Mission #3 - ... of Jesus

Acts 4:8-12

FULLY DEVOTED FOLLOWERS OF JESUS

     Do you remember the words to the chorus, There’s Something about That Name?  “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.  There’s just something about that name.  Master, Savior, Jesus, like the fragrance after the rain; Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, let all Heaven and earth proclaim: Kings and kingdoms will all pass away, but there’s something about that name.”  We must always be a church that is developing our world into fully devoted followers of Jesus.  We are not bringing them to a philosophy, a denomination, a list of rules, a doctrine, a church, baptism, but to the person, Jesus.  If we do, then He will supply all the power we need to transform our world!   

I.  THE NAME OF JESUS MEANS POWER!

     A.  God Gives Jesus Complete Power Over Everything.   Mt. 28: 16-ALL authority on Heaven and on earth.  The word for authority means the absolute power to do whatever one desires to do.  That pretty well gives Jesus all the power He needs.  There are a lot of powerful people in the world today.  With one word they can make things happen.  But there is no human or human institution in the world that is stronger than Jesus.  The combined strength of all the evil forces of the world is not stronger than Jesus.  The power that keeps this whole universe in operation is not stronger than Jesus.  If you combined all the power on earth and in Heaven together, you wouldn’t come close to having the power that God the Father gives to Jesus.  We are to bring Jesus into our world because only His absolute power will be able to change this mess!   

B.  God Gives Jesus Exclusive Power Over Salvation.  We know that these words in Acts 4:12 are God speaking through Peter about Jesus.  Verse 8 states that Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit when he spoke these words.  He tells the crowd that they were the ones who crucified Christ, but that the power of God raised Him from the dead.  He tells them that by the same power Jesus healed the crippled man.  He warns that they rejected the most important stone in God’s salvation building-the cornerstone-Jesus!  Salvation is found in no other but Jesus.  This agrees with what Jesus said in John, “I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes unto the Father but by Me.”  This should not be a surprise since God has always demanded that He is the one and only God.  Throughout the Old Testament He told His people that they could have no other gods beside Him. 

      Today’s world still finds it offensive.  Why?  Because Jesus proves to us that we cannot save ourselves.  This irritates people that have concluded that they will go to Heaven in any number of ways.  85% of Americans feel that when they die they will go to Heaven.  It’s almost as though if you are American, you automatically go to Heaven!  Jesus and the Bible put a kink in that thought.   

    Isn’t it great to graze at a good salad bar?  Many people today want a gigantic spiritual salad bar and graze through all the many ways of salvation the world offers.  This is why they still get upset with these teachings.  Jesus takes away the choices in salvation and leaves us with only one-HIM. 

            But in reality we shouldn’t get upset, we should rejoice in how much better Jesus’ way is.  In order to understand the stark contrast between Christianity and all other religions, listen to this illustration.  Picture a Father and his 3 year old daughter.  The daughter wants his father to pick her up, to embrace her, to carry her, to hold her close. So the little girl lifts her hands up to God and desperately reaches for his neck, so that she can be lifted up.  She reaches and reaches, and urges her father to pick her up, but she’s never quite able to reach up high enough.  That is a picture of the desperation many have in trying to reach up to God, but never quite reaching high enough.  Other religions are a system of rules and pious commandments which may bring a person closer to God, but never close enough. 

    Now picture a Father and this same 3 year old child.  The child reaches up to her father to be lifted up and held in his arms, but instead of just looking down at his child, he lovingly reaches down to where the child is, and with compassion and strength lifts the child up into his arms and draws the child close to himself.  That is what makes Christianity different than all other religions.  God came down to us in the form of Jesus Christ, and made a way for us to be lifted up into the arms of God.  Jesus came here to us, so we could come to him.  Only Jesus can do that.   

     C.  Eventually God Brings All to Submit to Jesus’ Power.  Some choose to do that for ourselves.  One day all will submit to Him. (Philippians 2:9-11) 

     Let’s do some thinking today.  Think with me about all the religious leaders of history-Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, Gandhi, Joseph Smith, Moon and all the others.  The most that you can say about them was that they were moral teachers.  Friends, a moral teacher CANNOT save your eternal soul.  One day all these people are going to come and bow before Jesus and proclaim that He is the King of King and Lords of Lords.  Everyone one will.  For those of us who have chosen to do it on our own that will be a great day of victory.  But for those who have to be forced to submit to the King, this will be a horrible day of realizing they wasted their lives for all eternity.   

    D.  If We Make this Our Mission , Jesus’ Power Will Fall on Us As It Did on Peter and the Early Church.  (29-31) Wherever people proclaim salvation through Jesus, His power falls there.  We can know it will follow us through our neighborhoods tonight as we go out in servant evangelism and it will go with us to the uttermost ends of the earth in Mexico, Canada, Wyoming, Ukraine, Sweden, Russia, China, Ireland or wherever. 

     We must remember another thing that will happen: the world will not like it.  Look at the response towards these men.  In the same way we must tell the truth in love to the world even when other religions seem to get along, “Because a thousand errors can live in peace with one another, but truth is the hammer that breaks them all in pieces.”  We have been called to tell the truth of Jesus in love to our whole world, because only the truth of Christ can set them free from their sin and give them life.  Without the Truth they will continue to wander in darkness.   

CONCLUSION

Most of us have heard Godfrey Saxe’s poem, The Blind Men and the Elephant, that is based on a fable from India .  In it six blind men to go observe an elephant to understand what it is like.  One blindly walks into the elephants’ side and proclaims that an elephant is like a wall.  The second feels his tusk and confidently says that the elephant is like a spear.  The third grabbed its trunk and said, “Why of course, the elephant is like a snake.”  The fourth, feeling the elephants’ leg said that it was obvious to any thinking person that the elephant was like a tree.  The fifth blind man ran his hand across the elephant’s ear.  He was sure that the elephant was like a big fan.  Finally the sixth man took hold of the tail and announced the elephant to be like a rope.  Saxe sums up the poem by saying that although each was partly in the right and they all were in the wrong.  The final verse reads, “So oft in theologic wars, the disputants, it seems, rail on in utter ignorance of what each other means, and prate about an elephant not one of them has seen.”

     When it comes to salvation, it is the same way.  There are a lot of people telling you how to be saved, but they have never seen it for themselves.  They are blind spiritually.  They only have a part of the picture.  Only God is able to tell us what salvation really looks like!