Compassionate Confidence

You are a tool of salvation in God's hands.

What do these four things have in common: an oven mitt, swings, the bathroom door at Starbucks, an appliance store in Woodstock (that shall remain unnamed). They are all things I’ve lost confidence in.

First, one of our oven mitts has a small hole in it by the thumb joint so if you aren’t paying attention to which mitt you grab or you don’t keep the hot thing away from that joint, you will get burned. I’m nervous every time I use it.

Second, swings. In the fall, I was pushing Hudson on our swing set. Many times we would end with him sitting on my lap and swinging together. One of our swings has always been a little squeakier than the other and I never thought much of it. But one time while we were swinging, suddenly the swing broke off the set and we went flying. Turns out, that squeaking sound was because it wasn’t properly attached and it was slowly cutting through the metal. I’ve been nervous on every swing since.

Third, the bathroom door at Starbucks. One of the doors doesn’t latch quite right. So there have been times when I’ve checked the handle to see if it’s locked and when it wasn’t I opened the door only to find someone in there going to the bathroom. It’s traumatic for both of us. When I have used that bathroom, I’ve noticed that the door doesn’t always latch. You have to pull it hard to hear a click and unless you do that, locking the door does nothing and someone can walk in on you. I now avoid that bathroom and use the other one.

Fourth, an appliance store in Woodstock (that shall remain unnamed). We have called this appliance store to repair a few appliances and we have not been impressed. Our dishwasher wasn’t working for a while so we called them to check it out. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong. So we paid them $80 for the service call, they left, and we still had a broken dishwasher. Katie then researched the problem on the internet then ordered the part we needed to repair it and I installed it. It’s worked ever since. But we no longer call that appliance store for service calls because they don’t seem to know how to fix things any better than we do.

What causes us to lose confidence in something? Didn’t work, let you down, don’t think it’s up to the task, expected it to do something but it didn’t, didn’t do what it said it would do, someone else tore it down or made fun of it (a new shirt you really like).

What happens when you lose confidence in something? Avoid it; worried, anxious, and stressed when I do it or use it; warn people about it; don’t recommend it to people.

This is our final message in this series where we have been laying out our growth theme and vision for the year: inviting others to surrender all of life to Jesus.

The apostle Paul says something interesting near the beginning of his letter to the church in Rome. First Paul says that he is eager to preach the gospel to them. We might wonder: Why is he eager to preach the gospel to them? In chapter 1 verse 16 he says:

16 For [or because] I am not ashamed of the gospel (Romans 1:16a)

That’s an interesting reason. He is eager to preach the gospel because he is not ashamed of the gospel. This would suggest that if Paul or anyone is not eager to preach the gospel, it might be because we are ashamed of the gospel. If we were to list the reasons we don’t talk to people about Jesus, I don’t think we’d usually say that it’s because we are ashamed of the gospel. We’d probably say we are afraid of what they think of us or of how they’ll respond or we are afraid that we won’t do it right.

But why would he be ashamed of the gospel? Being ashamed of the gospel would mean we have feelings of embarrassment or fear of ridicule because of the gospel. The opposite of “ashamed” would be confidence. What reason would Paul have for being embarrassed or ashamed of the gospel? Why would he lack confidence?

Paul addresses one of those reasons in chapters 9 through 11. Jesus’ disciples were proclaiming that Jesus is Israel’s promised Messiah, that he was the one they’ve been waiting for, that he has fulfilled the longings and expectations set out in the Old Testament. While many Israelites did respond to this good news by surrendering to Jesus, the nation of Israel in general had rejected the gospel. So what does that mean? If the gospel is supposed to be good news for them, why have they responded so negatively?

Imagine you are one of the few who has responded by believing the gospel. When you heard it, you were excited and filled with joy. It sounded too good to be true. In your excitement, you began telling others: “The Messiah has come! His name is Jesus! He has died for our sins and he has been raised from the dead.” But other people didn’t respond with excitement, joy, and belief like you did. They are skeptical. Some don’t care. Some think you are crazy. Some don’t just reject it; they turn hostile and oppose you, trying to shut you up and threatening you if you don’t. Some people make fun of you. Family members say you aren’t welcome in their home anymore. Friends stop talking to you.

So you begin rethinking things. “Did I get it wrong? Is Jesus not who I thought he was? Maybe he really is a fraud. Have I been deceived?” You were excited about Jesus, but many others don’t seem to be. In fact, instead of responding with excitement they are responding with apathy or anger. So you lose confidence in the gospel. You get quieter about it, less public about it. You are less vocal about your faith. You try not to be too obvious about your association with the Christian community and hide your Christian activities. You decide to just keep your commitment to Jesus to yourself. Maybe you lose a little confidence in God too. “What’s going on, God? I thought this was good news of great joy. Why don’t they hear it like that? Why aren’t you saving them like you saved me?”

Do you find yourself there today? Do you lack confidence in the gospel? If you are being honest, maybe you would say your actions actually show you are ashamed of the gospel. You are a little embarrassed about Jesus and your beliefs. You’ve decided to keep it to yourself. You lack confidence that Jesus really is good news for people.

I definitely can lack that confidence. I often think that talking to people about Jesus would be offensive or boring. I think that they aren’t really interested. They won’t really care. I am afraid it will sound too narrow and exclusive for me to imply that their beliefs are wrong and mine are right if I say, “Only through Jesus can you come to God”. I’m ashamed to say: “Jesus died for your sins. Jesus can give you forgiveness. And without him, no matter how good you are or whatever else you try, you have a future of eternal condemnation and separation from God forever.”

Thankfully, we have the apostle Paul to help us. Let’s look at how Paul deals with this issue for himself and for this church.

Pursuing Righteousness the Wrong Way (9:30-10:13)

Chapters 9 through 11 are answering the question: why are so many Israelites rejecting the gospel? The answer in chapter 9 is: because God didn’t choose them for salvation. Paul begins the chapter by expressing his sorrow and anguish over his fellow Israelites rejecting the gospel. Then he explains that their rejection doesn’t mean that the gospel has failed. In this chapter, Paul emphasizes God’s sovereignty or control over everything. Paul proves from the Old Testament that God is doing what he has always done: choosing some for salvation. From God’s perspective, this is not a failure. It’s according to plan that some will believe the gospel and others won’t.

Why are people rejecting the gospel? The answer in chapter 9 is: because God didn’t choose them for salvation. The answer in chapter 10 is: because they are ignorant, stubborn, and disobedient. The focus shifts from God’s sovereignty to human responsibility. Neither God nor the gospel have failed; Israel has failed to respond to God’s grace.

Paul starts this explanation in chapter 9 verse 30. From 9:30 to 10:13, he tells us that Israel was pursuing righteousness the wrong way. That’s the title I’m giving 9:30 to 10:13: pursuing righteousness the wrong way.

The word “righteousness” is a legal word. It puts us into a court scene. And in the ancient court, you could either be justified - declared righteous - or you could be condemned - declared guilty. So the question here is: how can you be declared righteous in God’s court? Pauls contrasts two ways of pursuing righteousness three times: in 9:30-32, in 10:1-3, and 10:5-6.

One way is to pursue a righteousness of your own based on works of the law. Paul says that this is what many in Israel have done. They are trying to be right with God by their own human effort, by their ability to do what the law says. Another way to pursue righteousness is to receive righteousness from God based on faith in Jesus. This is a righteousness given by God, received as a free gift.

The problem with the first is that to be righteous on your own, you need to keep all of God’s laws all of the time. In contrast, Paul explains what it looks like to place your faith in Jesus in 10:9-13. You confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved. Believing in your heart and confessing with your mouth are two sides of the same coin: one is the inner response (heart) and one is the outer response (mouth). What is believed and confessed is that Jesus is the resurrected Lord. And the result is justification and salvation. In verse 12 he says that there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. Why?
for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For

“everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:12b-13)

When you call on Jesus as your Lord, he bestows his riches on you. You call on him for forgiveness, for salvation, for the gift of right standing with God. When we surrender to him as our King, we receive the benefits of his kingdom. It’s that easy. Call on him, trust in him, rely on him, surrender to him. Let go of other ways to be right with God and receive God’s free gift of righteousness through faith in Jesus.

These are two fundamentally different ways to pursue a right standing with God and Paul’s point is that only one of them actually leads to attaining righteousness. Either you can trust in Jesus or you can trust in yourself. You can rely on Jesus to give you a right standing with God or you can rely on yourself to earn a right standing with God. Paul says that many in Israel have rejected Christ because they are pursuing righteousness the wrong way. The right way to pursue righteousness is to receive it as a gift from God by faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord who saves.

But this idea can actually be offensive. The message is that Jesus Christ died for your sins.” Let’s put ourselves in the sandals of a 1st century Jew and imagine their response to this message. “Really? This is how God is returning to his people and delivering us from our oppressors? Really? A guy hung naked and ashamed on a cross to die? That’s God’s great victory for us? Jesus doesn’t look very victorious. What good is a dead Messiah? Secondly, you aren’t only saying the Messiah was crucified, which is outlandish, but you are saying the reason he was crucified was to pay for my sins. Thirdly, you are saying that my right standing with God has nothing to do with my own personal righteousness and that I can be right with God simply by faith in Jesus? It doesn’t matter how unrighteous and ungodly I am, God will declare me righteous?”

This is why Paul quotes the Old Testament in 9:33:

They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, 33 as it is written,
“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense;
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” (Romans 9:32c-33)

Either Jesus will either be your foundation stone or a stumbling stone.

And why do they stumble over him? Paul’s explanation is that they have an improper focus on the law of God in the Old Testament. But it’s not that Jesus is contrary or opposed to the law. Paul says in 10:4: “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to all who believe.” Christ is the end of the law because Christ is the end to which the law pointed. The law is like a road that ends because it has reached its destination. The road was meant to get you somewhere. That was its purpose and goal. Continuing to focus on the law is like admiring a sign for DisneyWorld and never actually going to where the sign points. It’s like admiring a “coming soon” sign and never going inside the business that is already open or being so focused on a “save the date” that you miss the party that’s already happening. Even though God’s way of giving righteousness has come, they remain fixated on pursuing a righteousness of their own and are ignorant of God’s righteousness. Even though the goal and purpose of the law has come, they are missing it because they are too enamored with the sign.

No Excuse (10:14-21)

In 10:14-21, Paul shows that Israel can give no excuse for not trusting in Jesus. He hints at this earlier in verses 6 through 8 when he quotes from Deuteronomy chapter 30 where Moses is telling the people that they have no excuse for not doing what God says because God has clearly revealed his will to them. Paul uses what Moses says to summarize this moment in regard to the gospel. It’s not necessary to “ascend to heaven” to bring the Messiah down or to “descend into the abyss” to bring the Messiah up from the dead in order to know God’ swill and respond to Jesus. The Messiah has already come from heaven and he has already been raised from the dead.

Then in verses 14 through 15, he outlines a sequence of events that make it possible for someone to call on the name of the Lord to be saved. In order to call on the name of the Lord, they must believe. In order to believe in him, they must hear about him. In order to hear about him, someone must preach, In order for someone to preach, they must be sent. Paul sums it up in verse 17: faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Paul’s point is: “Preachers have been sent. Therefore the preaching about Christ has been heard. Therefore there has been an opportunity to believe in Christ and call on him to be saved.” The problem for many in Israel is stated in verse 16: “But they have not all obeyed the gospel.” They have heard, but not believed. Israel has no excuse for not calling on the name of the Lord. They’ve been given the opportunity.

Paul quotes four more Old Testament passages in verses 18 through 21 to make the point that the gospel has gone out into all the world and Gentiles - non-Israelites - are believing it and becoming God’s people but Israel remains disobedient even though God is holding out his hands to them. These quotes from the Old Testamentshow that Israel in general has always responded to God’s acts of grace with resistance and stubbornness and that the salvation of non-Israelites was predicted long ago. This is not new.

Here’s the point: “Yes, Israel in general has not believed the gospel and has rejected Christ. But that does not mean God has failed or that the gospel has failed. Neither God nor the gospel have failed, but Israel has failed to call upon Jesus in response to the gospel. They are without excuse because they have been given plenty of opportunities.”

We too might look at the world around us and think: “Why have so many people rejected Jesus? Why are so many opposed to Jesus? Has God failed? Has the gospel failed?” Perhaps you have prayed for people and told them about Jesus but they have not responded by surrendering to him and you wonder, “God, why won’t you save them?” This could lead us to lose confidence in the gospel and thus to become ashamed of it. Consider this very personally: do you show signs of being ashamed of the gospel?

Even though many have rejected the gospel, Paul is not ashamed of it. Why? Because he still knows it is the power of God for salvation (Rom 1:16) and he knows that faith can only come by hearing the gospel (10:17). Paul knows that God uses the gospel to save people and so he is eager to tell people the gospel.

Paul has confidence and he also has compassion for those who have not believed. In 9:2 he talks about his great sorrow and unceasing anguish because his fellow Israelites have rejected Christ. And in 10:1 he says his heart’s desire and prayer for them is that they may be saved. He has compassion for those who are still pursuing a righteousness of their own based on their ability to obey God’s laws.

Paul’s confidence is not an arrogant confidence, a confidence where he thinks he is better than others. It’s a compassionate confidence that moves him to sorrow, anguish, a desire for their salvation and praying for their salvation.

Here’s what Paul knows: when he preaches the gospel, he is a tool of salvation in God’s hands. And here’s what it means for you: You are a tool of salvation in God's hands. God’s plan is to use you to save people by your sharing of the gospel with others.

• God uses saved people to save people.
• God uses rescued people to rescue people.
• God uses redeemed to redeem people.

After you are saved, rescued, and redeemed, you become a tool of God’s salvation, rescue, and redemption of other people. And the way we live as a tool of salvation in God’s hands is by having compassionate confidence.

Isn’t that amazing? What a joy and a privilege that God actually wants to use us to bring other people to salvation? We get to be a part of people coming out of darkness and death. We could see the spiritually dead raised to life right in front of us. You want to see God do miracles today? Start talking to people about Jesus! Let's step into that reality. Let's live it in compassionate confidence.

This passage gives us an important reality to keep in mind as we do so. There are always three people involved when someone responds with faith to the gospel and each has a different part to play. Our part is to share the gospel. Their part is to respond in faith. God’s part is to enable them to do so. You are only responsible for your part: telling them the gospel. It isn’t up to us to make them believe. This takes pressure off. We put a lot of pressure on when is the right time or whether we are going to say the right things or whether we have all the answers. We think if we do it wrong, then they won’t believe. The reality is that if God doesn’t work in them, they will never believe. It isn’t up to us to make them believe. It’s just up to us to tell them about Jesus.

We also must consider the fact that we are part of God’s plan for bringing that person to Christ but we are not the ones who will actually see them trust in Christ. God’s plan may be for them to come to Jesus 5 years later through someone else. There’s a book I’ve been reading (I Once Was Lost) where a couple guys were seeing people come to Christ and asked them what the steps to actually placing their faith in Jesus were. As they listened to people’s stories, they noticed five common thresholds people would cross.

• Threshold One: Trusting a Christian is the shift from distrust to trust.
• Threshold Two: Becoming Curious is the shift from being complacent to being curious about Jesus.
• Threshold Three: Opening Up to Change is the shift from being closed to change to being open to change, which is the hardest threshold to cross.
• Threshold Four: Seeking after God is the shift from meandering to seeking.
• Threshold Five: Entering the Kingdom is the shift from seeking to following, which includes repenting, believing, and giving one's life to Jesus.

A mentor in my life uses the analogy of different pitchers in a baseball game. Typically there is a starter, a middle relief, and a closer. You might be the starting pitcher who gets the game going. You might be middle relief, coming into their life after the journey to Christ has been started but you don’t see them actually come to faith. You might be the closer, the one who comes into their life after lots of sowing of seed has been done by others and you get to be the one who harvests.

I want to close with a story that I heard on a podcast that a friend of mine hosts. They were interviewing a guest on the podcast named Jeff Christopherson, who is a church planter and author. On the podcast, he tells a story about his parents. They lived in Saskatchewan, Canada. His dad worked for a brewery and he was on the road to be an alcoholic if he wasn't already.

For some reason, in 1967, he and his wife decided to go to one movie playing at the one movie theater in town. He didn't know it, but it was Billy Graham's first movie called "The Restless Ones". He didn't know anything about it. They got there and found it was free. There was a scene in the movie where there was a man and a woman sitting in a car with the top down listening to Billy Graham on the radio issuing an invitation to receive Christ. During that moment while the couple in the movie was praying, Jeff’s dad reached over and squeezed the hand of his wife, Jeff’s mom. The movie ended, the lights came up bright, then a man in a suit walked up to the front and he started issuing an invitation to receive Christ and to come up to the front if they desired to do that. Jeff’s mom and dad looked at each other. Other people looked around. The man in front talked a bit more then they left. In the car, they started talking about what had just happened and they both prayed together and committed themselves to Christ. They found a baptist church in the area that desired to bring the gospel to all the towns, villages, and cities around.

Fast-forward 35 years. Jeff’s dad had quit working at the brewery and became a businessman doing welding. He got involved in a steering committee to bring Billy Graham and his son to Saskatoon for a crusade. They held a meeting with others in a hotel room. A man stood up and said, “Before we start making plans here, I'd like to hear testimony about how the Graham's have impacted your life.”

Jeff’s dad wasn’t a speaker but he felt his heart pounding so he was the first one to the mic. He told the story about going to the movie. He pointed to his two kids and said one is a missionary in South America and his son is a church planter and that he doesn't know how many hundreds people are in the kingdom of God because they went to that movie that day. People clapped. Dad sat down.

Then an old man got up second and he didn’t go to the pulpit but shuffled his way to Jeff’s dad, weeping. He hugged him. He said, “Allen, my name is Tom Dice and I put that movie on 35 years ago and we ran it for two weeks and every day I got up there and issued an invitation and for 2 weeks no one ever responded and I thought it was a failure. But praise the Lord! It wasn't a failure.” Jeff wanted to tell the story to make the point that we don't know what God will do with our faithfulness. We may never even see the results (https://ephesiology.com/2020/01/21/ep-34-interview-with-jeff-christopherson/)

As I’ve said before, successful evangelism is stepping out in faith and leaving the results to God. Successful evangelism is telling people the difference Jesus has made in your life and leaving the results to God. Successful evangelism is blessing others with the gospel and leaving the results of God. Successful evangelism is being the real you and leaving the results to God.