West Greeley Baptist Church
May 6th 2001
Acts 4:12 2nd Peter 3:9
“No Other Name”
Pastor Mark Hensley
1”2Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12
“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9
Introduction: Jason a 38-year-old single economics professor from California in response to the question why don’t you attend church said:
“I know you don’t like to hear this but I really don’t see how Jesus can be the only way to heaven. I definitely believe in God, but there are just too many people in the world who don’t believe in Jesus for me to think that God doesn’t love them too”
Transition: Jason has made some assumptions that simply are not true. Today we will be reminded that “There is no other name” that identifies God’s Love God’s passion and God’s plan for the salvation of human beings other than the Lord Jesus Christ!
And Jason has assumed that God is not moved by the masses, that somehow the shear magnitude of unbelievers render Jesus as the only way to heaven an impossibility! Was it not our Lord, who said that:
"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Matthew 7:13-14
The notion that because this world is populated with so many non-believers so Jesus cannot be the absolute way to God is illogical! To conclude that God doesn’t love people cuts against the grain of the greatest love story ever written! A love story not written with ink but written with blood! From the veins of God!
The bible is the written record of God desire to see reconciliation take place, to set souls and heart singing! In it’s pages you can trace the “Scarlet thread of redemption”. “There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." Take God’s word and be finding: Acts 4:12, 2nd Peter 3:9
1”2Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12
“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9
Salvation is found in no one else.
Repentance is essential.
I. Salvation is found in no one else. “2Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12
In the context of Acts 4 Peter and John have been called to give an account of the healing of crippled man. Cornered by religious leaders they resolutely state the exclusiveness of Christ! Salvation they boldly declare is found in no one else!
The great New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce wrote:
“The name of Jesus by which the crippled had been empowered to spring to his feet and walk, was the name which Israel’s salvation (and, as was to appear later the salvation of the world) was inextricably bound up. The course of duty and wisdom for the rulers was therefore clear; if they refused it and persisted in their present attitude, they would bring destruction on their nation as well as themselves” F.F. Bruce commentary on the book of Acts pg 94.
Salvation is to be understood as: Rescue, deliverance from extreme danger!
Normally the flight from Nassau to Miami took Walter Wyatt, Jr., only sixty-five minutes. But on December 5, 1986, he attempted it after thieves had looted the navigational equipment in his Beechcraft. With only a compass and a hand-held radio, Walter flew into skies blackened by storm clouds.
When his compass began to gyrate, Walter concluded he was headed in the wrong direction. He flew his plane below the clouds, hoping to spot something, but soon he knew he was lost. He put out a mayday call, which brought a Coast Guard Falcon search plane to lead him to an emergency landing strip only six miles away. Suddenly Wyatt’s right engine coughed its last and died. The fuel tank had run dry. Around 8 p.m. Wyatt could do little more than glide the plane into the water.
Wyatt survived the crash, but his plane disappeared quickly, leaving him bobbing on the water in a leaky life vest. With blood on his forehead, Wyatt floated on his back. Suddenly he felt a hard bump against his body. A shark had found him. Wyatt kicked the intruder and wondered if he would survive the night. He managed to stay afloat for the next ten hours. In the morning, Wyatt saw no airplanes, but in the water a dorsal fin was headed for him. Twisting, he felt the hide of a shark brush against him. In a moment, two more bull sharks sliced through the water toward him.
Again he kicked the sharks, and they veered away, but he was nearing exhaustion. Then he heard the sound of a distant aircraft. When it was within a half mile, he waved his orange vest. The pilot radioed the Cape York, which was twelve minutes away: "Get moving, cutter! There’s a shark targeting this guy!" As the Cape York pulled alongside Wyatt, a Jacob’s ladder was dropped over the side. Wyatt climbed wearily out of the water and onto the ship, where he fell to his knees and kissed the deck. He’d been saved. He didn’t need encouragement or better techniques. Nothing less than outside intervention could have rescued him from sure death. How much we are like Walter Wyatt. Peter Michelmore, Reader’s Digest, October, 1987.
Floating in a restless sea of sin, sharks circling ready to finish us then the strong hand of our redeemer reaches out to pull us to salvation!
“2Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12
We claim the uniqueness of Jesus because the Bible does!
The Old Testament claims the uniqueness of God.
Isaiah 43:10-11
"You are my witnesses," declares the LORD, "and my servant whom
I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and
understand that I am he.
Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me.
I, even I, am the LORD, and apart from me there is no savior."
Jesus claimed uniqueness for himself.
Matthew 11:27
"All things have been committed to me by my Father.
No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the
Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to
reveal him."
John 14:6
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me."
As the great missionary D. T. Niles also said,
"Jesus Christ is not a value that we can negotiate, nor is he a preference that we can reject. He is the truth, and the truth cannot be changed."
Jason has made some assumptions that simply are not true. “There is no other name” that identifies God’s Love God’s passion and God’s plan for the salvation of human beings other than the Lord Jesus Christ!
Jason has assumed that God is not moved by the masses, that somehow the shear magnitude of unbelievers render Jesus as the only way to heaven a impossibility. Not true! God reaches out to every human being, desiring that they would discover that life becomes life when you know Christ! The way to know Christ is the way of repentance! It’s essential!
II. Repentance is essential. “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9
God desires a relationship with every human being! It was God who in acted a rescue plan to bring mankind back to himself! Sin separates us from God unless that sin is acknowledged and repented of we are without hope!
One well-known Pastor stated “The average American is strutting to hell, thinking there to good to be dammed”
Remember what Jason said:
“I know you don’t like to hear this but I really don’t see how Jesus can be the only way to heaven. I definitely believe in God, but there are just too many people in the world who don’t believe in Jesus for me to think that God doesn’t love them too”
That someone can conclude that God doesn’t love people is amazing! His love is a constant!
“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9
This verse in Peter is in response to scoffers who will be very vocal before the coming of the Lord. Critics who assume that the end of time has been delayed because it’s somehow not true. That the passing of years and turning of calendars stand as silent witnesses that oppose God’s plans!
The idea being this:
You say that God will bring judgment, yet everything seems to be as it’s always been the sun rises the sun sets the seasons come and go, people live people die etc!
The passing of time in actuality is a witness to God’s patience he is a “Long suffering God” The only reason he tarries in his coming and the establishment of his earthly rule is:
“He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
We have something to say to Jason a 38-year-old single economics professor from California
Jason, God does love people! You need to know Christ is the only way to God!
At a forum in Harvard, Ravi Zacharias responded to some critics by using the law of non-contradiction. This law of logic simply states that no statement can be true and false at the same time and in the same relationship. Zacharias said this law must apply to religion and reality. If Jesus said he was God, he either is or he isn’t. You cannot have it both ways. The same law applies to every other religion. They are ultimately true, or they are not. When he made this argument, the audience went silent for several minutes. That the laws of logic apply to reality floors people, even though they use logic to attack Christian truths.
*Here’s the rub: the average non-religious person will believe something WITHOUT thinking it through. They will believe many things and never investigate if they are rational. But this same non-religious person will disbelieve things on the basis that they are not logical. So they will attack Christian assumptions using principles of logic that they don’t even apply to themselves. *From the sermon “Only one way”? By Pastor David Holwick
Christ is the only way to God; repentance is the only way to Christ!
Repentance is a change of thinking it is a change of direction! Mentally physically your walking in one direction chasing your own dreams and desires. Then you realize that Jesus has died for you a price has been paid for your sins. Repentance is turning from our desires and wants and turning to Christ asking him to cleanse you. In effect you say my life I give to the one you gave his for me!
When Jesus truly gains entrance into a human heart he makes a difference!
Not too many years ago newspapers carried the story of Al Johnson, a Kansas man who came to faith in Jesus Christ. What made his story remarkable was not his conversion, but the fact that as a result of his newfound faith in Christ, he confessed to a bank robbery he had participated in when he was nineteen years old. Because the statute of limitations on the case had run out, Johnson could not be prosecuted for the offense. Still, he believed his relationship with Christ demanded a confession. And he even voluntarily repaid his share of the stolen money! Today in the Word, April, 1989, p. 13.
Appeal: Salvation is found in no one else/ Recognize
your deliverer!
Repentance is essential/ let his life change
yours!
