14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” 16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
18 But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for “Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” 19 But I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says, “I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation; with a foolish nation I will make you angry.” 20 Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, “I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.” 21 But of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.”
— Romans 10:14-21, ESV

“The end justifies the means” is a Machiavellian expression that condones wrong-doing in an effort to make things right.  Robin Hood wants to help the poor, a noble and kind gesture.  To get there, he robs money and belongings from the rich and gives them to the poor.  His sin of theft is overlooked, even championed, because it seems a necessary means to a more noble end, distributing aid to the poor.

Can Christians live by this motto, that a desired end justifies any and every means?  To that question I would answer and emphatic, sometimes!  When you are driving your wife to her surprise birthday party, and she notices a large number of cars in the driveway, then she asks you if this is a party, and you emphatically say no, our friends just came into some money and bought a bunch of cars, then the end of a good surprise justifies the means of obfuscating the truth.  When your friend in church shows up on Sunday with a new hairdo, and it makes her look like the bride of Frankenstein, but you tell her how wonderful she looks, then the end of not hurting your friend’s feelings justifies the means of tactfully not telling the truth.

In serious matters, however, Christians cannot be Machiavellian.  We must use only the biblically prescribed means to reach the desired end of seeing people saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.  Jesus never made worldly or sinful compromises to compel people to come to Him.  Neither should His church.  

The previous paragraph in Romans ended with a general call to all to be saved (ref. Romans 10:13).  This paragraph offers the right means for a righteous end.  Just what are God’s means of grace?

Means of Grace

Salvation comes by grace alone, but it never comes alone, it is usually delivered by a Christian or discovered in one of Christ’s churches.  Anything we do in witness or worship, in order to bring lost people (vs. 14) to Jesus, can be seen a means of grace.  We must, therefore, make sure our means of grace are authorized by God’s word.  In our day, holy scrutiny of Holy Scripture is needed more than ever.

This is because there are so many false means of fraudulent grace.  Promising people prosperity as a means of helping them to have faith in God is false grace for a false gospel.  Entertaining so-called seekers with rock music, theater lighting, and hip clothes as a means of getting them to join your church is a superficial grace for superficial faith.  Turning your campus into a Halloween scene and trying to scare kids into coming to Christ is a silly means of silly faith.  Other examples abound, especially in the shallow soil of revivalism and the so-called altar call.  Such means as these cannot be found in the Scriptures.  

A survey of God’s word identifies some good means of grace not expressly mentioned in this text.  I believe prayer is a means of grace, interceding to the Lord to save someone you love.  I believe the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are means of grace, though most Baptists prefer to call them ordinances.  Ordinances are symbols, of which they are, while sacraments are means of grace, a God-prescribed way of sharing the gospel, which these two are, too.  I believe giving is a means of grace, when it sustains a gospel church or supports an evangelical missionary.  Bible distribution is a means of grace, and thanks to The Gideons and others, there’s even an app for that.  All such means are all scriptural and scattered all throughout the New Testament.  

But Paul only mentions only one means in this text.  And, it is the main means: preaching (vs. 15).  Preaching is the primary way for a Christian and a Christian church to shower grace up lost souls so that they may come to faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Preaching is any proclamation of the word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ that calls upon people to call upon the name of the Lord in repentance, faith, and obedience.  This is the purest means of God’s grace that leads to genuine professions of faith.

Preaching was Jesus’ priority (ref. Mark 1:38).  Preaching was the Apostles’ priority (ref. Acts 6:4).  Preaching was Paul’s priority, as reflected in his dying words to young Timothy (ref. 2 Timothy 4:1-2).  Preaching is the Pastor’s priority, and if a church has a Pastor who won’t or can’t preach, they need a new Pastor.  And, if you are a Christian, preaching is priority for you, too.

All Christians are to be senders, supporters, sustainers, prayerfully and financially, of those who preach the word (vs. 16).  Without their sending there would be no vocational Pastors devoted to the study and the pulpit.  Without your sending there would be no missionaries sharing the gospel and planting churches around the world. 

In addition to being the sender, every believer is called upon sometimes to be the preacher.  God expects and God gives opportunity for every saved sinner to tell other sinners how to be saved.  All Christians are all means of God’s grace when we proclaim our faith to others so they may come to faith in Jesus.  

“For faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of God (vs. 17, KJV) and message of Christ” (vs. 17, ESV).  Charles Haddon Spurgeon famously said of his own preaching, “I take a text and make a beeline to the cross.”  All Pastors and all Christians should be of the same mindset.  Preaching and sharing the word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ remains God’s primary means of grace.  

Means of Beauty

If you are a carrier of God’s means of grace, then you also among the community of God’s means of beauty.  It is written in the Old Testament and New Testament that God’s people who proclaim the gospel have beautiful feet (vs. 15).  Feet?!  Isn’t it just like God to turn the ways of the world upside down?

When the world declares someone beautiful, upon which part of the body do they focus?  Face it, it’s the face!  I suppose People Magazine still publishes their edition of the most beautiful people in the world.  It’s all head shots of celebrities, preening for the cameras, flashing those pearly whites.  That’s beauty, according to the world, but it’s only skin deep.  God declares real beauty is what real beauty does.

When God says someone is beautiful, which body part does He focus upon?  Feet!  Can you imaging a beauty contest for feet?  I would not want to judge.  Think of the smell, the gnarly toes, the ingrown toenails, maybe even a little fungus.  No, we don’t find feet particularly beautiful in our world.
In God’s word feet represent a messenger with good news.  Taken from Isaiah 52:7, the image is of a military courier or court official announcing the end of war and release of prisoners.  Spiritually speaking, hearing and accepting the gospel ends one’s enmity and rebellion against God, it ends one’s captivity to sin, and sets them free to be the glorious children of God.  Feet are the messenger, faith is the message, and salvation full and free is granted by grace through faith in Christ, who has the most beautiful feet of all.  

So let’s kick off our shoes and preach the gospel!  And, get ready to be rejected.  It won’t be based on the looks of your feet, but by the gospel’s demand for repentance and obedience.

Means of Rejection

I’m an old baseball player, and I wasn’t bad.  When I went to bat, however, more often than not I failed to get a base hit.  That’s just the law of baseball.  I’m afraid it is the law of evangelism as well, only more so.

Isaiah is quoted by Paul in this passage.  All New Testament Christians love this Old Testament prophet.  We thrill at the story of his calling in Isaiah 6:1-8.  Isaiah sees the Lord.  Isaiah is saved by the Lord.  Isaiah is sent to preach the word of the Lord.  “Holy, holy, holy … here am I, send me!”

Most of the time we stop reading right there.  We don’t want to hear Isaiah 6:9-13.  It basically says when preachers preach the word to the world, the world will by and large refuse to hear and believe. 

Lost people have many means for maintaining their lostness.  They are black belts at chopping down the gospel.  Paul quotes Moses to delineate how lost people block the word of God with a two-fisted “disobedient” and “contrary” response.  They find other things to do on the Lord’s Day than attend biblical worship.  They find abundant excuses to neglect reading the Bible.  They ignore and excuse their sin, sometimes even revel in it.  They are not willing to accept that Jesus must be obeyed (vs. 16) in order to be believed.  They strive for personal happiness, afraid real Christianity will interfere, and indeed it will, then miss out on “the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (ref. Hebrews 12:14).  

Lost people ignored Moses and Isaiah, Jesus and Paul, and they will ignore you and me.  But we cannot let this deter us from being a means of grace to them, from taking our wonderful gospel and beautiful feet to invite them to Christ and Christ’s church.  We must absorb the rejection by the majority for the sake of the minority, the few, the remnant (ref. Romans 9:27, 11:1, 11:5), the ones who will hear, agree, and commit to being fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.  

I grew up near the beautiful beaches on Florida’s Gulf Coast.  I was taken there as a kid, drove there many times as a teenager, and as an adult still vacation there almost every year.  I remember in the old days, you could easily find starfish.  They would meander up near the coastline at high tide, then get stranded on the beach when the tide receded.  As they dried up and died, they became great souvenirs.  These days they can hardly be found.

I never met him, but I was told of a man who would walk the beach at dawn, picking up starfish and throwing them back into the ocean.  He bumped into an old codger one morning who told him, “You know, you can’t save ‘em all, what you’re doing really doesn’t matter.”  The fellow picked up a live starfish, and just before casting it into the water said, “It matters to this one.”