Romans 10:14-15 [5th Sunday after the Epiphany]
Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace—Benson/Vail, AZ
February 10, 2019
In the name of our Savior Jesus, dear friends,
I’d like to read something for you this morning. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it or not, but it’s called “The Perfect Pastor.” The ideal pastor preaches exactly 10 minutes. He condemns sin, but never hurts anyone’s feelings. He works from 8:00 a.m. to midnight and also serves as the church janitor. He makes $40 a week, wears good clothes and donates $30 a week to church. He is 29 years old and has 40 years of experience. He makes 15 house calls a day and is always in his office. If your pastor does not measure up to these criteria, send this list of pastors to six other churches that are also dissatisfied with their pastor. Then, bundle up your pastor and send him to the church at the top of the list. In one week you will receive 1,643 pastors. Surely one of them will be perfect. Have faith in this letter. One church broke the chain and got its old pastor back in three months.
Certainly no one thinks that is how pastors move from church to church! But I do know that there are many questions every time a church extends a Call or a pastor receives a Call. We are no exception, even though we have been through the calling process around here more than a handful of times! When holding a Call, I’ve been asked, “How does this work exactly?” “Do you have to go?” “How long do you have to decide?” “How do you decide?” and more. There are more and different questions when we, as a congregation, are extending the Call. What fortunate timing it is for us that Romans 10 is an appointed lesson for this Sunday, as we have recently had the Call we extended returned! Let’s look specifically at verses 14 and 15 today and consider GOD’S CALL TO PASTORS and see that they are 1.
CALLED TO A SPECIFIC MESSAGE
(v. 14) and they are
2. CALLED TO A SPECIFIC PLACE (v. 15)
The Apostle Paul writes about the preaching of God’s Word by using a series of questions. He says, So then, how can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one about whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without a preacher? When he says “the one”, he means Jesus. His point is that people cannot know about Jesus unless someone tells them. In fact, we are all testimony to that truth. None of us knew all about Jesus as our Savior, without someone telling us, teaching us, or steering us to the Scriptures. Many of us hold a special place in our hearts for the person who did that. Perhaps it was your mother, your father, a good friend, a roommate, a pastor. The truth that Paul teaches is that we could not “call on”, “believe in”, or “hear” if there was no one to bring us that message of salvation from God. In this letter to the Romans, Paul writes quite a lot about the Jews not confessing their sins to God, but instead trying to live a perfect life and earn God’s love. Paul emphatically states that that cannot be done. No one is perfect because sin is part of everyone’s nature—and everyone actively goes against God’s will. That sin is damning; it causes separation from God—a separation that will last through eternity. To a just and holy God, that is totally fair and justified. I think that even we can understand how that must be from the point of view of a perfect God.