If you don't worry, close the old a lot. Romans chapter 10, don't you hate it when you prepare for a sermon and you have to change your life? I'd much rather just sort of do a sermon that didn't change me, but I have to tell you that this preparation for this message today that change has changed me is changing me as I think about you. It's not very often that we think of students at RTS as contestants in a beauty pageant. That would be a strange thing actually. I suspect that we think lots of things about each other, don't we? We think some people are smart, some people are gifted, some people are hard-headed, some people will be used, some people won't be used, but I suspect that it's seldom that we ever think to ourselves, my isn't he beautiful? Aren't the teachers here beautiful? Aren't the students here beautiful? Aren't they just absolutely magnificent? Well, there's a passage in the Bible that tells us that that's exactly what we ought to be thinking of each other. RTS is a beauty contest and you are the contestants. Romans chapter 10, verse 14. How then can they call on the one they have not believed in? How can they believe in the one whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news? How beautiful are those who bring the good news? That's what we're doing here. We're trying to train people to be bringers of the good news. And isn't it strange, though, that we seldom at ever think about each other as people who are beautiful? People who are that magnificent, that amazing? What is it that makes Paul able to do this? What is it about him? What's on his mind? What's on his heart? Is he's writing these words? Out of all the things he could have said, out of all the ways he could have ended this small segment here of Romans 10, he chooses Isaiah 52 and verse 7. Why? Why does he think that you and I are beautiful? As I read through Romans 10, searching for an answer to that question, I have to admit to you that I found myself confronted by, well, a different view of the Christian faith than what I've grown accustomed to, a different view than what I usually espouse. There are a couple of things we could say about Romans 10, but one of the things I want to say that leads Paul to the conclusion that we are beautiful. Our feet are beautiful if we bear the gospel of peace. One of the things that he talks about is the heart of the Christian faith, the heart of the Christian faith. Beginning around verse 5 or so in this chapter, the apostle Paul is answering the question, what exactly does it mean to believe or what exactly does it mean to find salvation? How do people find salvation? What exactly is the heart of this Christian message that we believe in? And Paul is opposing people, you know the context already. He's opposing people who have turned religion into something very complicated. They've turned the way of salvation to something complex, something in which you have to learn a lot, something and for which you have to achieve a lot. And Paul says that all this complexity of learning and all this complexity of achievement has nothing to do with the heart of what I'm about. And he proves it by referring to Moses. He starts in verse 6, for example. He says, but the righteousness that is by faith says, and now he's quoting or paraphrasing the book of Deuteronomy, do not sing in your heart who will ascended to heaven that is to bring Christ down or who will descend into the deep that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? What does the Bible say about the way of salvation? This is what it says, the word is near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith we are proclaiming. That if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. That's the heart of what we're about. And it's the way all of us began this thing we call the Christian walk, but how easy it is, especially in an environment like this, to lose sight of that very basic simple heart matter of the Christian faith. Instead, what we find ourselves doing, and I see it many times in many different places, that we forget the simple heart of the gospel and we become wrapped up in our own kinds of complicated systems of beliefs and achievements as the way of salvation. Oh yes, we distance ourselves from the Judahisers, but we become Judahisers ourselves. We replace this kind of simple message with all the large scale, magnificent, complex beliefs and achievements that we lay on people as the way of salvation. You don't believe it? Let me tell you what I do every single year. I ask the entering class at seminary, what does a person have to believe to be saved? And I start writing those things on the board that are shadowed at me from the room. And before it's over, we don't have enough room on the board to write down all the things that people say you have to believe or you have to do in order to be saved. That strike you as odd? Strikes me as tragic. Recently, I got a new printer, a new computer printer. It's one of these color things that is really complicated and I couldn't sleep one night, so I decided I'm really going to read the manual on this thing and I'm going to master what this printer can do. I'm not the kind of person that does that. Usually, I'm the person that just learns as little as I possibly need, have to learn in order to make it through what I'm going to do. But I said, all right, I've got a whole night here can't sleep, I'm going to do it. So I sat down and started reading this thing and it was gibberish. It was so complicated, so absolutely indesertible what these people were trying to say to me that I close the thing up and I said to myself, I'm never going to be able to use this, never. So I was packing this little manual up and packing everything away and as I did, something fell out and it was a three easy steps to using your printer book, okay? It was a nice looking one, it was the colorful one, the one I didn't notice. So I picked it up and looked at it and it said things like this, put your printer on and lay a level surface. Plug it into the wall, turn it on. I can do that. You know, the reality is, is that many times, this is exactly what we have done to the Christian faith. We've taken something that at the heart of the matter is a very simple thing and we've turned it into some monster that it is not. And so it's no wonder that we don't believe that the feet of those who bear the good news are beautiful. After all, if you believe indeed that the heart of Christianity is this complicated system of beliefs and achievements that we lay on each other, if that's what you really believe the heart of our faith is, then who is it that you think is beautiful? It's not gonna be those who spread the gospel. It's gonna be some plastic substitutes. It's gonna be the Christian stars who've accomplished a lot. It's gonna be the great scholars, it's gonna be the large books, the spectacular programs, the wonderful big mega this, that, and the other that's out there. Those are the things we're gonna consider beautiful and look around you. I hate to tell you this, but there are not very many people in here who are scholars and not very many people in here who are going to have great, huge successful mega programs. And so it's no wonder we don't look at each other and say how beautiful it's because we've forgotten the very basic, the very heart belief of what we hold as Christians, the simple gospel. It's in your heart, it's in your mouth, or as he says in verse 13, Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. I wanna tell you something, Paul knew more about theology than we will ever dream of knowing. He achieves more than we'll ever dream of achieving, but he did not hesitate in this chapter to boil it all down to what is in your mouth and what is in your heart, period. So I'm calling you back. I'm calling you back to where you began. But I think something else is also going on with Paul here. Not just a reaffirmation of the heart of what we are about as Christians. It's also a reaffirmation of one of the central purposes of the church. Did you notice it in verse 14 that he says, How can they call on the one they have not believed in and how can they believe in the one whom they have not heard and how can they hear without someone preaching to them and how can they preach unless they are sent. And a word with the apostle Paul is saying this calling, this believing, this hearing, this preaching, this sending bit, is saying basically God has a plan, has a particular purpose for the church. He has a particular purpose for believers. There's a divine economy, a divine program, a divine set of things that tells us what we are to do. We fit into a steam. If the gospel is, if Christian faith is, in a nutshell, what's in your mouth and what's in your heart, if somebody's got to get this stuff, this to go into their mouth and into their heart, somebody's got to get this to them. And guess what, that's you and me. That's what we've been ordained to do. That's why we were called, that's why we were made Christians. Now the scriptures tell us that Christians have been called to do many, many different things. I know you have work to do, I know you have families, I know that even local churches and denominations have things like the worship programs, the education programs, fellowship is important, outreach and all these signs of things that we think about. And I'm not the kind of person to stand up in a group and say one of these is more important than another. I'm not that kind of a person. It's sort of like asking a basketball player whether it's more important to be able to dribble or to shoot. Well, the fact is you have to be able to do both. Both are essential to the game. It's like asking a gardener, is it more important to plant the seed at the right depth or to use the right amount of fertilizer or to use the right amount of water? Well, the answer is yes, all of those are very important. None of those are more important than the others. And I think the same kind of thing is true when it comes to the various things that the church is to do. We have lots of things to do, but we make a big mistake when we find ourselves taking this idea that we are to be messengers going out from the church out into the world and put it low on the list of priorities for the church. That's the big mistake that you and I make. It's especially true in reformed circles, it's especially true in seminary circles. I want you to hear something. Paul does not use the picture here of the church as a fortress, a fortress of safety. It is a fortress of safety for us. He does not even use the picture of the church as a family with an open door that welcomes people in. It is a family that welcomes people in, but instead he uses the picture of the church as a group of people who are sent, sent to bear a message, told to go out, people who are proactive, stepping out of the fortress, stepping out of the family, and going out into the world, by the time you get out of here, going out into the world that is full of darkness and full of wickedness and full of lost people. And this is one of the chief reasons why you're a Christian. Do you still believe that? Some of you believe that before you came here, do you still? I've noticed it and it really disappoints me that there's a tendency among Christians that the longer you've been a Christian and the more you learn about Christianity, the less you're concerned about the people who are outside of Christianity. Your friends become Christians, your family becomes Christians, your profession becomes Christian, your life is Christian, and you don't even know people who are non-Christians. It's one of the most serious dangers that people preparing for the ministry have that you don't even know unbelievers. Can you write down the names of 25 unbelievers that you know personally? 10. 5. People to whom you feel sent. Some of you know I've spent time in Mongolia the last few years, and I want to tell you something that's just absolutely magnificent about my times in Mongolia, and that is, I saw the church start. A brand new church where there had not been a church before. It was the most magnificent experience I've ever had. It came about six months after religious freedom had been proclaimed in Mongolia, and after the evangelistic work really started moving out in the public arena and that sort of thing, and I got to see the church doing its thing in Mongolia. It was amazing. Their church had maybe 400 people in it in the capital city of Ula-Mbatar, and I can tell you that every single night of the summer months, every single night there were Christians waiting in line to be able to be within the groups that were sent out every evening to show the Jesus film all through Ula-Mbatar in the surrounding communities. They were waiting in line, hoping to be able to find a space on the bus. The Christians were waiting in line hoping to have the opportunity to take the gospel to their fellow countrymen. I sat in those buses one night, and I watched as they showed the movie and as they passed out tracks, and this is no exaggeration I saw with my own eyes. I know the missionary stories. I saw it in my own eyes. They were literally that evening, 2000, 2000 leaflets, given out to individual people as they came through to see the movie. I asked them how often does it happen that we have big groups like this, and they say every night. I say just this one place? No, at least 10 or 12 places. As we're going around different places, they have heaps and heaps and huge groups of people coming, not just once but twice, a third time, a fourth time, and the Christians stand in line for the opportunity. If we had the opportunity to show the Jesus film in a local church, you'd have a hard time getting anybody to line up to show it. You'd have a hard time getting you to line up to show it. It's just that as longer you become a Christian, the less you're concerned about such things. And so, it's no wonder that you don't consider those who give the gospel to be particularly beautiful. After all, that's not what's important. What's important is things like writing books. What's important is building a church. What's important is what my Presbyter's think of me. What's important is what my fellow students think of me. What's important is one more Hebrew paradigm. When you learn those things, then you're beautiful. Paul says, no, we've got to remember the heart of what we believe as Christians. It's a simple message, the gospel. And we've also got to remember the chief concerns that we are to have as Christians. And what will be the result? Well, it's verse 15. How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. These words express Paul's heart attitude. And I remember as a child having a real struggle with this. You see, very early on in my Christian walk as a young child, I wanted to be a minister. And I remember one time some missionary conference, somebody preaching from this past. How beautiful are the feet. Now, like every member thinking was, my feet are not very beautiful. So it must mean that God doesn't want me to preach. Because I really have ugly long toes and things like that. It's just really bad. And I had them back then. Now, if it was this long when I was 12. And the reality is, though, of course, as I misunderstood, no one had explained it to me that it's not talking about the feet. It's a figure speech talking about the arrival, the coming, the movement of those who bear the gospel of peace. But what I want you to see is that Paul is not saying here that that movement of those who bear the gospel of peace is nice, that that movement is good, or that movement is necessary, or that movement is appropriate. He says that movement going out of the church and into the world, that movement of being sent into a world of darkness with the good news of Jesus. That movement is beautiful, amazing, spectacular, wondrous. And I think that these words challenge us to ask ourselves what we consider to be amazing and wondrous about Christianity. What do we consider to be beautiful? Is it the great cathedrals and the great monuments that Christianity has established all over the world? Is that what we consider to be beautiful? Is it the historical importance of Christianity? Is that something that amazes us and makes us just absolutely full of wonder at this thing we call Christianity? Or is it tremendous theology? What turns you on? What turns you on about Christianity? What is it? I hope you delight in many things, but I think one of the things that Romans 10 teaches us is that we should be thrilled, absolutely beside ourselves, when we hear stories of people who are taking the gospel to those who have not heard it. That we should be amazed and full of wonder when we receive the opportunity to participate in things like that ourselves and that we should see how beautiful it is that we are sitting in a room full of people who are going to be taking the gospel to the world. So now stop looking at each other the way you've always looked at each other as students, as future ministers, as colleagues, as enemies, as friends. Stop looking at each other that way, just maybe for one day. And instead look at each other as contestants, contestants in a beauty pageant and know that the judge's decision has already been made. Every single one of you, every single one of you, it's beautiful. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, we confess to you that many times we have replaced the heart of our Christian faith with our own sets of contrived beliefs and achievements. We confess to you that many times we overlook what has got to be one of the most important things you've told your church to do. And now we come to you to reaffirm our trust in our commitment to the simple gospel and our trust in our commitment to the purpose of the church. Give us eyes to see, now Lord, what a beautiful thing it is to be those who have been sent with the gospel. Amen.