Romans 10:14- 21 “Holding Hands with God”

The message last week that we got from Paul was so clear an unambiguous. Look at verse thirteen of this chapter in Romans. If we call on the name of the Lord then we will be saved. Right after that profound message, we get a series of questions from Paul that makes it sound as if he has some concerns about his previous statement. Let us just say that he sees a reality around him in the new churches that he has to question.

Listen to these questions: “How is someone going to call on the name of the Lord if they do not first believe?” “How are they going to believe in someone they have never heard of?” He states then that faith comes through what is heard through the Word of Christ.

However, there is something more that is in the very last line of our scripture for today. Do you see it? God is holding his hands out to us! I find this to be a most incredible image. I think of my mother or father with their hands out as I am a small child looking for comfort. When I cry or weep, the arms are spread wide for me to jump into my comfort zone with love once more.

Do you remember when Jesus first sent out his disciples? Do you recall how they were empowered? Let us turn to Luke 9:1-6, “Then Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. He said to them, ‘Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money—not even an extra tunic. Whatever house you enter stay there, and leave from there. . . .’ They departed and went through the villages, bringing the good news and curing diseases everywhere.”

This morning, I want to empower you in the name of Christ to witness the good news. I want you to feel the Spirit coming into you this morning giving you the strength and the “gonna” to go out speaking the good news of salvation. Moreover, I want you to feel God’s arms are open to you now, and that you can alos open your arms for God this morning.

Listen to this prayer from St. Teresa of Avila (1515 - 1582) “Christ has no body Now on earth but yours, No hands but yours, No feet but yours, Yours are the eyes Through which Christ’s compassion Is to look out to the world, Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good, And yours are the hands With which he is to bless us now. “

Paul says in verse 15, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news!” I will be painfully honest with you. I have some of the ugliest feet you would ever want to see. They are bony. The toes are extra long and bulbous at the ends. The toenails are not nice at all. I have one toenail I have been working to recover for years after dropping concrete on it. Nobody should be telling me that my feet are beautiful!

Yet, and I really want you to hear this, if it be these feet that should carry the rest of me to that place where I can be of service to the Lord by sharing my faith through the good news of Jesus Christ, then these selfsame feet are the most beautiful feet in the world—especially to the one who is hearing that good news for the first time!

I do also want to point out that feet are the sign of utter humility in the Bible. When we think of feet we remember Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. We remember the woman wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair. We recall Ruth uncovering Boaz’s feet as a sign of their enduring love. The feet are not in each of these cases beautiful because of the way they look. The feet are beautiful because of the humble action that we see involved with them.

Let your feet serve the Lord in all humility. Go, carry the message of the good news out to those who need to hear it in their lives.

In verse 18 Paul quotes from the Prophet Isaiah: “Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” This is indeed an incredible prophecy when considering the fact that Paul himself still has not even gone to Rome. His plan was to visit Rome as a transit point on the way to Spain to bring the message to that part of Europe. So, the good news has not even made it to the ends of Europe much less to the ends of the earth! Yet, Isaiah spoke of this long before even Paul’s time.

Today, we can say that the message of Christ has gone to all corners of the world. Actually, it has even gone beyond that! On Christmas Eve, 1969, the crew of Apollo 8 which was orbiting the moon at the time looked out and saw the lunar sunrise and read the words from Genesis 1: “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. . . .”

I will just share with you that a group called “American Atheists” sued the United States Government for that! The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was dismissed because the chief justice noted that the moon was out of the court’s jurisdiction. (Ha ha!)

The crew of Apollo 11, the first one to actually land on the moon, celebrated Christian communion while on the lunar surface. This was not broadcast by the way. You know the old adage, “If they can put a man on the moon, why can’t they ‘fill in the blank’”! Why can’t they make a zipper that won’t stick or a 0 calorie potato chip? So, here it is for the church: “If we can share the good news on the moon, why can’t we share it with the person sitting next to us?”

The great preacher Billy Graham was famous for his large revivals that took place in baseball stadiums. At the end of the revival he would invite folks who wanted to be saved, to speak the sinner’s prayer, to come forward into the infield where they would be prayed over. On top of this, you will remember that these events would be broadcast across the country and around the world.

Then one day during a revival at Anaheim Stadium, he had an epiphany. He realized that even though the evangelism was happening from the stage to the audience and even out to the television audience, it was not happening between the people sitting in the stadium. Instead of having people come down to the stage that day, Billy Graham told the thousands of people sitting there to turn to one another, to the person sitting behind, in front, and to either side, and to pray for and over one another.

That is how the gospel of salvation has spread to every corner of the world and beyond. It has been just a matter of people sharing with one another. It is not clear how many Christians there are today on the planet—over two billion to be sure. Before we start feeling good about that number, we must realize that there are over seven billion on this planet—and there is a serious question about those 2 billion we do claim as Christians.

Paul himself already raises an issue that is echoed up from Isaiah’s time again. He writes in the last line of our Scripture for today: “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.” I think we need to look at the prophecy of Isaiah a bit closer now. Please turn with me to Isaiah 6:9-10, “Keep listening, but do not comprehend. Keep looking but do not understand. Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds. “

In the book In Name Only by the Christian professor Dr. Eddie Gibbs, he makes the point early on in his writing that we are not just dealing with nominal Christians in our day and age. A nominal Christian would be one who identifies him or her self as Christian even though that same person will have never attended church or read the bible. He or she would be Christian “in name only. Now, we are dealing with “notional” Christians. Notional Christians might even be indifferent or hostile to Christianity as a faith but they still don’t mind taking two weeks off at Christmas or even humming a verse of “Silent Night” if they hear it on the radio by chance.

If you ask a “notional” Christian if he or she is a Christian, the response back might be “Well, I am not a Christian, Christian—but I know I am not Jewish or Buddhist.”

In Paul’s time, as he is writing this in Corinth, he is seeing a large number of people coming into the house church there when they would celebrate communion. The people would be packed into the atrium as the meal was set out in a dining hall. The sacrament would be celebrated, but it would be like the entire Passover feast. There was meat. There was good wine and good bread for all. Paul later writes about this in his first letter to the Corinthians 11:20, “When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s Supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper. One may go hungry while the other becomes drunk.” People were coming to church just to get drunk on the wine! Mouths open, minds closed!

Okay, we have this incredible statement from the Apostle Paul that says that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. That is glorious. Then, we have a bit of reality that we need to face up to. It is up to us to make this happen. We are the open arms of God in this world. As we find spiritual comfort in being accepted into the arms of God, we share that out to others. Are hands are for the use of God’s love in this world.

Amen.