In chapter 10 of Romans Paul continues to reveal his disappointment in Israel’s failure to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. (Romans 10:1-2)
Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge
FIRST…what does it mean to be zealous for God?
One who is zealous for God recognizes the personal cost of following Jesus…of surrendering his life to His will…even when it means that I won’t be popular or accepted by my non-believing friends or family.
Becoming a Christian is not a half-hearted or partial commitment…it’s not a sometimes on sometimes off kind of faith that could be classified as ‘lukewarm.’
It’s being fully dedicated to God as evident in your attitudes and actions… embracing all that Christ wants to do in your life…being determined to remain fully committed to following Him regardless of the situation.
When you answered the call to become a Christian did you consider the cost of what that involved?…or was it an emotional reaction?…something you did for fear of being sent to Hell?…did you consider how that would impact your individual life?…what changes might be involved?…did you count the cost of being a Christian before you decided to become one?
Jesus addresses this very issue in calling people to follow Him in discipleship.
Jesus knows there’s a cost in becoming a Christian, so He uses the analogy of a person building a building…He asks…does (he) not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? [Luke 14:28].
Jesus is reminding us that discipleship is like building a building…you don’t start building it without having enough resources to finish it…you don’t want to leave it half-finished…before deciding to become a Christian do you know what that involves?
So, he says, “Be sure to count the cost before you sign up for discipleship because it is costly… I don’t want you to sign up and then be surprised later when the cost is too high.”
BUT…how do we count the cost of something in advance when we don’t know what the cost will be?
That’s what makes that decision even tougher…generally in life when you sign up for something you know in advance what you’re committing to…you wouldn’t think of buying a car or a house with the interest rate left blank and the reason is… ‘we can fill that in later.’
But that’s the commitment you make with God…you will never know the cost of what your commitment involves…God will never reveal the specifics of His purpose for your life…or what He has planned for you…goes back to what I said earlier…how do we count the cost of something in advance when we don’t know what the cost will be?
Being zealous for God means being on fire for the Lord…being hungry for His presence…passionate about His word…eager to learn and grow…and not being ashamed of your faith…that’s the kind of life God calls all Christians to live.
God calling goes back to the Greek word καλέω (2564) which means to summon or invite…referring to “an invitation” …it’s God inviting you to join Him in eternity…not to scare you…BUT…it is a call you can accept or reject…it’s an invitation that can be refused.
Every time someone comes to the place where they respond to God’s call to join Him in eternity…a tremendous process is behind that call…it starts with the birth at Bethlehem and includes
…the anguish of the cross
…the miracle of the resurrection
…the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost
…it involves a person’s whole being…the heart…and the inner consciousness
…it involves a deep conviction of the will
…it involves a willingness to verbally confess that Jesus is Lord
All this is the process behind the single individual act of answering God’s call of salvation.
This brings up the SECOND issue…zeal not based on knowledge.
If anything characterized first-century Judaism it was zeal for God and His law.
The Jews in Paul’s day were descendants of those who had gone into exile for their flagrant violation of the Mosaic covenant…because of their love affair with Baal and other idols, God had forsaken them.
God followed through on His promise to scold Israel for their bad behavior by allowing them to be overrun by the Assyrians and the Babylonians…God literally declared them to be…not my people.
Wanting to avoid a second exile, and the ugliness of being in captivity…the returning Jews seeked to regain God’s favor…emphasized the study and practice of God’s law…and the building of synagogues.
This effort was commendable, but what started off as obedience motivated by repentance and gratitude for God’s forgiveness (Neh. 9) devolved into a system of works-righteousness…we’re working hard so God will love us.
Paul makes it clear that although Israel has a zeal for God, they were ignorant of the purpose of the Law…in their zeal they became preoccupied with keeping the law and sought to attain their own righteousness without understanding that only the blood of their Messiah could pay the price for their sins.
As Christians our zeal for God must be more focused…we must avoid being like Israel who:
…wanted to be followers of God, but did not want to listen to God
…wanted to appear godly but did not want to be godly
…lived a life that was self-righteous instead of one that honored God
They were outwardly zealous, so much so, that they killed Christians thinking they were doing God a favor…all the while failing to realize that Jesus was the very righteousness that God provided for them.
Now people aren’t out killing Christians in this country…but how often are the more conservative Christian denominations ridiculed by the more liberal denominations that results in disagreements and divisions within the Church?
Let me just address a couple…on May 1 the United Methodist Church split…it was the launch of the Global Methodist Church, a new theologically conservative denomination.
The split came as a result of the more progressive views within the Methodist church being at odds with the traditionalists who want to adhere to stricter Biblical principles.
Without giving you a lesson in church history, the Presbyterian Church has done the same thing…the Presbyterian Church of the USA…being more liberal and the Presbyterian Church of America being more conservative…which includes New Hope Presbyterian Church.
Having a zeal for God without having knowledge of the Bible is hopeless.
So, what has this got to do with the Jews?…nothing…but it does demonstrate that zeal without knowledge is failing…it’s deceitful…it’s fraudulent.
Paul warned about these churches: the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires they will gather around them teachers that say what they want to hear.
Churches that want to be accommodating to societal pressure and Political Correctness…sermons that charm rather than challenge…sermons that entertain rather than edify…and please rather than preach.
We alter God’s Word to display our progressive belief that God changes to agree with the times…just because the Supreme Court declares something to be legal…doesn’t mean it’s moral.
Just like the Israelites in Paul’s day…many people today are zealous about God but have no knowledge regarding the truth of who Jesus is.
True worship is worshiping God in spirit and in truth….this can only happen through Jesus.
When you remove Jesus from His deity and worship God without regard to who Jesus is…then your worship is in vain and is not based upon truth or knowledge.
We use religion to make God into what we want him to be or what we think He should be…God is a spirit and to communicate with God requires that we be on a spiritual level as well…that’s what being born again means…born not naturally but supernaturally from above.
It’s exactly what Paul was referring to in [2] …”they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge.”
Cults are just like the women at the well…they’re zealous for God…they send missionaries throughout the world…they go door to door in their communities… their zeal is unmatched by Christians…but a zeal not based on knowledge.
Let me just share with you four primary fallacies regarding cults:
1) They lack the knowledge of knowing who Jesus is…that He is part of the Trinity…He is God in the flesh…that failure to understand Jesus’ association with God is what keeps them outside of what is known as mainline Christianity.
2) One of the most telling signs of a cult and its leaders concerns the source of their doctrine…the Bible should be our authoritative source for faith and practice.
While we may refer to other writings at times, those are secondary to the Bible …cults on the other hand will invariably fail to remain faithful to the Bible.
One of the ways they vary from the Bible is to cherry-pick through the Scripture for passages that support a belief they want to promote while ignoring the rest.
3) A third indication of a false leader or cult is their claim that they have the only correct understanding of the Scripture…they have the only way to Heaven.
4) Most all cults claim that you need grace plus works, this is unbiblical.
This is an incredible reality that people need to understand…worship is misguided and meaningless unless it is based upon the truth of God’s word and Jesus’ claim as His Son.
As long as people are deceived into looking outside of Jesus for salvation, it’s just religion…religion does not want you to be free…that’s why most all cults claim that you need grace plus works…they don’t include Jesus of the Bible and that is why Christianity regards them as a cult…they fail the test. [Acts 4:12]
Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved”
Jesus said…If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free [John 8:31-32] …but to be free, you have to know the truth.
The world wants you to believe that there are many roads leading to heaven… it’s acceptable to talk about Buddha and teach about Allah but at the mention of Jesus the world gets hostile…WHY?
We’re not accommodating…we don’t ‘coexist’ with other religions…we don’t even coexist with other denominations…as a result …Christianity is selfish… arrogant… and self-centered because of our belief that Jesus is the only means of salvation.
Jesus is the vital piece of information that we must have in worshipping God… and for those who claim that they can worship God outside of knowing Jesus… that is a lie.
Christians who lack knowledge of who Jesus is are no better than unbelievers …my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6)…having only a superficial knowledge about who Jesus is.
The only knowledge they have is Jesus in the manager….not realizing the world is full of the person of Jesus and what He has done…and what He has given to the world through His redemption…this is the knowledge that Paul desired the Israelites to have. He knew Jesus was the missing link in their devotion to God.
It’s exactly what Paul was referring to in [2] …they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge.”
When we have knowledge based on truth…then Paul’s statement in [9] reveals how simple salvation is…put this verse right alongside John 3:16.
Confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your
heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
So simple…there is nothing left to do except to celebrate the new life that Jesus offers…it’s as simple as that…kind of.
It’s not my intention to always be negative with respect to what a Christian is… but I believe Romans 10:9 has been oversimplified and taken out of context so that the meaning has lost its original punch which Paul intended.
The phrase, “Jesus is Lord,” is so short that it is easy for us to pass over it and say it quickly without digging out the full meaning.
Becoming a Christian being fully dedicated to God is evident in your attitudes and actions…embracing all that Christ wants to do in your life…surrendering your life to His will and being fully committed to following Him regardless of the situation.
To testify that Jesus is Lord means that we know and accept who Jesus truly is…that He’s not just an ordinary person…He’s not merely a prophet… He’s not just a good moral human.
When we confess Jesus is Lord we are accepting within our own hearts that Jesus is God and He’s fully divine.
When we acknowledge Jesus is Lord, then we are accepting that He is in charge …that He is ruler over all rulers…powers…and people…that He is the king and we are the subjects…that He is in charge.
Problem is we’re willing to accept that Jesus is Lord over the world…but that somehow excludes our lives…we think we can say that Jesus is Lord yet live our lives how we want.
If I believe that Jesus is Lord, then I must find out what He wants me to do because He is over my life….this is the problem with what I see going on in the Christian world today.
We say, “Jesus is Lord” …it’s not the mere uttering of words that saves…what Paul means is that if Jesus is Lord, then we will submit to His rule…He will be in charge of our lives …we will act as He wants us to act…we will do what He says…and we will yield our will to His will… God is not asking you to say Jesus is Lord. God is asking you to live it.
Christians must have knowledge AND zeal.