(Acts) the Only Way to Get to Heaven — Brian Brodersen

Peter’s Defense and the Authority of God’s Word

Let's open our Bibles tonight to Acts chapter four, and let's pray together tonight before we look at the word. Father, we pray now as we look together at your word, Lord, that you would speak to us. And Lord, I just think of how you said that heaven and earth would pass away, but your word abides forever.

And Lord, here we are tonight before the eternal abiding word of God. And we thank you, Lord, that the truths that are proclaimed in it are just as true today as they were the day they were written. We thank you, Lord, that you've shown us the way of salvation.

Lord, you've made it clear. We bless you for that, Lord, and we pray that even tonight as we consider that subject, Lord, we pray that you would help us as your people to understand more clearly the whole issue of how it is that a person is saved so that we, Lord, might in turn impart that to those that we encounter.

Lord, we pray that you would work by your spirit now, for we ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen. I want to read to you from Acts chapter four, verses eight through twelve. Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said unto them, you rulers of the people and elders of Israel, if we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is made whole, be it known unto you all and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him.

Does this man stand here before you whole? This is the stone which was set at not of you builders, which has become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved here in the context.

As you perhaps will remember, was making his defense for the Jewish religious authorities. They were asking about this man who had been healed and by what power, by what name has this man been made well?

And so Peter is answering their question here as he makes his defense. But as he does so, there are certain things that he says that had application far beyond the immediate situation. Here in the verses we read, Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, lays down universal, absolute truth concerning the way of salvation.

So, you know, in a sense, it is incidental to his argument, but yet it's incredibly relevant for all time because he's stating an absolute truth. He's stating a universal, absolute truth here. Concerning the way of salvation.

Salvation as Humanity’s Most Urgent Need

Now, salvation is the most important issue facing men. There's no other topic. That even comes near in importance to the issue of salvation. Every human being is personally responsible for his or her own salvation.

I cannot save you and you cannot save me. Each of us must personally choose whether or not we'll be saved, not that we save ourselves. But that we choose to receive the salvation that God has made available to us through the only Savior, Jesus Christ.

Now, to be saved means basically three things. Number one, it means to have your sins, which are violations of God's law and offenses against his person to have your sins forgiven. Secondly, it means to be reconciled to God.

And thirdly, it means that you become a citizen of heaven. Your citizenship is in heaven to not be saved. It means to be under the guilt of your sin, separated from God and destined for hell. The place of outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth forever.

Oh, how the postmodern mind despises such statements or such ideas. These are the kinds of statements that people become highly agitated over. Yet they are true, absolutely true, provably true. And so what we want to do is look at what Peter said, break down what he said here as he lays out for us the only way to heaven.

Old Testament Prophecy and the Rejected Stone

The first thing that I want you to notice that Peter did is he made reference to. The fact that. Jesus was the stone that was rejected by the builders, and in doing this, what Peter was actually doing was appealing to prophecy.

You see, there was a prophecy that declared that the stone would be rejected by the builders. If you want to turn real quickly to the hundred and 18th Psalm. Let me read it to you. Verse 22, the stone which the builders refused is become the headstone of the corner.

This is the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord hath made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. Save now. I beseech thee, O Lord. O Lord, I beseech thee. Sin now prosperity.

Blessed be he that comes in the name of the Lord. So Peter appeals to prophecy as we have opportunities to present Jesus Christ to people. As the only way of salvation, I think it's important that we inform them that this salvation was promised hundreds and even thousands of years before Jesus Christ came in the Old Testament.

A while back, I was watching an interview with a couple of leading evangelical Christians, and they were being asked a variety of questions, and they were asked concerning faith in Jesus Christ. And they were actually asked the question if they believed that Jesus was the only way to salvation.

And they, of course, affirmed that they did believe that, and they made reference to a few scriptures in support of it. But I really personally felt like they they didn't give as strong of a case as they could have.

And as I was listening, I was thinking, you know, at this point, what I believe they should have done is they should have gone back to the Old Testament prophecies. They should have gone back to the very beginning.

They should have gone back to, you know, as far back as God creating man, God having a relationship with man, man falling from that relationship. And then God making a promise that he would redeem man.

And then God there made the promise, of course, that he would send a savior. And I thought, oh, they would have had such a better case had they gone back and built upon the prophecies of the Old Testament.

Because, you know, when you tell somebody that there's only one way to salvation and it's Jesus, sometimes people don't realize just exactly who Jesus is. They don't have the knowledge that we have. They don't know that he didn't just step into history, just some, you know, man that was, well, you know, a child that was born in Bethlehem, grew up there in Israel.

And, you know, they don't know the details. They don't realize that his entire life is coming. Everything about him was prophesied hundreds and even thousands of years before he got here. And I think we do ourselves a disservice in our presentation of the gospel, especially when we're considering that there's only one way to heaven.

I think we do ourselves a disservice if we don't present that part of the case to them. Because to me, if you take it back to God, the creator, you take it back to man being created by God and then man falling from the relationship and God promising to restore it.

Then I think the case is more easily established that there's really only one way to salvation, the way that God declared that he would reconcile man all the way back in the beginning. And so Peter does that here.

He makes reference to the prophets. And in the Old Testament, we find hundreds. And as I said, even thousands of years before the coming of Jesus, we find his family lineage, his miraculous entrance into the human race, his birthplace, the time of his appearance in history, his miracles, his substitutionary death, his resurrection.

We find all of these things foretold centuries before he arrived on the scene. And so I think. We've got something to learn from Peter. As we make the claim that there is no salvation apart from Christ, that we establish that claim, first of all, upon the prophecies of the Old Testament.

The Exclusivity of Salvation in Christ

Now, notice the second thing that Peter says here in verse 12. He says neither is there salvation in any other. And here's what I want you to catch here. Hear the apostle Peter. Remember, he's speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Verse eight tells us and Peter, full of the Holy Spirit. He went on and said these things. So he's speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He emphatically denies that all roads lead to God or that all religions are equally.

Are an equally valid means. Of attaining salvation, Peter denies that here he says neither is there salvation in any other. Basically, what Peter saying is there isn't another religion on the face of the earth that can truly save a person.

Now, we are living in a time and in a place where the all roads lead to God or all religions teach the same thing. Doctrine is fast becoming the law of the land. Did you know that if I. As a pastor, we're invited to.

Say, come and lead a prayer. For the opening of, let's say, a city council meeting. If I were to come in to do that, I would be informed before I prayed that it is illegal to pray in the name of Jesus Christ.

That's the law of the land. You cannot pray at a public function. That is in any way, shape or form sponsored by the government. It is illegal to pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Now. The reason for that is because to pray in the name of Jesus Christ implies that there could possibly be only one way to God and the powers that be do not want that message being circulated.

Now, the only people that truly believe that all roads lead to God or that all religions teach the same thing, the only people that really believe that are what you would call the nominally religious and the nominally religious are those whose religion doesn't affect the way they live.

And there are lots of people like that. They have a religious affiliation. Maybe they're a Methodist, maybe they're a Presbyterian, maybe they're an Episcopalian. Maybe they're Jewish, maybe they're Catholic.

Whatever the case, at least that's what they would tell you. But yet their religion has not impacted their life at all. It doesn't affect in one iota the way they live. Those are really the only people that take the whole idea of all roads leading to God or that all religions teach the same thing seriously.

And they basically do it out of ignorance because they haven't really taken the time to investigate their own religion or other religions to find that that absolutely is not true. Now, the atheistic humanist that control the media, the educational system and certain aspects of our government, they use the all religions teach the same thing doctrine as a ploy to downplay the significance of religion in general.

You see, those who are humanist and a humanist is basically an atheist, they don't believe in any religion at all, but they realize that there are a lot of people who are religious and so they can't come right out and do away with religion.

So what they then seek to do is downplay the importance of it. And as long as you hold your religion and it doesn't really impact your life, they're fine with that. That's not going to create any problems in society.

But yet anyone who knows anything about any religion knows that all religions do not teach the same thing. The person who makes that statement is a person who is either ignorant or deceptive in regard to the matter.

Those are the only two possibilities, because anyone who knows anything about any religion knows that religions do not teach the same thing. Let me quote you from Dr. Michael Green, a senior research fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, England.

He said this. It is really ludicrous to suppose that all religions lead to God when Buddhism does not believe that there is any God at all. When Islam makes them so far removed, when Hinduism offers extinction after many incarnations and in the meantime, sanctions idolatry on a massive scale.

How can all religions lead to God when they have such different beliefs about God, the afterlife and how one can attain it? You see, it's a complete myth, this idea that all religions lead to God or all religions teach the same thing.

The fact of the matter is this. No other religion, no other religion presents us with a savior. As Peter said, neither is there salvation in any other. No other religion presents us with a savior. Jesus stands alone as the one who claimed to be the savior of the world, the one and the only one who could reconcile man to God.

Jesus stands alone. There's no one else, any founder of any religious system. There's not even any theological system outside of biblical Christianity that teaches anything like a savior at all. It just isn't there.

Now, if you think about it, you can understand why Buddhism, say, for example, or Confucianism, they, of course, would have never taught any such thing because they are really. Systems of ethical behavior, not of salvation.

The whole idea of a reconciliation with God doesn't even exist within those systems. We call them religious systems. They're really more accurately, in a sense, ethical systems. But of course, there is a spiritual element to them.

Muhammad certainly never claimed to be a savior. It's just as Peter said, neither is salvation in any other. And then he goes on and he says that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

No other name given under heaven among men by which we must be saved. Now, this wasn't merely Peter's opinion. And believe it or not, I've read some Christian authors. Well, they call themselves Christians.

I doubt the validity of their claim. But I've read Christian authors so-called who have said who deny the idea of Jesus being the only way to heaven. And when they look at this statement by Peter, their response is, oh, well, you can't take what Peter was saying in the context of of an address to these people as a doctrinal truth.

And so they dismiss it on that basis. They say this is just a man standing before, you know, these people arguing his case and somebody recorded it. But we can't take this as doctrinal truth. We can't draw the conclusion from this that there's only one way to heaven.

Well, I think we can. Because I don't agree with them, I don't think this was Peter's opinion at all. As a matter of fact, I know it wasn't because Jesus said the same thing himself. Let's look together at what Jesus said, Matthew chapter 11, verse 27.

This is a great passage that basically declares the same thing that Peter is saying here, and quite often it's one that's overlooked. It's not referred to that often when we're talking about this subject, but I want you to notice Jesus taught the same thing, that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

Verse 27 of Matthew 11, all things Jesus is speaking, all things are delivered unto me of my father. And no man knows the son, but the father. Neither knows any man the father. Except the son and he to whomsoever the son will reveal him.

Jesus said no man knows the father. No one knows God except the one to whom the son will reveal him. So Jesus is making the same kind of statement that Peter made. There's no way to even know God unless we know God through Jesus Christ.

Now, over in John chapter 14. Verse six, a verse that's much more familiar. On this topic, Jesus again, he is speaking and he says, I am the way, the truth and the life and no man comes unto the father, but by me.

How could anything be any clearer than that? I am the way I am, the truth and the life. No man comes to the father except by me. Now, over in the 17th chapter of John, again, Jesus said something similar.

John chapter 17. The first two verses, these words spoke Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come glorify thy son that thy son also may glorify thee. Now, listen, as thou has given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou has given him.

Jesus said that he had power over all flesh. That is a radical statement power over all flesh, not just some people in certain parts of the world. Where Christianity would be known and then other people, of course, would have another means of attaining salvation depending on where they lived and what religion they were brought up under.

You see, that's all a ploy of the enemy to keep people in darkness. But Jesus makes it clear in these three places and we could go on and on over and over again, looking at both Old and New Testament, where the same thing that Peter said is being said.

Paul’s Exaltation of the Name Above Every Name

Now, Paul, the apostle, he also taught the exclusiveness of Jesus Christ. Turn with me to Philippians chapter two. Philippians chapter two, verse five, speaking of Christ Jesus, verse six says, who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

Therefore, God also had highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the father.

Notice he has been given a name that is above every name. A name above every name, every. Me shall bow and every tongue shall confess that puts Jesus in a category all by himself. And so Peter stated it in our text here in Acts four, Jesus stated it several times over as he spoke during his public ministry.

Paul, the apostle. He stated it here in Philippians, but, you know, this is the message of the entire Bible, we could go back into the Old Testament. And find the same thing being communicated that God would send a savior, one savior, not many.

As a matter of fact, Isaiah 4311 says, I even I am the Lord and beside me there is no savior. Now, Jesus, his name. You remember, it means the Lord is salvation, that is, the name above every name is the name that actually means the Lord is salvation.

You remember when when the angel appeared to Joseph and he informed him that Mary was pregnant by the activity of the Holy Spirit, a supernatural thing. A miracle had taken place. The angel says to Joseph, you are to call his name, Jesus, Yeshua would be the Hebrew pronunciation for he shall save his people from their sins.

The meaning of the name Yeshua is the Lord is our savior. So when Peter stood there before the Sanhedrin that day and he made this confession before them, notice what he said, he said, be it known unto you all and to all the people of Israel.

Now, this is a message that Peter said everybody needs to know. They needed to know it, all the people of Israel needed to know it. All of the Gentiles need to know it. And what do they need to know that?

There is not salvation in any other. There is no other name, no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Now, Peter says something here that actually, I think, clearly solidifies his case.

The Resurrection as God’s Validation of Jesus

And there in verse 10, he refers to Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom God raised from the dead, you see, and that's the distincting the distinction. Right there between Jesus and everyone else. Now, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, Sai Baba, whoever you want to refer to regarding Hinduism or whoever you want to refer to regarding any other religion that was founded by a person, all of these people, of course, died and remained dead.

Jesus is the only one. Who died and came back to life, Jesus actually claimed prior to his death that he would do that very thing, so it wasn't an afterthought, it wasn't something that, you know, the disciples after he was dead got together and said, well, what can we do now?

What do we say? I mean, you know, we thought he was the Messiah, but now he's dead. And then they came up with a great plan, well, we'll say he rose from the dead, didn't happen like that at all. Jesus, during his lifetime, during his public ministry, he was telling them something they had not even begun to imagine.

He was telling them he was going to die. And he was going to rise again. So while he was still alive, he predicted that he would rise again. And again, this is the thing that sets Jesus apart, puts him in a category all by himself.

And, you know. If you were God. And you wanted to designate one person as the authority on the subject of salvation. You know, what would you do to distinguish that person from every other person? What would you do to make sure that people realize that this is the person who has the authority to speak on the subject?

Well, I think God did the wisest thing that could have ever been done. He took that person and he raised him from the dead. Something that's never happened with anybody else. And you think of all of the people that have lived and all the great people that have lived.

And all of these religious men that we've spoken of here. And no matter how devout, no matter how pure, no matter how committed or whatever the case, when they died, they were dead. And that was the end of their life, the end of their story.

But not so with Jesus. And so he's the one who stands out in all of history. Jesus died like the others. But he rose again, but as a matter of fact, you know, thinking about it, he didn't really die like the others.

The others died because the reality is they partook of a sin nature like we all do, and because they partook of a sin nature, it was inevitable that they would die. Jesus did not partake of a sin nature.

It was not inevitable that he would die. Jesus died willingly. Jesus gave up his own life, he actually said, you remember, no man takes my life from me, I lay it down. And he said, I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again.

And then when we read of the account of the crucifixion in the Gospel of John. It's interesting that after Jesus went through all of the suffering that he went through, all of the beating. And the abuse, the mistreatment and then the brutality of the crucifixion.

All of those things that easily would have killed anybody else, we read that Jesus, he released his own spirit. So Jesus didn't really die like anyone else would die. He gave up his own life himself, literally at a point in time when his suffering was completed.

He simply said to his spirit, spirit, I dismiss you. You see, so he didn't really even die like other people die. He did die in the truest sense, but he died because he chose to die. And he rose again because he chose to rise again, so he rose again, not in some mystical sense.

And when we talk about the resurrection of Jesus, I think we all know this, but it's always good to reiterate it. We're not talking about a mystical resurrection. We're not talking about something that happened that nobody could really affirm whether or not it truly did happen.

We're not talking about something that happened in the mind of the apostles. A good idea that Jesus would have risen from the dead, therefore, we're just going to believe that he did, even though there wasn't any evidence for it.

That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the resurrection of Jesus. We're talking about a literal, physical resurrection. We're talking about a person who was dead, who comes back to life, who who is then seen and touched and spoken to by hundreds of people.

That's the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was predicted by the prophets. It was confirmed by the apostles and it's verified by history. So you see, as here, as we find ourselves today living in a time and in a place where the law of the land is becoming, you can't speak in the name of Jesus Christ.

You can't pray in the name of Jesus Christ publicly and these kinds of things that are happening and perhaps will continue to escalate. The argument for that, again, coming from the humanistic side, the atheistic side, is basically that, you know, all religions are equally valid.

But truly, if they were honest, they would actually say all religions are equally invalid because they don't believe in any of them. But what they don't want is anybody else to really believe all that seriously in them either, because that creates problems for their agenda.

You see, that's the way they work it. But as they would try to impose this and any one of you who are in school, whether you're in junior high, high school, college, you know that this kind of thing is being pressed.

It's not just being pressed in the educational realm, it's being pressed in society. And now there's all kinds of laws and things that have been passed where if you're on your job and you begin to talk to somebody else about Jesus Christ and perhaps they're of another religion, well, you could be fined for that.

You could be sued, you could be released from your job because after all, you're implying that your religion is better than theirs. And so this whole thing is going on. But, you know, the people who are behind this kind of thing are always talking about the fact that we live in a pluralistic society.

But, you know, they've redefined what a pluralistic society is. If we did truly live in a pluralistic society, actually, the United States has been a pluralistic society for many, many years. A pluralistic society is the way a society ought to be.

It's a society where there's freedom of religion and there's freedom to express your religion as long as it's, you know, within certain boundaries, like you're not killing people and trying to overthrow the government and things like that with it.

That would be a problem. But you're you're able to express your beliefs and you're able to seek to actually persuade others to believe what you believe, you're able to challenge their beliefs, you're able to call into question the veracity of their system.

That is what a pluralistic society is. And that's what has largely been the case here for a long, long time since the beginning, really, of the establishing of our country. But more recently, although they still cry a pluralistic society, they've redefined what that means.

And now in what they call a pluralistic society, it's a place where. It is not tolerated. For people to make truth claims, exclusive truth claims, we will not allow anyone to challenge anyone else's belief system.

And that's why they, you know, made an attempt to even remove something like one nation under God from the Pledge of Allegiance, because, oh, that offends this atheist here that doesn't believe in God and you're trying to impose another belief system on them and they have every right to just keep believing what they believe and they should never be challenged or questioned or any of that.

You know, there's a lot of factors playing into it. It's certainly a violation of the constitutional right to free speech, but it's more than that. It's more than that, it is really an attack against.

The gospel of Jesus Christ, it's an attack against the word of God and it's an attempt by the devil, really, ultimately, if you trace it back far enough, it's an attempt by the devil to silence the word from going out because, of course, he knows better than anybody else that neither is there salvation in any other.

That there really is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved, the devil knows that, and therefore he wants to do everything in his power to silence the gospel message so that no one is saved.

Standing Firm on the Gospel and the Witness of the Apostles

So we, as God's people. We have to stand strong, we have to stand firm, we have to know what we believe, we have to know why we believe it, we have to know that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and that sets him apart from everybody else that puts him in a category all by himself.

And that's not some mystical thing that we hope happened, but it's an event, as I said earlier, that. Was predicted by the prophets, confirmed by the apostles and verified by history. It was predicted by the prophets, as we already mentioned in the early part of the study, the prophets.

And like I said, I think we would be wise in our communication of this truth of only one way to heaven, we would be wise to to have a good understanding of what the prophets actually told would occur and that we know that they didn't write this after the facts, they certainly wrote it before the facts because the Old Testament in which it's written was confirmed by the prophets.

It was completed 400 years before Jesus was ever born. It was completed, it was available 250 years before the birth of Jesus, the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek. You see, some people, they look at the Old Testament prophecies and they say, oh, these aren't prophecies at all, somebody just came along after these things happened and wrote them down, pretending like, you know, they were prophecies.

Not so. You have to be a complete ignoramus to believe that. Because it's a fact, an established historical fact that the Old Testament was completed 400 years before the birth of Christ, translated into Greek 250 years before the birth of Christ.

So as we go back to the prophecies, all the way back to Genesis, where we begin with God promising that he's going to send a deliver there in Genesis 315 and all the way through the books of Moses and then all the way through the prophets, I was just reading through Isaiah today.

Reading through chapter 49, chapter 50, chapter 53, and there it is so blatant, so clear, so unambiguous about the Savior who would come. And who would give his life for the sin of the world. And because he would pour out his soul to death and be numbered with the transgressors, God would exalt him and give him that name above every name and so forth, it's all there.

And so as we communicate it, we need to refer to what the prophets predicted. And then we also need to point to what the apostles confirmed. The apostles confirmed that the message of the resurrection was true by shedding their blood.

In support of their belief. In other words, they gave their life rather than deny the resurrection. Now, some people would argue and say, well, that doesn't really prove anything because lots of people give their lives for causes.

And even presently, we're finding that there are lots of people that are giving their life for a religious cause presently. And we hear about the suicide bombings and all of these things, but you see, here's the difference between those two things.

Those today who are killing themselves and killing other people in the process, whether it be through hijacking airplanes or strapping on explosives and then blowing themselves up, they believe that they're doing the right thing.

They believe that they're truly serving God, they believe that this is what God wants them to do. They're totally deluded, unquestionably, they are radically deceived. To think that God would actually want you to murder people.

What a great deception. Didn't the Ten Commandments declare that you shall not commit murder? But they murder people and then they excuse it by crying Allah Akbar, that justifies it, we kill them for God.

Radically deluded, but nevertheless, they believe that. They're doing the right thing. They're giving up their lives for what they believe. Now, here's the difference between them and the apostles, if the apostles.

If anyone knew that Jesus didn't really rise from the dead, if he didn't rise from the dead, they would have known it. They would, of course, have been the ones who actually made the story up and then having made the story up, they would have died for something that they knew wasn't true.

You see, that's the difference, those people who are dying right now as so-called martyrs, they believe that what they're doing is right. They believe it's true Islam. But you see, these guys would have had to die knowing.

That their message wasn't true, they would have had to die for what they knew to be a lie, and that is not something that people do. When people die for a cause, they believe that it's the right cause, they believe that it's true.

But if these guys knew that Jesus didn't rise from the dead, but just wanted to save face, and so they made up the story that he did rise from the dead and then got killed for it, they were the stupidest people that ever lived.

But you see, it's completely against reason to think that they would have done that. They could give their lives willingly. Freely, without reservation. Because they knew that he had risen from the dead.

They knew that he had risen from the dead and they remembered his words, because I live, you shall live also. And they had that absolute hope of resurrection. And so we have the prediction of the prophets, the confirmation of the apostles, and then we have history to verify the truth of the resurrection.

There have been many great books written on the subject. If you want to study them, there are many over in our bookstore. Just the historical veracity of the resurrection, how when you take all of the facts given in the scripture and you lay it all out and you analyze it from a legal standpoint.

From the standpoint of taking it all to court to find out, you know, was this an actual event or is this just a fabrication? All of the great legal minds that have ever addressed it, some of the greatest legal minds in the history of our country and Britain have concluded that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a historical fact beyond dispute.