Will You Believe and Obey the Gospel?

Thinking about Romans 10:16-17.

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But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, "LORD, WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR REPORT?" So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:16-17)

Although “good news” had been preached to Israel, they had not believed it.

Unbelief is an Old Problem.

Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 53:1, “Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?”

In the middle of a prophecy about God’s Servant - the Messiah - Isaiah mentions how this “report” would not be believed. Just as Isaiah’s message was rejected many years earlier, so Israel was once again rejecting the message of God.

The problem was not with the message. The problem was not with the one proclaiming the message. The problem lay at the feet of those who refused to believe God’s word.

Paul wrote elsewhere that the preaching of Jesus Christ crucified was a “stumbling block” to the Jews.

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:21-24)

Some of the last words Stephen said on this earth pointed out the stubborn refusal of the Jew’s religious leaders to listen to God.

"You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers, who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it." (Acts 7:51-53)

Failure to “trust and obey” was not a new problem. It was an age-old problem that was rearing its ugly head once again at the preaching of the gospel of Christ.

The Connection Between Faith and Hearing God’s Word.

The interrelationship of faith and the hearing of the Word of God is at the heart of the whole process of transforming an individual from a child of wrath into a child of God. It is by the transforming power of the Word, faith laying hold on the Word, that a man ceases to be a child of disobedience and becomes a child of obedient faith. - Barnhouse, Romans IV, 94

The prophets - like Isaiah - taught God’s word, and the people were expected to believe it. When they didn’t believe and obey what God said, He rebuked them, and ultimately, there were consequences for their unbelief (taken into Babylonian captivity).

Paul's emphasis here in Romans 10 is that faith comes by hearing the word of God - specifically, the “word of Christ” (ESV).

The only type of hearing producing faith is the kind based on hearing the good news about Jesus. - Pollard, Truth for Today Commentary, 369

Although God’s message of salvation was for everyone - including the Jews - they rejected that message and did not believe or obey the gospel.

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Jesus Christ is at the center of God’s good news for the world (Romans 1:1-4).

To refuse to believe and obey the gospel of Christ rejects God’s righteousness (Romans 10:3-4) - the only way for sinners to be righteous (2 Corinthians 5:21).