go to, let’s say you have a trip to go to the park, okay, and the park is five miles away.
09:53 Now, all you need is a vehicle to get you there safely, right? You know, maybe good on gas ideally and, and, and securely and quickly.
09:59 Right? So if you have a Lamborghini or Ferrari or a Porsche or Aston Martin, you know, that’s great.
10:06 Uh, and you can drive very fast, but that’s kind of vain, right? You’re just driving something.
10:12 Say, look at me. You’re driving something to say, Hey, I wish I was a race driver. It’s improper use.
10:18 Amen. And again, no one loves cars as much as I do. I’d say, well, I shouldn’t say that.
10:23 Maybe people do love cars more than I do, but I love cars. I love fast cars. I wish I could drive a fast car sometimes.
10:29 Amen. I’ve talked to my church about that. Maybe one day the Lord will let me drive some kind of fast car, but either way, I wouldn’t, even if I did do that, I would still have to admit it’s vain use.
10:37 Well, the Israelites were practicing a vain religion. They were saying we’re, we’re righteous and you know, we’ll teach you about the scriptures and this and that, but they weren’t actually understanding what Christ did for them. They were not understanding that.
10:49 I remember Paul’s time was after the crucifixion of Christ. Okay. So let’s go on to verse four here for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth.
11:05 And remember, we’re talking about the gospel in every verse here of Romans 10, Christ overcame the law for those that believe on him, this is the true gospel.
11:10 So we talked about here in the first couple of verses that Paul’s desire is that they get saved. That is the end result of the gospel that in verse two and three, that they aren’t fully understanding what the gospel is they’re sharing and practicing a false gospel and in here,
11:26 Paul’s correcting them, the Israelites, even though he’s an apostle to the Gentiles, he’s addressing his people saying the true gospel is that Christ overcame the law.
11:33 He overcame the law when he died on the cross at Calvary. Amen. He overcame the law when he died on the cross at Calvary.
11:38 Let’s look at verse four here for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. So we’re justified by what faith. So everyone that believe it, everyone that has faith is then justified in the sight of God.
11:52 Uh, the Bible actually says, I think in Hebrews 11:6 it’s impossible to please God without faith. So we are justified by faith. We believe on God.
12:02 Amen. And what he did at Calvary through the person of Jesus Christ, uh, suffering the worst death ever to be experienced by mankind, uh,
12:12 being in the grave three days and being risen from the grave. Uh, and the walk in the earth, 40 days and 40 nights of sending up to heaven and being at the right hand of the father today,
12:21 when we believe on that gospel, as is clearly outlined in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4
12:27 When we believe we are saved, we are justified by faith. Uh, now let’s look here at verses five through eight for Moses, Moses described with the righteousness, which is of the law that the man. That which do do with these, those things shall live by them.
12:45 But the righteousness, which is of faith speaketh on this wise, say not in nine heart, who shall ascend into heaven that is to bring Christ down from above or who shall descend into the deep that is to bring up Christ again from the dead, but what sayeth it?
12:59 The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart, that is the word of faith, which we preach. And so we have verses five through eight telling us that we cannot save ourselves. Amen.
13:14 Uh, that the gospel is by faith and that works fall short, uh, that we can’t bring Christ, uh, down from heaven or up from, uh, the inner parts of the earth. We can’t do those things. We simply have to believe that God did them.
13:24 Amen. That this is God’s gospel. This is God’s plan for salvation, for us to believe.
13:29 And let’s look here at verses 9 and 10, uh, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth, the Lord Jesus shall believe in nine heart, that God has raised him from the dead.
13:40 Thou shalt be saved for with the heart, men believe within the righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. This is the founding verses of our church.
13:47 Amen. If that, if thou shalt confess with the mouth, okay, you’re speaking of the Lord Jesus and shall believe in thine heart, that God has raised him from the dead. So the heart is the deepest part of us.
13:57 So we’re believing in the deepest part of us and we’re verbalizing that belief. And the reason why Paul’s making that distinction is many people will verbalize, Hey, I believe,
14:07 but the deepest part of them don’t believe in their actions and their conduct and everything shows they don’t believe, but they verbalize it. They say, I’m a believer, right?
14:15 Uh, for with the heart, man, believe with under righteousness and with a mouth confession is made unto salvation.
14:20 Look, verses 9 and 10. This is the truth of being saved. This is a former mention of the gospel.
14:26 This is how we are saved. Time’s up. Tune in next time for part two.Thank you so much. Amen.