If you turn with me in your Bibles
to Acts chapter 4, let's read the Scriptures together. Acts chapter 4 is the first persecution,
the first opposition to the Gospel that the Church meets. In verse
7 we have the picture that's set before us with Annas and
the high priest and Caiaphas and John and others, and they
sat there in the midst, but asked, by what power or by what name
have you done this? By what power or what name have
you done this healing? of this impotent man, this lame
man. Then Peter, filled with the Holy
Ghost, said unto them, Ye 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 and
to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of
Nazareth, whom ye 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 nought of you builders, which has become the head of the corner.
Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none
other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be
saved. Now when they saw the boldness
of Peter and John and perceived that they were unlearned and
ignorant men, they marveled. And they took knowledge of them
that they had been with Jesus. And beholding the man which was
healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it. They couldn't deny the wonder
of the miracle that was before their eyes. But they couldn't
accept, they couldn't accept and wouldn't accept the fact
that this is the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to
look at verse 12 with you. We speak of salvation. Salvation
is being saved, saved from God himself. He must be saved from
the very holiness of God. He must be saved from Satan.
He must be saved from all of his wiles, all of the cunning
and craftiness of him who prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking
whom he may devour. He must be saved from sin. the sin that you are and the
sin that you do. You must be saved from yourself,
you must be saved from this world, you must be saved from the men
of this world, you have to be saved from temptations and trials. When men in religion speak of
salvation being a simple thing that you can do by walking an
aisle and saying some prayer, they're taking into no consideration
the wonder of salvation. the wonder of the Lord's salvation. As we saw from Psalm 118 last
week, it is the Lord's doing. And for the Lord's people, it
is marvelous in our eyes. I just wanted to look with us
at those last three words of verse 12. I'd like to think about
the musts, the imperatives of salvation. There is no other
name, none other name under heaven. Peter has in these sermons and
just before these people, and they will do when the church
comes to prayer again and they will every time they get an opportunity,
they'll proclaim the name of the Lord. They'll define who
the Lord is in terms of who the Lord Jesus Christ is. And anyone
that ever speaks of God and anyone that ever defines God in any
way and doesn't do so in light of the Old Testament scriptures
about who the Lord Jesus Christ is, is not talking to you in
the name of the Lord. To talk in the name of the Lord
is to describe Him, to describe Him in the wonder of His deity,
the amazing wonder of His humanity and Him dying under the wrath of God
on Calvary's tree. There is a description of the
Lord Jesus which is so emphatically clear in the scriptures that
necessitates that any description of Him which is not in accord
with that given by the apostles is clearly talking about another
Jesus, another Jesus and another salvation. There are many people
who find themselves very comfortable in their religious attainments,
very comfortable in their association with denominations and other
things, very comfortable in their churchgoing, very comfortable
in all sorts of things. And I love that description that
someone gave a long time ago, and I don't know who it is, but
they said that preaching is to discomfort the comfortable and
to comfort the discomforted. For those who are troubled, for
those who are troubled, for those who are weary, for those who
are heavy laden, for those who, like these people, these 8,000
people who were saved over the preaching, they saw that the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ was theirs, was on their hands,
and they were personally responsible. Your sins make you personally
responsible for his death." They were in a place of desperation. They were in the hands of a God. They had just weeks earlier been
in a place where they could stand in judgment of him. And now they're
in a place where they were very clearly in his court, and in
his court There was just one simple accusation against them.
You have with wicked hands crucified the Lord of Glory. And if you
don't believe that that is what your sin accounts for, you have
no idea of sin and you have no idea of the holiness and the
glory of our God. You have no idea of His wrath.
You have no idea of His name. That's why In church we want
the people to read the scriptures with us. God's people love God's
salvation. I just love the way God saves
sinners. I love the way his character
is revealed, his name is revealed in the salvation of sinners.
I love the way he works in the hearts of his people. the truths
which the natural man and especially the natural religious man find
so deeply offensive, like the parable that Simon read to us
just a little while ago. They find those truths they find
them gloriously comforting and gloriously refreshing. We delight
in the fact that the great transaction that is the centerpiece of all
human history, the centerpiece of all salvation, is that great
transaction on the cross 2,000 years ago outside Jerusalem,
which is what all the scriptures are about. And that is the centerpiece
that holds everything together in this universe, the Lord Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. They preached Him and they proclaimed
Him, and God's people love it. God's people love the fact that
in the eternal covenant, God the Father put all the responsibility
for salvation of all of his people into the hands of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And he came willingly. He came willingly, both as a
man and both as God. He is God in human flesh. And on that cross, the great
transaction of the cross, which Peter refers to again and again
and again, is the great transaction between God the Father and God
the Son. Why did a holy and just God slay
a holy and just Son? in perfect accord with every
attribute of God, to reveal His justice, to reveal His holiness. This is what Peter declared on
the day of Pentecost. You can read it again and again.
He was put to death by the determinate counsel and full knowledge of
God. It was God's activity regarding God on the cross, which is the
centrepiece of the salvation of all of God's people. All of
the sins of all of God's people were made to be the Lord Jesus
Christ and he took responsibility for them. And when God the Father
found sin on his darling son, He punished him to the full extent
of God's justice, to the extent that God can say, it is finished. The only measure of sin, the
only measure of sin is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. We
think so lightly of it because we swim in it and live in it
like a fish lives in the ocean and drink it down all the time.
and think so little of it. It's wonderful that God brings
us the Gospel and gives us a place and a time where we can set a
pause to the busyness of life and just contemplate Him. One of the wonderful things about
His work, His blood was shed and in Acts we see His blood
applied. They will be witnesses, they
will bear witness to Him, but in that bearing witness to Him,
these guilty sinners, these guilty sinners, 8,000 guilty sinners
with wicked hands are saved. It is just a remarkable, remarkable
picture of the grace of God. that if He saved sinners like
that, maybe there's a sinner here that He might save. And when He saves them, He works
in their lives in remarkable ways, doesn't He? That's why
I love and want us to look closely at those last three words in
John 4, verse 12. There's no other name. There's
salvation in no other form because there is none other name under
heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. I just love those phrases, each
one of them. There is a we, isn't there? There
is a we in this world. There is a we who are God's children
and they must be saved. There is a necessary group, isn't
it, that they are and they respond to the words of God. They respond
to the words of God about the Lord Jesus Christ and they respond
to the words of God about themselves. They have no problem being described
by God as having wicked hands. They have no problem being described
by God as being part of a wicked generation. Their religion was
wicked and they were a wicked part of a wicked religion. They are the we. They are the
we who were pricked in the heart in Acts chapter 2. They were
wounded in their heart. They were wounded in their heart
by the preaching of the Word of God, by God the Holy Spirit.
He wounded them in a place that no man can ever reach. And they
gladly received His Word and these, this we, repented and
they were baptised. This we received the gift of
the Holy Ghost. This we responded when Peter
cried out, save yourselves from this untoward generation. This
we is the ones that the Lord added daily to the church, such
as should be saved. There is a we. They are called
the Lord's sheep. They are His. They are His. They were His in eternity. They
are His bride. They are the objects of His love.
But where there is a we, there is a must. That word must speaks
of necessity. There is a necessity for all
of the children of God. There are things that the children
of God must have. They must hear the Gospel. They must be brought to a place
where they're wounded in their hearts. When the Gospel comes
with resurrection power, there is a new life created that didn't
exist before in the hearts of men. And it's a new life that's
energised by the power of God. You must be born from above. You must be born from above.
You're born from above. Your origin, brothers and sisters
in Christ, your origin is from above. There is an exercising
of that grace in the hearts of God's people. He moves their
hearts that they have a must, they have a necessity. You see,
most people can put on and off religion as they change their
clothes. They can come and go, can't they? They can dip in and
out of it as it suits them. But for God's people there's
a must. There's an absolute vital must. There's a must. They must. They must hear the Gospel. They
must come to the Lord Jesus Christ. They must hear about Him. There's
a necessity. There is a hunger and a thirst
that God creates in people that's only satisfied by the proclamation
of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a must. What
must we do to be saved? There was a necessity about salvation. They saw that in the courts of
God, hell was their portion. That's what they had earned by
their activities, and the doors of hell were opened before them,
as it were. A heartbeat away from eternity. They must there's a gospel imperative. And we see it so beautifully
in the scriptures, don't we? That woman that was bleeding
for 14 years, she said, I must, if I just might touch his garment,
if I could just put my hand on something that's associated with
him, if I could just touch him, I'll be made whole, I shall be
made whole. That man with leprosy, leprosy
is a picture of sin in all of the scriptures, that man with
leprosy cried out to the Lord and he said, Lord if you'd be
willing There was a necessity, a must, about his cry. Lord, if you are willing. He
knew that nothing he could do could relieve his situation. He went round, he was cast out
from that community. Any time he saw anyone, he had
to put his hand over his mouth and say, unclean, unclean. Every time he saw anyone, he
was excluded from all worship of God. But he was put by God in that extraordinary place where
he met the Lord Jesus. And he came to him and he said,
if you'd be willing, if you are willing, you can make me whole. There's a necessity, isn't it?
There's a necessity. There is a must. There's something desperate.
There's a desperate need that's created in the hearts of all
of God's people. They call upon the name of the
Lord. They have to cry out to Him. They call upon His name
because they have nowhere else to go. And they do it with an
imperative. They call upon Him. But what
is it to call upon the name of the Lord? To call upon the name
of the Lord, the first time it's mentioned in the scriptures,
there is a must that they have to call upon Him. The first time
it's mentioned in the scriptures in Genesis 4.26 is to call upon
the name of the Lord is to worship Him in church, to worship Him
gathered together with His people. To call upon the name of the
Lord in Romans 10 is to know Him, isn't it? Romans 10 verse
14 to 17. There's a remarkably powerful
passage of scripture which describes what happens, isn't it? Verse
13. Whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved. To be called upon Him is to have
salvation. To call upon Him is to hear who
He is. How then shall they call upon
Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in
Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without
a preacher? And how shall they preach except
they be sent, as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of
them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings
of good things? So you can't call upon the name
of an unknown God. You can't trust and call upon
a saviour who hasn't been revealed to you. You can't believe the
promises of God if they haven't been spoken to you. Christ must
be made known. And that's the glory of these
events that we read about in the Day of Pentecost. It was
all about the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Every sermon,
every sentence, every Old Testament passage that's quoted is all
about the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Well, who is He? Who is He? And Peter answers
the question of who He is. And he answers the question of
who He is in terms of what He has done. And why did he do it? And where is he now? And what
is he doing there? All those questions are answered,
aren't they? They are revealed so that people
can actually call upon him and know who they're calling upon.
To call upon the name of the Lord is to pray. Prayer is a sign of life. Elijah called upon the name of
the Lord on Mount Carmel. faced with all of that extraordinary
opposition, but to call upon the name of the Lord is to pray. is to seek mercy in the only
place that mercy can be found. It's actually to trust him, isn't
it? When that letter that we read about said, Lord, if you
are willing, you can make me whole, he knew that there was
just one place in all of planet earth and one person on all of
planet earth who could relieve his situation and he must get
to him and he must speak to him. It's to trust him, isn't it?
He went with a childlike faith. Lord, if you be willing, you
can make me whole. To call upon the name of the
Lord is to profess his name publicly before men. The people who called
upon the name of the Lord and those who were saved and those
who were added to the church, they called upon his name, they
publicly professed who he was and they saw themselves wonderfully
and joyfully and thankfully joined with these apostles. They had
left this religion with this magnificent temple and all of
its extraordinary history and all of its pomp and ceremony,
all of its Bible colleges, all of its denominations, all of
its mission organisations, all of its history, and they left
it. they left it to be joined to
some Galilean fishermen who were counted as nothings in this world. That's what they're described
as, aren't they? They're ignorant Ignorant and unlearned men. In the eyes of that religious
world, they were ignorant and unlearned. But there was something
remarkable about these apostles, wasn't it? They're standing there
being judged by this great Sanhedrin. Ignorant and unlearned men who
had been with Jesus. There is this Gospel necessity,
this Gospel imperative. We must, we must, we must be
saved. There is a must from God's side,
isn't there? The Lord Jesus Christ is a sovereign
reigning ruler of this universe and that's what Peter makes so
abundantly clear. He sits on the throne of heaven
and he's waiting for his enemies to be made his footstool. Nothing
that happens in this creation is outside of his sovereign absolute
control. I just love what Isaiah 42 said
of the Lord Jesus Christ. They're just words that ought
to be written, emblazoned on our consciences again and again
and again. He shall not fail, Isaiah 42.4. He shall not fail. Brothers and
sisters, say it again to yourselves. He shall not fail. I didn't write those words, they
were written 2,700 years ago. He shall not fail, nor be discouraged. He shall not fail nor be discouraged."
We must be saved, so the people who are saved have a necessity,
don't they? They must know the truth. They cannot in their troubled
state rest on anything other than the absolute truth, the
absolute assurance from God, the full assurance of salvation,
the full assurance of faith. And there's one other thing that
should comfort your hearts, brothers and sisters. When it says the
we must be saved, the saved is in the passive tense, which means
that the ones being saved are not doing the work. That's what
passive means, isn't it? Who's doing the work? Who's doing
the work? If you're passive and things
are happening to you, who's doing the work? It's a wonderful thing,
isn't it? It's a wonderful thing, salvation.
Salvation's of the Lord. Jonah needed to spend a bit of
time in the whale's belly to learn that salvation is of the
Lord. Most of us need to go through the same school to learn that
salvation is of the Lord. If you go back a couple of verses
in our text, if we've been looking at this man who has been lame
for all those 40 years. And Peter began this defence
of his preaching, if we this day be examined of the good deed
done to the impotent man by what means he is made whole. Do you
know what that word whole is in the original? Saved. Salvation is a creative activity
of God Almighty. And it's one of the great comforts
of the Gospel, brothers and sisters, isn't it? That when God creates,
He doesn't need your permission to create. When He created this
universe, all He did is He spoke it into existence. Light be and
light was were His first words. It should give us great hope.
It should give us great reason to go before the throne of grace
again and again for the people that we know and love and care
for. Paul almost necessarily was in this audience. And Paul
heard these sermons. He was there in Jerusalem. He
says in Philippians 3 that according to the law, under the law, he
was perfect. He was blameless under the law.
To be blameless under the law meant you were there at the great
feasts. He was there being taught by Gamaliel. He was in Bible
college in Jerusalem, being taught by Gamaliel, the greatest of
the Jewish teachers. And he was there and he heard. and he didn't believe, and he
saw and he didn't believe, and he heard again and didn't believe,
and he was a witness to the remarkable events of Pentecost, and the
remarkable events that we've been reading about in these early
chapters of Acts. He was a witness, and he didn't
believe. See, we witness to people, and
they don't believe. But when God creates life, brothers
and sisters, He creates life in such a way that wondrous things
happen. We read about it in Psalm 118,
didn't we? What was their declaration in
Psalm 118, verse 23 I think it is. This is the Lord's doing. This is the Lord's doing. It is marvellous in our eyes. And salvation comes to sinners
like these. It's marvellous in our eyes.
It's the marvellous thing we look for, isn't it, brothers
and sisters? That people will be drawn to the truth in such
a way that they are drawn by a force that is more powerful
than their wills. In fact, God promises, doesn't
He? And Peter told them, and they knew it. And they recited
it with him, Psalm 110 verse 3. Thy people, thy people shall
be willing in the day of thy power. Thy people shall be willing. They'll be willing. There will
be a must. A must. There will be a necessity
about their salvation. There will be a desperation about
it. They must be saved. They must
know the truth. They must know the truth about
God. They must know the truth from
the scriptures about who He is and how He saves people. They
must, because He will make them willing in the day of His power. There is a Gospel imperative
in it. There is a must. They must be
saved. We must be saved. We must be saved because of who
the Lord Jesus Christ is. I'll just read some of the musts
of Him in the Scriptures. it will be a comfort to you."
Whenever he taught them, he says, as soon as he was revealed on
that Mount of Transfiguration, in those last years of his ministry,
he declared again and again, the son of man must suffer many
things. He must have the scriptures fulfilled,
how it is written of the son of man, he must suffer many things
and he must be set at naught. He must be considered as nothing
by men. That's exactly what they thought
of him, didn't they? Pilate sought him, set him at
nought. Herod set him at nought. This Jewish crowd, including
this saved 8,000, set him at nought and said this world is
not worthy of him. You can treat him like a piece
of trash. He must be rejected of this generation. Everything that's written must
be accomplished in Him. The Son of Man must be delivered
into the hands of sinful man, be crucified and rise again the
third day. Everything that was written about
Him must be fulfilled. He was a walking, living, breathing
fulfilment of every Old Testament prophecy in complete perfection. such that they can go to the
Old Testament Scriptures and they can see again and again
all He did was fulfil the Word of God. Every promise of God
is yes and amen in Him. You must, because of His work,
you must be born again. You cannot enter the Kingdom
of Heaven, you cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven. You must be
born again. The Son of Man must be lifted
up. And for God's preachers, there
is just one cry like John the Baptist had, isn't it? He must
increase. He must increase and I must decrease. That's the cry of every believer,
isn't it? The closer we get to meeting
Him in glory, we must decrease and He must increase. He must
have people who worship Him. God is spirit, the Lord Jesus
said to the woman at the well in Samaria. They that worship
Him must worship Him in spirit and truth. And I love what He
says in relation to that. The Father seeketh such to worship
Him. If the Father seeks them, I reckon
He finds them, doesn't He? If they must worship in spirit
and truth. The Lord Jesus Christ spoke of
the great shepherd, didn't he? He says, I must bring them in.
I must bring them in. There will be one fold and one
shepherd. When the church is gathered,
there will just be one fold and one shepherd. They must, they
must be brought in. He must suffer. He must rise
from the dead. The heavens must receive him.
There is a must. There is, in this age, there
is a necessity that we must, through many tribulations, enter
into the Kingdom of God. There must be heresies among
you. There must be. Don't be surprised
by them. God says there must be. And heresy,
the word heresy just means to choose. It means people choosing
their own way. But our God must reign. He must give faith. He must bring
faith. He must exercise faith in the
hearts of His people. He is both the author and the
finisher of faith. He gives faith. That's what Peter
had told them, isn't it? And His name, through faith in
His name, has made this man strong, whom you now see and know. Yea, the faith which is by Him. He brings faith and He brings
people to a place where they simply, like children, trust
Him. You must. Without faith it's
impossible to believe Him. He that cometh to God must believe
that He is. and that He is the rewarder of
them that diligently seek Him. There is a necessity, they must
be saved, but they must seek Him and they will seek Him. And
all what happens in history is a necessity, isn't it? It must. It must come to pass. All the things that must happen
must shortly be done, says Revelation at the end. Satan must be loosed
for a little season. They must be saved. There are these imperatives of
the Gospel on account of the nature of our God and the nature
of His promises. And they work in the hearts of
God's people that they become absolute imperatives in their
lives. In that parable, the next parable
on that Simon was reading, there's a parable of the man who found
the pearl in that field. What did he do? What did he do
to get the pearl at great price? Kingdom of Heaven is like unto
a treasure hid in a field, which when a man has found, that treasure's
hidden in the field of this world, brothers and sisters, isn't it?
It's hidden from the eyes of unbelievers, it's hidden from
multitudes of eyes, and it's revealed, it's revealed to God's
people. But that man when he found it,
when the joy thereof, he goes and he sells, what does he sell? He sells everything He has. And he buys the field. He buys,
gets rid of everything he has, just to have that one field.
But only what he's after in that one field is just that one thing.
There is a must, brothers and sisters. There must be saved. Peter and John stood there before
people who had put the Lord Jesus Christ to death. and were about
to put Stephen to death. They stood there and they just
said, what do we do? You tell us what to do. You tell
us, is it better to obey God or listen to men? They stood
there, signing their death warrants before that crowd. That religious
Sanhedrin surrounded them. They signed their death warrants.
That's what it is to be a witness, brothers and sisters. To be a
witness to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Greek word is just martyr. To be a witness is to be a martyr,
is to say to this world, I have the pearl of great price, I have
sold everything, you can take me and do as you like, but I'm
going to stand, I'm going to stand for God, I'm going to stand
for his truth, because I must be saved. He has created the
need. By His must of who He is, He's
created a must in the hearts of His people. Let's pray.