Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - If God is Sovereign, Why Share the Gospel? | New Testament | Romans 10

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

You can't follow Jesus without God working in your life, yet you have the responsibility to share and believe in the gospel. How is this possible? In today's episode, Keithunpacks this paradigm from��Romans 10. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Romans 10

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. If you listened to yesterday's episode on Romans 9, you heard how Paul says that the only reason we are Christians is because God worked in our life to draw us to himself and give us faith to believe the good news of the gospel. This means that if you'd given me 10,000 chances to follow Jesus, I wouldn't have unless God worked in my life. The Bible says that God opened my eyes and changed my heart and gave me faith. And I think every Christian knows that deep down in their soul.

Because when you pray about your salvation, what does it sound like? Do you pray, God, I'm thankful that you did your part in my salvation, and I'm thankful that I did my part? Well, of course not. In your prayers, you thank God for saving a wretch like you. You thank God for opening your eyes so that you can see the beauty of Jesus and the truth of the gospel. you thank God that he opened your heart to him, just like he did Lydia in Acts 16. Well, today we're in Romans chapter 10, and in this chapter, Paul emphasizes our responsibility to share the gospel and believe the gospel ourselves.

See, Romans 9 said God is sovereign over our salvation, and in Romans 10, it says that in order to obtain that salvation, we must believe the gospel ourselves. Maybe that sounds contradictory to you, but the Bible never sees God's sovereignty and our responsibility to be in conflict. Now, I agree that it's hard for us to understand. We usually want to say that it's either God is sovereign or our choices matter. But that's not how the Bible thinks about it. The consistent theme of the Bible is that God is sovereign over all things and we have real choices for which we are rightly held accountable. The Bible never says that God sovereignly directed some event so that people's choices were irrelevant. That's because the Bible never treats

human beings like robots or puppets. But neither does the Bible teach that people did something and God just sat back and watched. It never teaches that God is at the mercy of our choices. Instead, the Bible holds together that God is sovereign and we make real choices that truly matter and those two truths work together. You see this from the very beginning of Romans chapter 10. Here's verse 1. Brothers and sister, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. So Paul prays that his fellow Jews might become believers. Now, if our salvation were totally up to us, then why would Paul pray? Well, Paul prays because he knows that no one comes to genuine faith in Jesus unless God works in their heart.

Here's verses 9 and 10. If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess, your faith and are saved. And then in verse 13, everyone who calls in the name of the Lord will be saved. See, these verses clearly teach that we are responsible to believe in Jesus, to put our trust and hope in Him. If we don't believe and follow Him, we won't have the salvation he offers. In the next verse, he moves from our responsibility to believe to our responsibility to share that good news with other people. He says in verse 14, how then can they call in the one who 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 anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. So Paul works backwards. He starts with believing and he says, we are responsible to believe, but we can only believe in one we've heard about. So someone must tell us about Jesus. Now, how can they tell us about Jesus unless someone has sent them? So Romans is teaching that God is sovereign over our salvation. We are completely dependent on him. It's all about grace.

But we are still responsible to pray for people to come to faith, to share the good news with them. And of course, we're all responsible to believe the gospel ourselves. I find that most people have a difficult time accepting that God is sovereign over our salvation. For some reason, we prefer to think that God has done all that he can to save every person, and now it's just up to us to believe. If that's where you're coming from, I totally get it. No judgment here.

But remember, this chapter begins with Paul praying for the salvation of his fellow Jews. Why would he do that if God had already done all he can do to save them? What would he ask God for? Well, I think the Bible is pretty clear that Paul is praying because he knows that only God can change their heart so that they can follow Jesus. That's what he's praying about. That's what he's asking God to do. but what if you sit on the other side of this and you believe that since god is sovereign over your salvation you don't really need to share your faith with others after all you kind of reason that if god's

going to save those he wants to why does it matter what you do well in romans 10 we've seen paul say that a person can't believe unless someone has told them about jesus but let's look at another verse that continues that same theme. This is 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 10. Paul says, therefore, I endure everything for the sake of the elect that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. Think about all that Paul had endured in his ministry. He'd gone through a lot. He'd been stoned and left for dead. He'd been severely beaten on multiple occasions. He'd been shipwrecked. And that's just a few of the trials he endured. So why did he go through all that? Well, he just told us in Second Timothy that he did it so that people could come to faith.

See, Paul never used God's sovereignty to justify not sharing his faith in Jesus. Let me show you something similar that happened when Paul was in the city of Corinth. Here's Acts 18. One night, the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision. Here's what God said to him. He said, do not be afraid. Keep on speaking. Do not be silent.

For I am with you and no one is going to attack and harm you because I have many people in this city. So Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching them the Word of God. See, Paul had grown discouraged because Corinth was a very difficult city to plant a church in. And so God comes to him in a vision and encourages him by saying that he is with Paul and that he will protect him because he has many people in that city that he wants to come to faith in Christ. So when Paul hears that, what does he do?

Does he say, well, since it's hard to be here and since I'm not seeing many results, and since God said he's sovereign over everyone's salvation, I'm just going to go to an easier city to plant a church. No, not at all. It says that he stayed in Corinth for another year and a half. In other words, Paul believed what he wrote in Romans 10, that the only way for a person to believe is if someone shares the gospel with them. And because he believed that God is sovereign

and had many people in that city, he stayed there to share the gospel with them. God's sovereignty motivated Paul's endurance. So it is biblical to affirm that God is sovereign and thank him for your salvation while at the very same time praying for the people in your life and sharing the good news with them because that's how they will come to believe in Jesus and become a follower of his. Romans 9 and 10 teach us that God is sovereign and that we are responsible to make choices which we are rightly accountable for. let's not split those two truths. Let's hold them together just like Paul has taught us to do. Amen.

Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. You'll get a short email once a week. It'll challenge you to grow in your faith, give you interesting background on today's passage, and a lot, lot more. Just click the link in the show notes to sign up. It'll help you deepen your journey with Jesus.