Jeffrey C. Long

Romans 10:5-13

For Moses writes about the righteousness of the law, “The one who does them will live by them.” 6 But the righteousness which is of faith says this, “Don’t say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down); 7 or, ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead.)” 8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth, and in your heart;” that is, the word of faith, which we preach: 9 that if you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart, one believes unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. 11 For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes in him will not be disappointed.”

12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich to all who call on him. 13 For, “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Lent is the 40 days prior to Easter. The word Lent originally referred to the forty hours of total fast which preceded the Easter celebration in the early Church. The main ceremony on Easter was the baptizing of the new believers on Easter Eve. The fast was for the new believers to prepare to receive baptism.

The reason that they chose a forty day period was because the Bible uses the number 40 often. Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness; the forty days and nights Elijah spent walking to Mt. Horeb; in the story of Noah, God makes it rain for forty days and forty nights (they were in the ark for much longer); Jonah in his prophecy of judgment gave the city of Nineveh forty days grace in which to repent. the Hebrew people wandered forty years traveling to the Promised Land; finally the forty days Moses spent on Mount Sinai with God.

Exodus 15:11 recounts the words of Moses when he led the Israelites across the Red Sea safely away from the Egyptian army

Who is like you, Yahweh, among the gods?

Who is like you, glorious in holiness,

Fearful in praises, doing wonders

Moses knew that Yahweh was a holy God.

None of the gods is like Him

There is no person who is like Him.

Fearful

Does wonders

But as a holy God, he demands righteousness of us.

righteousness means that we put ourself under, conform to the claims of someone who has higher authority then us. the opposite of righteous is lawless.

so God’s demand is that we put ourself under him, conform to his claim upon our lives, which means that we are to live up to his standard of holiness.

pretty tough road.

Let’s look at our text.

In Romans 10 Paul describes the righteousness that the Christian is to live under. He does so first by contrasting it with the righteousness that Moses spoke

Verse 5 says

“Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that “the person who does these things will live by them.”

Moses was speaking of the law that God had given them. He was saying that they would live a long life in the land of Canaan, in great happiness and prosperity. He was not saying that they would have eternal life. Something that is notable in the Old Testament is that it very rarely speaks of eternal life and usually not in terms of how to attain it.

How they would acquire this life was by doing what God commanded. The law. We could rehearse the ten commandments or do a study on the law in deuteronomy but for now let’s look at the sabbath.

Deuteronomy 5:12 Observe the sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.

Sabbath keeping has been an important part of the Jewish faith since the time of Moses. The Pharisees were so diligent in keeping the law that they found Jesus offensive for healing on the sabbath. Jews are still diligent about keeping the Sabbath. I mentioned once that you can go to the internet and put in your latitude and longitude and find out the exact time when the sun goes down and the sun rises to begin and end the sabbath.

Christians have also had a lot of respect for the sabbath. Some keep it as the Lord’s day and there have been many rules for how it should be kept. Awhile ago I mentioned blue laws that restrict activities on Sunday. I’m not positive because I don’t try and buy alcohol on Sundays’ but I don’t believe you can in Idaho. Churches have had restrictions against recreation on Sundays.

A branch of Christianity called Sabbatarians believe that we should continue to keep the sAbbath on Saturday. I went through a season of doing this, though not legalistically. The family still remembers that we used to have church on saturday night, not sunday morning.

All of these people have made sabbath keeping very important. But do you know that no matter how diligent you are to keep the sabbath, you will never be a righteous sabbath keeper?

Matthew 5:20 “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

The Pharisees were diligent keepers of the sabbath. And yet they were not righteous sabbath keepers.

We can not find righteousness with God by adherence to the law.

in Romans 10:8 the righteousness which is of faith says “The word is near you, in your mouth, and in your heart;” that is, the word of faith, which we preach: 9 that if you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

We come by righteousness not by what we do, but by what we say.

Because righteousness by our actions is never enough. Our righteosness comes through the work of the blood of Jesus.

1 Peter 3:18 says 18For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.

Jesus was our righteousness. He fulfilled the requirements of the law once and for all because he was unblemished, holy, righteous.

Hebrews 9:14 and 15 say How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! 15For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.

We are not righteous. He is our righteousness. It is through His actions, not ours.

The only way that we can come under this righteousness is through the words of our lips and through our belief in our heart. There is nothing we can do.

Galatians 2:21 says I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

9 because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

10 For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.

11 The scripture says in Isaiah 28:16, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.”

12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.

13 The scripture also says in Joel 2:32 “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

We’ll close with a story from Luke 18

Luke 18:9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10”Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee stood up and prayed about[a] himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ 13”But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

14″I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The righteousness of the Pharisee could not save him because even though he was a diligent keeper of the law it left him prideful. Rather, the humble confession of the unrighteous tax collector justified him.

Today let us go out confessing that we are made righteous not from our own works but through the work that Jesus did which we are only able to accept through our belief in our heart and confession of our mouth.