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By Christ alone Acts 4: 1 – 12 Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 13 Jan, 2008 I TOLD you we have to know where we stand before we try walking. Where do we stand? In Jesus. The key fact is the supremacy of Christ: there is no other source of salvation. Even at the time of the Reformation, any Catholic Christian could have said there is absolutely no–one else to give us salvation. Yet Tetzel banged his drum in Wittenberg. He cried out, As soon as the coin in the cash box rings and people rushed to buy his indulgences, they jostled each other for notes, signed by the Pope himself. “Look!” they’d say. “See this paper! I’ve paid my fee, now I’m free. No more Purgatory! I’m going straight to heaven!” Oh yes — all salvation is from Christ. But this little scam effectively said that the Pope controlled where salvation goes. It even gave Tetzel control, because he decided who had paid and who hadn’t. Money was at the core. Corrupted religion has the foulest stink of all. The Apostles said, 4:11 [Jesus] is Luther picked up this theme. He rejected Tetzel’s abuses. He committed himself to the centrality of Jesus. Sola Christi! was the cry. Scripture alone, and Christ alone. Look at Jesus. He’s the risen Lord, he’s the healer, he’s the Saviour of the world.
Risen Lord The Jewish leaders were enraged that the apostles proclaimed Jesus as the risen Lord. 2 They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. The apostles proclaimed that, because Jesus is risen, he is also the source of resurrection for all who have faith. If Peter and John had preached that one day there would be resurrection for faithful Jews in God’s good time, that would have upset no one. But they preached a risen Christ and that caused the angst. If Christ is risen, resurrection is already happening. If Christ is risen, he is the pioneer of resurrection for others. Follow him, and you follow him into life. It is that simple. And it’s that complex. A sociology lecturer taught a class on caring for people with severe mental illnesses. He told them it is easy, even for people with minimal training. He asked his class, “Do you have any questions? Does anyone have any doubts?” But no one had any problems. Most spoke about how confident they were that anyone could cope with the task. In his next class, he gave the same lecture. But this time he told them about opportunities to help people with severe mental illnesses, and urged them to consider volunteering for the experience. Amazingly, many of them suddenly saw reasons why it would be difficult and unsafe to do this kind of work. Jesus personalises the truth. He is the truth. He is the way, the truth and the life. He is the truth of salvation. He is the truth of resurrection. He is the truth of healing. You are no longer talking about theory. You are talking about someone who died and returned to life, someone who offers acceptance with God, someone who does heal many who come to him. And that confronts each of us with a choice: will we accept him, or will we reject him? When we move from theory to practice, when we move to personal choice, then it becomes threatening. You know why we believe that Jesus rose from the dead. You know he promised to return to life. You have heard about the empty tomb or about the many who were so convinced he was alive that they risked their own lives to proclaim the fact. Have you heard the many Old Testament promises? Do you remember the amazing conversions of people like Paul and even Jesus’ own brother, James? Do you need me to talk about the many people throughout history who knew Jesus has intervened in their lives and changed them forever? There are many reasons to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. But the real challenge is, “What do you plan to do with this message?” Look at the evidence. Consider if it is true. And then decide. If Jesus is alive, follow him into life; if he is not alive, settle your heart for death and decay: it is all you can hope for. Forget the foolish hope for maybe. Forget about saying, “Perhaps God will give me a positive rating and let me in.” Does God give us a positive or negative score and accepting or rejecting us on that basis? That’s illogical. In fact, it defames God. It makes him a prostitute, giving his best gifts to the best payers. It assumes that we are capable of living sufficiently good lives to pay our own way. It neglects what any first year psychology student can tell you about human motivation. We can’t do it. We can’t pay our own ticket price. The only sure hope is to follow the one who has opened the way through his own death and resurrection. Jesus is the risen Lord, and we must choose: follow him — or reject him.
The healer The conflict between the Apostles and the Jewish leaders began when Peter and John healed the crippled man at the Temple gate. We read, 7 They had Peter and John brought before them and began to question them: “By what power or what name did you do this?” 8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: “Rulers and elders of the people! 9 If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, 10 then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. Once again, no one would have worried that the man was healed. The problem was that the Apostles claimed he was healed by the authority of Jesus. The problem started when Peter and John preached in the temple that they hadn’t healed the man by their own power or authority, but by the authority of Jesus. Have you experienced healing? Have you seen people healed by prayer and faith? You know about when I had pneumonia. As a church, you all prayed for me. At the very time when you were praying, I realised that I was beginning to recover. I didn’t know that a special prayer time had been called. I had no expectation that anything unusual would happen. I didn’t just leap from my bed. I wasn’t walking, leaping and praising God. In fact, my full recovery took time, several weeks. But that was the turning point. I knew I was finally on the mend. My fevers became less from that time, my coughing wasn’t so painful. I even slept better. We have seen others healed. There was the woman with cancer of the bladder. Her X-rays had her riddled with cancer. But she had no trace of the disease the morning after the night we specially prayed for her. We prayed until we knew God had it in hand, whatever it was he would do. I don’t think we really expected something so dramatic! The Bible is so full of stories of the healing power of Jesus, that you would know them if I just name them. The daughter of the Syro-phoenician woman. Simon Peter’s mother in law with the fever. Jairus’ daughter who died, but returned to life. Blind Bartimaeus and his friend outside the Jericho walls. Some of our brothers and sisters in the Pentecostal and Healing movements claim that healing is as much a part of Christianity as salvation, and only lack of faith keeps us unwell. That’s magic, not miracles! We do well to be uneasy about that teaching. The very nature of miracles is that they don’t just happen mechanically — push here, lift there, shake three times, and it is done. Miracles happen when God and humans interact in accordance with God’s will. But there is also a truth in what they say. healing is in the cross. That is true. Many conservative Christians deny it, but why distort the truth one way because some distort it another way? Healing is in the cross. But, like salvation, healing is now, but not yet. I am saved; but I am not yet saved. What does that mean? It means that Jesus has ear-tagged me for heaven. He has bored my ear lobe to the door posts of heaven. Now I am his forever. He will never leave me or forsake me. He promised it. But I am not yet in heaven. I am not yet risen. At least, I’m pretty sure I’m not. I like you all, but I think there has to be something better. I’ll be pretty disappointed if not! I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in my flesh I shall see God. But I haven’t yet seen God in my flesh. Paul puts it this way: ROM 8:23...we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? You can see it. We wait for our adoption. We wait for the redemption of our bodies. These things are still future. Yet in the very next verse, Paul says, For in this hope we were saved. That is past. We are already saved. Jesus will not go back on his word. And that is how healing is. In the same way as we experience aspects of our salvation in this age, we experience aspects of healing in this age, too. But the complete healing is yet to come. No one in this world is fully healed. We all age, get sick, die. In the age to come, that will be ended. Right now, we see healing in some situations and not in others. Yet healing is in the cross, because all God’s benefits to his people are in the cross. In fact, I will go further and say that whenever healing occurs, that is an inbreaking of God’s Kingdom into this present age, it doesn’t even matter if the healing is mediated through a follower of Mary Baker Eddy in Christian Science. It doesn’t even matter if a satanist mediates that healing. It is still an inbreaking of God’s Kingdom into this age; however, the glory and praise goes to Christian Science or satanism rather than to God through Jesus. He paid the price, even if someone else stole the healing and used it in his own name. But the Bible clearly says, By his stripes we are healed. And Matthew says it in his gospel: 17 This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: Jesus is our healer: trust in that! But remember that, in this world we will have troubles, and we need to use all the help we can get. God made natural means as well as supernatural means. See the doctor, but don’t forget to pray, because all healing ultimately comes through Jesus, the healer. Saviour of the world The final point of conflict was over Jesus as Saviour of the world There is salvation in no one else, said the Apostles. If you said, My heart rejoices in God, my saviour no one complained. But to say “My heart rejoices in Jesus, my saviour” sounded like the worst blasphemy. A God who defeats the enemy, a God who leads his people across ocean floors and river beds with dry feet, a God who provides manna in the desert and water in the rock, that is the kind of saviour anyone could accept. But someone executed as a criminal? A wandering healer who had no home of his own? A man who called upright leaders whited sepulchres and who overturned businessmen’s tables? How could such a person be the saviour! It was too horrible to contemplate, too wrong to accept. These apostles had to be silenced! But they refused to be silent. They rejected the authority of the Sanhedrin. They preached Jesus even before the highest court of the land. And those rulers caved in. They caved in because Jesus was doing something different in that crippled man, and in the apostles, and in places where no one could deny he was at work. The apostles probably couldn’t even explain exactly why Jesus was able to save all who came to him. But they knew he had done something eternal. They knew he had brought about salvation and there was no one else who could do it. They might not have said the words, that Jesus died, the just for the unjust; but they knew that that was what he had done for them. They might not have been quite able to put into words that he died to take the place of people like you and me, because ...all we like sheep have gone astray They might not have understood that he died the death that you and I should die. But they grasped it by experience. They knew they had been touched by his love. And they knew they had passed from death to life. We know they knew it for one simple reason: they boldly declared it to the full leadership of their nation. They stood before a plenary meeting of the Parliament and the High Court and the Business Council and the Department of Public Prosecutions and the ACTU. Everyone with power in the land was there, demanding an answer. And they put it plainly to them all: 4:12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
Conclusion The Reformers said there was one source of the truth of God, and that is the Bible. And they said there was only one Saviour, and that is Jesus. Sola scriptura for the data, sola Christi for salvation and life. I want to make this very clear. As Jesus said of himself, John 14:6 I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. There is only one way to come to God the father, and that is through Jesus Christ the Lord, by faith in him and in his death and in his resurrection. I want to make it absolutely clear, 4:12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” If you have never come to Jesus in surrender and faith, this is your time to come to him, because he is calling for you today. AMEN
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© Peter R. Green 2007. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.) |
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