No Other Name Series

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.