Session 44 – Romans; Romans 10:5-13: Mark Lanier, 10/18/26

ROM 044_Romans P44_PODCAST_101826
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[00:00:00] All right. I am really stoked about getting to teach this morning. I'm really stoked about getting to teach next week. There is this latent part of me that's really itching to start something new, but Brent gets upset because I never finish what we start because I get real excited about something new.

So I'm pledging to try to get through at least Romans 9, 10, and 11 before we start something new. Today, I had these grand plans for what all we were gonna do. And the more I kept getting it ready, the more I started thinking, "Well- I'm not gonna get to even half that stuff. And so I've kind of peeled it back a little bit because I really want us to understand some verses [00:01:00] and what Paul's doing.

He's doing really cool stuff, but it's hard for us in the year 2026 to really get it because we live in such a different age and culture. So what I wanna do is I wanna take you back. I wanna take you to a town in Turkey These are the ruins of Sardis. Now, you may think, "Oh yeah, Sardis was in the Book of Revelation.

It was one of those towns." It was, but I'm going back further than that. I'm going back to Sardis around 550 BC. Now, I asked AI to take the ruins and to take what we know about Sardis and give us an idea of what it would've looked like 550 BC, and here it is. Wow. It was... Yeah, it was by the [00:02:00] river here, and it's back in the mountains.

So it's, it's up in the hills from Ephesus. And, uh, they've got a temple up at the very top of... But they've got the town down below the temple and all surrounded with the, uh... That's... It's a pretty good AI reconstruction from what I can gather. Now, I picked 550 BC because probably in about 555 BC, somewhere around there, uh, it's the first consumer test I can see, uh, that was done of the gods.

Now, this is King Croesus. King Croesus, um, he's kind of a, an arrogant guy, uh, my read of him. I don't wanna judge him too harshly. I don't wanna speak ill of the dead. But he's been dead so long ago, I figure it's okay. Not like his, you know, long-lost nephew's gonna hold a grudge. [00:03:00] So he's a bit arrogant. You can read about the history that I'm giving you in Herodotus, a Greek historian, book one of Herodotus' Greek histories.

Now, Croesus, the king of Lydia, rules from Sardis, and he, his, his son died a couple years earlier. He's all upset, but he's decided he wants to go to war, kinda wash away his agony over his son's death. But he doesn't know if he should do it or not, so he decides to ask the gods. He's gonna go to an oracle, say to the oracle, "Should I go to war?"

Now that's okay, but he's a skeptic. He's kinda like, "Yeah, you know, I'm not sure that the gods [00:04:00] really give the answers that are true, or they're just, like, on the take, because they expect you to bring them all these gifts. If you don't give them enough gifts, what if they don't give you the right answer?

Or what if they're just fake?" So he calls in about seven envoys, emissaries, and he says, "Here's what I want you to do. I'm sending you out to seven different oracles. I want you to keep a very careful record of how many days go by. And exactly 100 days from right now, you approach the oracle, and you ask the oracle, 'What is King Croesus doing right now?'

I, the king, am gonna keep track of the same 100 days. I'm not telling anybody what I'm gonna be doing. I've just [00:05:00] decided it in my brain, and I'm gonna do it." So off they go. And if we explode a little bit of the map, these-- They even go down here to near Libya, modern Egypt, to Amon, uh, named after the, the Egyptian god.

Uh, uh, uh, and, and so they're, they're hitting all of them here. Hundred days go by, and, uh, each oracle is asked, "What is King Croesus doing right now?" And it's written down, and all of the answers are carried by the emissaries back, 'cause they don't know what the king's doing. Well, on one hundred, day one hundred, do you know what he did?

Clearly you're not oracles.

He took a bronze cauldron with a bronze lid, and he [00:06:00] chopped up a lamb, and he chopped up a tortoise, and he made a stew. A lamb tortoise stew Now, the-- by the way, we don't know, nor did Herodotus know what most of them answered. All he really knew was what the answer came from Delphi. Now, Delphi was a temple dedicated to Apollos, and the, the oracle at Delphi was called the Pythia.

It was a woman. It was a priestess. And so the priestess at Delphi, she's sitting there, and when the guy comes in, the emissary from Croesus, he-- she just immediately, before he can even ask, she says, "I know the number of the sands and measures of the sea, and I smell a [00:07:00] hard-shell tortoise boiling in bronze with the flesh of a lamb."

And then, uh, the rest of it I didn't put in here. "And there's bronze below it, and there's bronze on top." She even got the lid So they take the message back, they hand it to the king. King says, "That's the one we're gonna pay. I'm gonna send you with so much goodness for her that I can rely upon her answer, and I want you to go ask her whether or not I ought to go to war.

Specifically, should I attack Persia? Now Persia, by the way, is being ruled by Cyrus the Great from the Bible. So we, we can do this little cross here. But anyway, should I attack Persia? And do you know what the oracle says? The oracle says, "If, if [00:08:00] you send an army against the Persians, you will destroy a great empire."

Because he's got Lydia, with a few small exam- exceptions like down near Cilicia, where Saul was-- Paul was from, and, uh, some others. This is, by the way, this is Paul's history too, in the sense this is where he grew up. But the Medes and the Persians are being ruled by Cyrus the Great

And the battle is fought at Pteria up there, uh, uh, near the top where I put the cross swords And, uh, Croesus destroyed a great empire, his own. His own. He got whipped Because he was so arrogant, he just assumed when the Delphi Oracle said, "Oh, you go to war against them, you'll destroy a great empire," he thought it meant he'd destroy them.[00:09:00]

He was arrogant and he was stupid

But look at the lengths he went to to get a word from the gods He does his big test so that he could decide whether or not to put confidence in the word. But to get a word from the gods, you gotta travel, you gotta pay. All of the gods got paid. You had to wait until the gods want to answer, and then you could get a riddle you didn't even trust.

You can't trust because it's a riddle. Side note, the Oracle at Delphi. Delphi is where a little over 100 years ago, they discovered the, uh, uh, Gallio inscription, which we can use with Acts, that he was-- Gallio was the proconsul, uh, when Paul was in [00:10:00] Corinth, and they found that. Uh, that's how we date a lot of the stuff about Paul.

Uh, just side note. That's a different reason to know about the Oracle at Delphi. That had nothing to do with the Oracle. It was just at Delphi. But anyway, the cost of getting a word from the gods was intense, and it is to be in stark contrast with the Word of God that Paul says you don't travel for. It came to you, and you don't have to doubt it, and it's in your heart, and it's clear.

There's a huge contrast between the way Paul explains the Word of God in the passage we're looking at today and the way the, the ancient Greek pagans thought you had to really work to get a word from the gods and then to understand it. So let's put [00:11:00] today into context. Now, imagine Paul is speaking to a church.

Of course, Romans, he's writing, but everything he's writing are things he's been speaking to house churches. These are his ideas. These are his talking points. These are his sermons. These are his messages. These are his thoughts, divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit and accepted by the church through the Holy Spirit as Scripture.

But you can just imagine Paul standing there talking to everyone in the little house church about these ideas. Now, my AI image generator, uh, has a couple of guys holding up their hands. Um, they didn't hold up their hands to ask questions back then. Uh, they just heckled or asked or waited politely if they were polite.

In a school, there would be a [00:12:00] process for asking questions, but it wasn't holding up hands. Uh, uh, y- holding up hands had a whole different significance. So I just stuck it in there 'cause to us That means, "Hey, I got a question." Okay? So the question that he knows could have been asked quite properly is, did God's word fail vis-a-vis the Israelites?

God promised them to be the chosen people. God promised them the Messiah, and most of them don't embrace the Messiah. In fact, they're anti-Messiah. So did the promise of God fail? And Paul has said in Romans 9, absolutely not And we don't need to go back through that. You can go pull the old lessons on it.

But then somebody else asks the question, "Okay, then why is there this unbelief among the Israelites? Why the hardening of Israel?" And we started [00:13:00] this last week with Paul saying two things: "I'll give you a human answer, and I'll give you a divine answer." He started with the human answer, and he used a passage of racing verbs.

He took words that are-- were used in racing, which was a big deal, especially in Corinth, where he was writing from. But he talked about who pursues or chases or runs after righteousness, dioiko in the Greek. He talked about, uh, katalambanō, what it, what it is to pass someone, to overtake someone, uh, to catch someone in a race.

Um, he uses the word, uh, of, uh, pathanō, uh, eis, to arrive at, to reach. And, and what he's saying is, in, in the part we looked at last week, you've put Israel in the starting blocks. [00:14:00] Israel is running this race. Israel is chosen to be the winner. And, and he can think in those terms from the Isthmus Games, but he specifically does something unusual.

He says Israel stumbled on a rock, and God placed the rock in their path. And then he pointed out the big scandal, and the big scandal is Israel's been training for it. They've been running hard. They've been following the law. They've been trying to do everything that they can do to achieve their relationship and righteousness with God.

And what happens to them? They stumble, and somebody who hasn't been training, who's just been on the sidelines, gets to win. The guy in the Nike shirt, Nike meaning victory in Greek, the guy in the Nike shirt that's been stuffing his face with a hot dog is the guy who's getting it, the Gentiles. Some of those people were [00:15:00] pagans last year.

Some of those people have spent the last fifteen years going to drunken orgies and calling it religion, and they're getting the prize? The runner who never entered, the runner who never trained, who never took the starting blocks, who spent the entire race in the stands eating a hot dog, that's who gets the crown Because they're the ones who got to the finish line.

They're the ones who got to the end of the race. Because they are the ones who found Christ, and Christ is the end, the telos He's the goal. He's the finish line. He's the end of the race. You can take it as the termination of the race. You can take it as the goal of the race. You can take it however any [00:16:00] number of commentators take it.

To me, though, it's the point. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. And so Paul's writing from the source of the Isthmus Games, and he wants us to know Jesus is the finish line. Greg said, you know, remember in Revelation that Jesus is the beginning and the end. He's the end of, of the law, but he's the end o- of, of, of, of everything as well.

So Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. Not anything else, just for righteousness, and that's where we are today. So today, ideally, I want to spend most of our time on point number one. Point number one is Moses in Moses, the righteousness that speaks. And then I'll give you a little preview, if we've got time, of where we'll go next week with the [00:17:00] keystone, the shape of Romans nine through 11.

And maybe if we've got just a time to look briefly at, uh, a third area, it's the continuation, uh, where Paul is saying, in essence, "Say it." The nearest word in the world is the way I've phrased it. So let's start with the beginning, and let's see what we can make through this. Now, we are picking up where Christ is the end of the law of righteousness, and then Paul says this in Romans 10:5, "For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them."

Now, this is what Moses writes, grapho in the, the, the Greek. We get, uh, graphite from it, you know, which was what we used in pencils for a l- [00:18:00] a lot of time. Moses writes that about the righteousness that's based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. Now, Paul is quoting in this highlighted text that I've put on here, "The person who does the commandments shall live by them," Leviticus.

He's quoting Leviticus chapter 18, verse five. I've put it up here in Greek as well. Some of you, uh, uh, are great at Greek, so I'm making it handy for you. Some of you don't give a rip about it, and you say to me all the time, "Hey, that's Greek to me." And I understand If you don't give a rip, don't worry about it.

You don't need to give a rip. You can still hang on to what I'm saying here. But, um, I gotta teach this for all sorts of folks, and I want folks who can read Greek to come to this class too and, and learn. So just [00:19:00] humor me while we throw it up here. So if you see this, you... and you went back and you read the version of the Septuagint that we have today, the accepted version most people use, you've got the exact same language.

Here it is in Leviticus eighteen five. It's the exact same language. You sh-- And this is the context in Leviticus eighteen. "You shall keep theref- you shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules. If a person does them, he shall live by them. I am the Lord." So this is where Paul starts out, and it's honest arithmetic.

It's the honest arithmetic out of the law. The honest arithmetic is if you do it, you will live. If you do the commandments, you'll live by the law. So Moses wrote [00:20:00] about the righteousness based on the law that the person who does the commandments will live by them. Then Paul continues, and he says, "But the righteousness based on faith says..."

So we had Moses wrote, and here the righteousness based on faith says or speaks, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" That is to bring Christ down And then he's gonna continue, but when he continues, if you recall, four lessons ago, I talked about what a rhetoric school would have taught in Paul's day, the highest education you could get.

And, and one of the tools, and it's a tool that Paul is about to employ, was called, [00:21:00] um, uh, prosopopeia. And, um, prosopopeia, prosopopeia, prosopopeia is, um, where you speak in an assumed character. And what Paul's about to do here is, is kind of, uh, personify, uh, uh, this. Watch what he says. "The righteousness based on faith says," it's personification.

You know, righteousness based on faith really doesn't speak, but he's, he's using that to contrast it with what the law wrote, Moses wrote in the law. "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?' That is, to bring Christ down." Now, some may say Paul has here then the written code, and the written code where Moses wrote says, [00:22:00] "If you're gonna live by the law, you live by the law."

But then he's got righteousness that is speaking as opposed to the written code, and he's actually quoting from Deuteronomy thirty-twelve through fourteen for most of this. There's a little wrinkle to that that I'll get to in a minute. But some say, "Wait a minute. Is Moses schizophrenic? Did Moses not know the difference?

Did Moses change his mind? Is this Moses versus Moses?" No, not at all. We need to understand that this... Let me, let me re-reorganize this for a moment. The written code in Leviticus eighteen five and the Deuteronomy speech [00:23:00] come in different contexts and at different times. In fact, Moses gives the Deuteronomy speech after about 38 years of Israel's failure to live up to the law in the wilderness.

So this is after 38 years of failure. So he looks more like that And he's actually writing it within the context of his speech about how if Israel refuses to honor God, God will send them into exile And so he's writing about life after the exile Different people take this in different ways, and I'll talk about that later, and I'll give you the, the views from Tom Wright to John Piper to Doug Moo, uh, to Jimmy Dunn, to whomever is you're reading.

But before we get there, I want you to watch carefully what Paul does as [00:24:00] he quotes Deuteronomy 30

We start here. The righteousness based on faith says, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" That statement, who will ascend into heaven, is from Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 30. Paul's quoting from Deuteronomy 30. Righteousness based on faith says, "Don't say in your heart," and then he begins, "Who will ascend into heaven?"

So let's put it up here so that we've got it to look at. He quotes, "Who will ascend into heaven?" And then he continues, "Or who will descend into the abyss? That is, to bring Christ up from the dead." Now, who will [00:25:00] descend into the abyss is coming from Deuteronomy 30 with a little twist. But who will descend into the abyss gives us our second.

So who will ascend into heaven? Who will descend into the abyss? And then he continues, "But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith that we proclaim." So he's quoting D- Deuteronomy 30 again. The word is near you and in your heart. So we've got these three statements here: Who will ascend into heaven?

Who will descend into the abyss? And the word is near you, and in your mouth, and in your heart. And the reason I said I want you to watch carefully what he does here is because there are four [00:26:00] things that I want to point out to you. First Paul doesn't start quoting Deuteronomy 30. He actually puts in an earlier Deuteronomy quote first.

He actually starts with Deuteronomy 9:4. Okay, if you're lost, this is why we're not going much past point one today. I'm gonna, I'm gonna make all this make sense to you, okay? I'm sorry, I know this is kind of dense, and maybe I should just buzz over this and say, "Let me tell you what you need to know and have a good day."

But I, I want... I really want you to try and see what's happening here. I want you to have confidence in what we're saying is going on here, okay? So just look at this with me. Paul actually starts with Deuteronomy 9.4, or 9:4. "The righteousness based on faith says: 'Do not say in your heart.'" [00:27:00] That's Deuteronomy 9.

Then he shifts, who will ascend into heaven, to Deuteronomy 30. He goes 21 chapters in advance. Hey, look, we can, we can just ignore this. That's easy, and, and we can, we can all get together and we can sing, uh, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." And we would be right, and all is good. And we can sing, uh, "All to Jesus I surrender," though we'll be lying if we sing that song.

Uh, generally, I think about, "A tenth to Jesus I surrender, a tenth to Him I freely give." Um, b-but, but we can sing our songs and we can do... And, and Christian faith is great like that. I was speaking at a prayer breakfast of sorts. There was a big legal convention that happens twice a year in Vegas[00:28:00]

Yeah, put a, put a couple thousand lawyers in Las Vegas and see how, how the world turns. Um, but this year, uh, some of, uh, my friends who organized this of sorts, uh, wanted to put in a, a faith breakfast where we had a panel discussion about our faith. And, and they opened it up to everybody and urged everybody to come, and I'll bet you there were probably 100, 150 people who showed up, maybe.

Uh, we were surprised. I figured five, um, 'cause it was at 7:00 in the morning. Um- But it was fascinating to me because I was asked some questions. And knowing that we've got Christians, we've got Jews, we've got some Buddhists, we've got some pagans, we've got some, uh, uh, [00:29:00] people who are atheists, got some agnostics.

We've got a wide swath of people, and I got asked this question: "Mark, would you tell everybody about the Holy Spirit?"

Sure. I mean, most of these people think of me as, you know, I'd, I'd already given my, uh, presentation on, on how people make, uh, decisions on a jury. I mean, they think of me as a lawyer there. But the fella asking the question knew that, that this is my passion, and law just pays the bills. And so, uh, he said, uh, "Tell everybody about the Holy Spirit."

I was like, "Okay. Uh, let's see. Where do we do this?" And, and it was, it was interesting to walk through, but I- know enough [00:30:00] of the Jewish mindset, having read Hebrew and, and, and been following the Jewish mindset, that I was able to start not with Jesus and the Holy Spirit and Paul, but start with Genesis. Be able to say, you know, uh, let's be clear, Christian and Jew alike believe there is one God.

But even in Genesis, we see God expressing himself in movement upon the face of the deep as his breath or his spirit is what it's called. So the, the spirit of God is there. I talked about King David and his sin, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Uh, you know, and, and I started trying to walk through those things, and I said, "And as Christians, we understand the, the fun mathematics that one plus one plus one equals one, and, uh, we call that the Trinity."

Uh, but, but... And I tried to explain how we see divinity in the Holy Spirit and [00:31:00] distinction within the unity of the Godhead. So, I mean, you're doing the best you can, but you hobble together scriptures, and that's a very Jewish thing to do. So what Paul's doing here is not a bad memory. He's doing something very pointed.

He goes as a point to the Deuteronomy nine:four passage. And Deuteronomy nine:four, "Do not say in your heart," before he gets to Deuteronomy 30, "Who will ascend into heaven?" Look at it. It says, "Do not say in your heart, 'After the Lord your God has thrust them,'" the, the inhabitants of, of Canaan, "'out before you.'

It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me to possess this land." Don't say in your heart it's 'cause of what you did. [00:32:00] Don't say you get it because you're righteous. That's the quote Paul uses for his warmup. That's the quote Paul uses when he says, "Don't say in your heart." He said, "Don't you start thinking you're righteous.

Don't you start thinking you deserve it. Don't you start thinking you've earned it. Don't you start thinking it's owed to you."

Don't say in your heart, "It's because of my righteousness." So I said watch carefully what Paul does as he quotes Deuteronomy 30. First, he starts with Deuteronomy 9:4, and then look at the second thing he does. He re-routes the [00:33:00] second journey. It's like, what? Watch. We're back in Romans 10:6, "The righteousness based on faith says: 'Do not say in your heart...'"

He quotes Deuteronomy 9, "'Who will ascend into heaven?'" That's a direct quote. That is what Moses said. Moses said, "Who will ascend into heaven?" But then Paul says this, "Or who will descend into the abyss?" Now that's Deuteronomy 30, sorta Deuteronomy actually says the following: "Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us?"[00:34:00]

That we may hear it and do it. Who will go over the sea for us? It doesn't say abyss. He's rerouted the journey Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it? You know, Israel was not a seafaring nation. They didn't really have boats. They hated the sea, in fact. You say, "Well, wait a minute, Jesus w- John and the fishermen."

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm talking Mediterranean Sea. I mean, they got freaked out enough by the Sea of Galilee, which is a lake. The Mediterranean Sea, that's where people like Jonah go to get devoured. All right? Th- they, they don't... You know, Solomon was gonna build some, some navy. That didn't last. So, so th- you know, for, for this to be in, in, uh, Deuteronomy and be read by generation after generation of [00:35:00] Hebrews, who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us?

'Cause we ain't going there. Who's gonna go get it and bring it to us so we can hear it and do it? What Moses has done is Moses has said, "These are impossible journeys. Nobody can get up to heaven" And candidly, no Israelite was gonna take the g- head to Spain. These are impossible journeys But Paul takes these and reads them with Jesus as prophetic of Jesus, as speaking of Jesus, and Jesus has done the impossible journey successfully So Paul would be very upset with us if we taught through this and did not catch the fact that he rerouted the second journey.

And instead of talking about sailing across the sea, he's talking about Christ [00:36:00] descending into the abyss, death, to bring it back for us. Christ has done what none of us could do I mean, and it's a lot tougher than just getting on a boat Christ has done what no one can do. So Paul reroutes that second journey, and we don't wanna miss it.

Next, third weird thing he does. He deletes all of these do clauses. Do this, do this, do this, do this. This righteousness by faith is not a, a do thing. He's not saying, "Do this, do this, do this." This is not the do thing Um, I don't like the way I did this. Hold on. This is one of these early things in the morning, so we gotta make a change.

Okay? So just, uh, [00:37:00] humor me for just a second. Uh, y'all talk about your neighbors Hope your neighbors are doing well. Who you gonna invite to class when we start back up at our real time, in our real place? Animation. We want to replay those, and we need each one to be at about there, and we need each one to be on click.

Okay, now we're gonna save it. Now we're coming back. Y'all excited? Ready? Whoa. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa. Now we're cooking with peanut oil. Okay This is Deuteronomy 30. I put the whole thing up there for you, all right? And I, I don't like this much text on a slide.

I hate it. And I nearly left out the Greek. I mean, that's just... That gives me the hives just looking at it, [00:38:00] but it's important. "It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who's going to ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it?' Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?'

But the word is very near you." It's in your mouth and in your heart so you can do it. He's writing in a post-exile context here. But when Paul quotes it, look what Paul does He takes out a bunch of it. He takes out that we may hear it and do it. He takes out that we may hear it and do it. He takes out so that you can do it.

Paul's not [00:39:00] talking about what you do. He's making a point to talk about a righteousness that's not a righteousness based on what you do. It's based on what Christ did. It's based on who made the journey. It's based on who brought it to you And so you've got Moses here, and he gives you in Leviticus a written code to be performed, but then when he's talking post-exile, he's talking about a Messiah who came to be believed and proclaimed as Paul reads it.

So Paul starts with Deuteronomy 9:4. He reroutes that second journey, and he deletes every due clause. And the fourth thing he does is he gets all rabbi on us. He gets all rabbi on us with what we can call glosses. [00:40:00] This is very rabbinical. Look The righteousness based on faith says, "Don't say in your heart, 'Oh, it's because I'm so righteous.'"

Who will ascend into heaven? And you see the parentheses? That's Paul being rabbinical. That's him giving you the Pauline study Bible for Romans. That's a footnote, and in the footnote it says, uh, "That is, to bring Christ down." Or who will descend into the abyss? Parentheses, that is to bring Christ up from the dead But what does it say?

The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, parentheses, that is the word of... Whoops, parentheses, go back, go back, go back. That is the [00:41:00] word of faith that we proclaim. Now, we handed out some time ago a Baylor Annotated Study Bible to all of you who wanted one, who were here that Sunday. Clark, you were probably, like, in Alaska at that point.

Sorry, bud. Um, Judy, I'll get you one. I'm not worried about Clark. Um, but, uh, Baylor Annotated Study Bible, and this is a marvelous study Bible because it's got in the back something very un-Protestanty. Here's your Baylor Study Bible. Is that upside down? Yeah. Watch this My mama didn't raise no fool. The Baylor Study Bible, it's got in the beginning, that's a pun, the Old Testament.

In the beginning, get it? In the beginning, the Old Testament. And [00:42:00] then... Thank you. It took him a second, but he got it. And then it's got, uh, the New Testament But do you know what it's got behind all of that? The Apocrypha. Well, first it's got like a dictionary and all of that 'cause we don't, we don't want people to think we're like getting close to Catholicism here, uh, at Baylor.

Um, but at the end, it's got the Apocrypha, and Protestants don't acc- Protestants, we embrace the Jewish Old Testament as our Old Testament. The Catholic faith embraces it off of the Greek Old Testament, which became the Latin Old Testament, and so they have the Apocrypha included. But the Apocrypha was in those Greek writings, like Paul's quoting from, uh, oftentimes, but [00:43:00] not in the, the Hebrew Old Testament.

There is a book called Baruch, and in, uh, the old Bibles it would usually be after Jeremiah. Baruch was supposedly, um, uh... Well, we know Baruch was a secretary for Jeremiah and, and-- but this book was probably written a couple hundred years before Paul. It was certainly in circulation. But Baruch, uh, Paul knew it well.

Baruch does the same thing with Deuteronomy 30 that Paul did. It's very Jewish. So if we look at, let me give you the cite so that you can see it if you've got your Baylor Bible and care to look. It's on page 1855. Baruch chapter 3 verses 29 through 30. See if you can recognize Deuteronomy here.

Deuteronomy [00:44:00] 30

Who has gone up into heaven and taken her and brought her down from the clouds? Who's gone over the sea and found her and will buy her for pure gold? That's Deuteronomy 30, but it's got little glosses. It's got little extras. And if we're reading about it, it's talking about wisdom, which was a very standard way to read Deuteronomy 30 for Jews in the day of Jesus and Paul.

They read Deuteronomy 30 and thought it's talking about wisdom. How do we go get wisdom? Who's gonna bring wisdom? Who's gonna get wisdom? Now, we can go then to this, and we can see in Baruch 3, Israel's in exile. That's-- Baruch is an exilic book, post-exilic. Still exilic. I mean, Israel still thought they were in [00:45:00] exile.

A lot of them did at the time of Paul. Israel in exile. Who's taken and found wisdom? That's Deuteronomy 30. Then you get to the end of that chapter into the next one with 3:37 through 4:1, and look what you have

With wisdom. She appeared on earth and lived with humankind. She is the book of the commandments of God and the law that will endure forever. All who hold her fast will live, and those who forsake her will die. It's the same principle. It's saying wisdom is the Torah, and it's like it's going back to Leviticus 18.

And anybody who embrace-- You know, you, you live by the law, that's where you come from. And, and so we've got here, uh, this idea. Baruch [00:46:00] reads Deuteronomy 30 as wisdom came down and took up residence in the Torah Paul is writing to his people and he's fixing that. Paul says, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Deuteronomy 30 is not saying wisdom came down and set up in the Torah.

It was already in the Torah. The Torah was already there before Deuteronomy 30." Paul says, "I'm gonna take Deuteronomy 30 and I'm gonna give it a name, and I'm gonna give it a resurrection and change it to the abyss, because Jesus is the end. He's at the finish line. He's the completion. He is at the end."

Now, there are wonderful scholars who are friends. Uh, I say friends. I know three of these four. One of them is dead, so, uh, you know, I, I, [00:47:00] I never knew him. But I, I certainly... I've had Doug Moo at the library. I've had John Piper, and Tom Wright, uh, is a frequent guest. Jimmy Dunn has been dead for, for almost, uh, 10 years now, I guess, or so.

But these guys split on how they're gonna take this, and they take it in all sorts of different ways. Doug Moo thinks that Paul is setting up a contrast Uh, John Piper thinks that he's setting up a contrast, but he's also prophetically saying that Deuteronomy actually was prophetic about Christ. Tom sees this as all part of a continuum.

This is, this is the exilic part of what Paul is writing. And Dunn sees it as a continuum as well, but with a little different twist. I can get into that in detail next week if we deem it important to do so. I'm not sure that, that those are that useful. You can go read them on your own. [00:48:00] I'm happy with the text the way that I'm, I'm-- I've just taught it here because I don't think any of those folks would disagree with anything that I've said.

Um, Moses and Moses, the righteousness that speaks. It's a righteousness speaking. Uh, Moses wrote about how you live the law, but he also has the righteousness speaking aloud, and that's the Deuteronomy nine and thirty. Now, the second point that I wanna make is the way all of this shapes together in the context of Romans nine through 11, and I'm gonna talk about this, I think, next week.

But the key for you, there's an intellectual, theological, linguistic word, chiasm. Um, we'll talk about that, but for your purposes right now, I think it's good to think of it as a ladder. And Romans nine, ten, and eleven has kind of a ladder structure. And so Paul will make point [00:49:00] one, two, three, and four, and then he'll have this peak for emphasis, and then he'll make those points again in a descending order to complement the way it went up.

So Romans nine is echoed by Romans eleven R- for example, Romans nine started out with the lament. It ends with a doxology. A- and they complement each other. It's the story of Israel and it's the, the return of Israel. It's really cool, but we're gonna have to get into that. And oh, the coolest part is we're in the peak right now.

And the peak is what's emphasized in writing of this ancient type, chiasms. Chiasms are written in a way where you-- everybody knew who's, who's understanding the chiasm, the important emphasis trying to be made is in the middle [00:50:00] and we're in those verses now. But next week we'll talk about that some more, and we'll also talk next more about why the rest of these verses in that peak are there.

Because these are the verses that we'll get to next week. "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." This is the peak. This is what Romans nine, 10, and 11 is all building to. This is the center. This is the top of the ladder.

"For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the scripture says, 'Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.' There's no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is the Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."

And that is Paul's emphatic point that he's driving home in the way he writes these [00:51:00] passages. So that's what we've gotta get to next week and we need to understand it as-- I mean, these are the passages where you got your highlighter out and you are just highlighting it and you're not satisfied with highlighting it.

Then you're gonna... I mean, it's, it's like this. This is what you're gonna wanna do right here. I'm just gonna show you right now 'cause, 'cause I'm-- I, I want it in your brain, okay? You're gonna see this next week and this is what you're gonna wanna do. Ba ba ba ba ba, ba ba ba ba ba. You're gonna say, "Yeah, man, this is it.

All right, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on."

Because if you confess with your lips Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you'll be saved. I mean, you're just gonna wanna go, "Whoo, whoo, whoo." There's no distinction. Lord is generous to everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. You're gonna do that, and then you're gonna think, "Well, that's not enough[00:52:00]

Mm. Mm. Then you're gonna think, "Nah."

Then you're gonna get really down and say, "Whoa, whoa," because this is the peak. This is what he's talking about. This is what it's all about that he's been building up to. This is his big climax. This is his, his symphony movement. This is, this is it. Some would say this is the center of the whole letter. I don't read it that way, but it's certainly the center of these three chapters, and that makes it the peak.

So what are your points for home? First of all, can I suggest all of us retire from the travel business? You're not gonna go up there and get God and His righteousness, and you're [00:53:00] surely not gonna go down to hell and beat the evil one and death Jesus is gonna do that for you. Don't say in your heart, "Uh, I'm gonna be good enough.

I'm gonna go get that." Man, I, I saw my favorite cowboy up here this morning, and, um, he may be working cameras, I don't ... Yeah, right back here. Look, even he can't lasso righteousness on his own. Not gonna be able to do it. Croesus, he had the consumer test for the gods, and it cost a fortune to get a word from the gods.

He had to travel. We don't. God has come to us. Jesus has brought it to us. Y- you're not gonna pay for it. You're not gonna earn it. You're not gonna get it. And you don't have to wait. It's already been done. And it's not a riddle. It is as simple as simple can [00:54:00] be. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

God so loved the world He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life. It is not some th- riddle where you're sitting there saying, "Hmm, wonder what He means by eternal life?"

Point for home two, God came to you. We're not in the travel business. The Word is near you. It's in your heart So let's say it and believe it. The Word is near you in your mouth and in your heart. Amen? Amen. All right, here's your lunch topic. I had fun thinking of this one[00:55:00]

Did you understand anything that we talked about today?

That's your lunch topic. That's your lunch topic. And thanks to our fantastic internet team who will put this on the internet. I may go back and watch it to see if I can understand it. But let me bless you in the name of Jesus, and God willing, I'll see you next week. Lord, in the name of Jesus, I thank you that you have brought life to us, that you have descended from the heavens, that you have gone into the abyss and risen again, that you have bestowed upon us a righteousness That is part and parcel of a faith in Christ, the resurrected one.

That we know with our hearts and we proclaim with our mouths, Jesus, Lord of all[00:56:00]

We thank you for the honor of being your children Because of your love that called us. Through Christ we pray, amen. Amen.