I am sure that most, if not all of you caught the Superbowl last Sunday. What an amazing game! The New England Patriots came close to repeating a perfect season by winning all of their games. They were definitely the most dominant team in the league.
During the regular season, quarterback Tom Brady set the record for most touchdown passes in a regular season, paving the way for his winning the MVP award. At the age of 30, he has already won three Super Bowls—an accomplishment that sets him apart as one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game.In 2005, Tom Brady was interviewed by 60 Minutes journalist Steve Kroft. Despite the fame and career accomplishments he had achieved already, Brady told Kroft that it felt like something was still lacking in his life:Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, 'Hey man, this is what [it's all about].' I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me? I think, 'It's got to be more than this.' I mean this isn't—this can't be—all it's cracked up to be."Kroft pressed Brady as to what the right answer was, and Brady added:What's the answer? I wish I knew… I love playing football, and I love being quarterback for this team. But at the same time, I think there are a lot of other parts about me that I'm trying to find.
Van Morris, Mount Washington, Kentucky; source: and 60 Minutes (CBS, 2007)
We get so enamored by fame and fortune, that we silently hold the assumption that those who are rich and famous are happier and more satisfied with their lives. But we have heard from Tom Brady's own mouth, the man who has as much fame, fortune and success as anyone, wonder whether there isn't more to life. Is there more, or is this all that there is? This question haunts our every achievement.
The story that we are following in the book of Acts is about the answer to that question. The good news of Jesus is a message that there is more than what there is in this life. And in the chapter for this week, we see how to get what it is that our hearts are seeking.
The start of chapter 4 is not a new section but it is the middle of a story. What has happened? Peter and John had just healed the paralyzed man. Then Peter preached to the Jews who were there all about Jesus, who came to the Jews, but the Jews rejected him. He then called on them to repent and turn back to God. While they were speaking, the priests and religious leaders gathered together in response. And they were not happy. They were upset because they were preaching about Jesus and they were telling the people that there was resurrection from the dead for any one who believes in Jesus. They threw them in prison just to shut them up. But it was already too late. For there were already 5000 men who were believers in Jesus, not counting the women and children.
The next day Peter and John had their day in court. They got to present their side of the issue. Listen to God's Word to you from Acts 4, verses 5-14.
5 The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, 6 with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. 7 When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, "By what power or by what name did you do this?" 8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "Rulers of the people and elders, 9 if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, 10 let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. 11 This Jesus is "the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.' 12 There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved." 13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and recognized them as companions of Jesus. 14 When they saw the man who had been cured standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition.
This text is a great story of boldness and faith in the face of persecution. There are many lessons that we could learn. But there is a sentence here which is scandalous to the point of being shocking.
12 There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved."
We live in a world marked by globalism. Most of the goods that we buy on a daily basis are made half a world away. The food we eat is grown on the other side of our southern border. We are all interconnected. The US markets sneeze and the world catches a cold. We constantly hear about events going on in cities all over the world: Kabul, Islamabad, London, Tokyo, and on and on. To think that we can live only aware of ourselves and our way of thinking is a thing of the past. The last vestiges were blown away on 9/11, when we realized that the way that other people see the world matters a great deal, ESPECIALLY if they don't think the way that we do.
These new realities have left the impressions upon our society that no matter how many perspectives that you can gather into a room there are still more that you don't know about. No one can have the corner upon truth. And if you do, you're just wrong, and not only are you wrong, but it's worse. You are arrogant and wrong.
When this kind of thinking is applied to religion, it leads many to the conclusion that the best that you can do is to collect spiritual insights. You can't really know about God. Because if you say that God is nothing more than nature and I say that God is more, that he is loving and personal, we are at an impasse, because we can't put it to the test. This thinking then leads to the conclusion that all that there are many paths to the "higher power," each person has their own faith, which amounts to not much more than personal feelings. Following this logic, Christianity is just one path, and if you have grown up in it, or adopted it, then good for you. But you should never commit the unforgivable sin of thinking that it is any more than that, that it is "true." That just makes you wrong, and worse then wrong, it makes you arrogant and wrong.
Rock singer Sheryl Crow expressed it about as well as anyone, when she said:
I believe in God. I believe in Jesus and Buddha and Mohammed and all those that were enlightened. I wouldn't say necessarily that I'm a strict Christian. I'm not sure I believe in heaven.
—Rock singer Sheryl Crow in an interview with the New York Post in September of 2005
Everyone has a little slice of truth. It doesn't really matter what the content of your faith is. And my guess is that "those who are enlightened," according to Sheryl Crow, are those who share her politics and ethics.
Into this cultural situation, verse 12 crashes like a herd of stampeding elephants. Listen again,
12 There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved."
The name we are talking about is Jesus. What makes this scandalous is the particularity. It says that God is not found wherever one looks, as if he is no different than the plants or the trees. Instead, he choose a one particular people and eventually become one of them at a certain place and a certain time 2000 years ago. It was at this time and in this way that he choose to reveal himself and to reveal himself fully.
We make a mistake when we think that this scandal is new, just to us. The Roman Empire was equally cosmopolitan. We think that being multicultural is a recent development in history. But the Roman Empire spanned such a swath of cultures of infinite variety. So much so that they great achievement of the Emperor Augustus, was the establishment of peace. Peace itself was the achievement because the Empire had brought together so many different peoples. And all of these peoples' had their own gods. The Greco-Roman world was awash with gods. You couldn't swing a cat without hitting an idol to one of them. It was into a cosmopolitan world that the first disciples proclaimed Jesus of Nazareth, raised from the dead. They called people to turn from their false idols and to worship the true God who created heaven and earth.
The real issue here is the knowledge of God, and the question is, Can you really know God or not? The pluralists, that is those who think that every path is a path to God, essentially believe that no one can have firm knowledge. Different people can glimpse different things, but we can't know enough about God to say whether he is loving and personal, like we Christians think, or not-loving and impersonal as the Dalai Lama believes. This explains why so many people just want to reduce religion to ethics and just talk about how to be a better person. They declare with all the certainty that they can conjure that this is what all religious are really about anyway. What they fail to realize is that they are claiming the very knowledge of God that they say that others cannot attain.
Preacher Tim Keller helpfully says this:
Pluralists contend that no one religion can know the fullness of spiritual truth, and therefore all religions are valid. But while it is good to acknowledge our limitations, this statement is itself a strong assertion about the nature of spiritual truth.A common analogy is cited—the blind men trying to describe an elephant. One feels the tail and reports that an elephant is thin and flexible. Another feels a leg and claims the animal is thick as a tree. Another touches its side and reports the elephant is like a wall. This is supposed to represent how the various religions only understand part of God, while no one can truly see the whole picture. To claim full knowledge of God, pluralists contend, is arrogance.I occasionally tell this parable, and I can almost see the people nodding their heads in agreementBut then I remind them that the only way this parable makes any sense is if you've seen a whole elephant. Therefore, the minute you say, "All religions only see part of the truth," you are claiming the very knowledge you say no one else has. And you are demonstrating the same spiritual arrogance you accuse Christians of.
Timothy Keller, "Preaching Amid Pluralism," Leadership Journal (Winter 2002, vol. XXIV, no. 1), p. 34
What it all comes down to is whether or not you believe that God can reveal himself. The thing that marks Christians out is not that we believe that we are so spiritual that we have found the truth of who God is, but that the God who is spirit has made it plain to everyone who looks, just who he is.
Why do we Christians continue to insist that Jesus is the way to God? It is not to justify ourselves. It is not to make it easier on ourselves. I would love to say, "Oh yes, you believe that your pet goldfish is the spark of God in your life. That is fantastic! I am happy that you found your way." I would love to just affirm everyone for everything. But I can't. Why? Because I believe that God loved us too much to keep us guessing. There is no way that you can come to any definitive knowledge about God by only looking at nature, or studying history, or looking at human psychology. There are too many possibilities and many of them are contradictory. Some people look at these things and conclude that God is evil and vindictive, and just toys with us. If you can't know otherwise, then this might actually be the case.
God doesn't want us to guess. He wants us to know. He wants us to know what he is like, what his character is. He wants us to know him so that we can love him, and we can know his love for us. He wants us to know for certain that we are his special creations and we were made with promise and purpose. He wants us to know that he will care for us and provide for us. He wants us to know that we are not alone in a meaningless world like others say.
He made all of this clear in Jesus, because in Jesus Christ, God took on human flesh to reveal who he was and what he wants from us. He became a Jewish peasant in an outlying village, not to save Jewish peasants, or even all Jews. He took on the particular life of one human in order to be able to save all humans. See, there is no way that he could have become human in some general sense, he had to become one particular human. That is the genius of particularity. He became a unique person, in order to save a unique person just like you. For God does not just love humanity in a general sense. He loves each one of us individually and uniquely, for that is how he created us.
What he accomplished in Jesus was utterly unique. There is no repeating what Jesus did. See, Jesus was not just a prophet that revealed truth, as many want to make him. He did not merely show the way to God. He created the way to God as we took our sins and debts upon him and gave us his righteousness. That is why we insist on salvation in Jesus, not because he discovered some spiritual path, but because he is the path. He is the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through him.
Is this good news? You better believe it. There is no better news. Because just as we don't have to fumble around in the dark trying to get some small glimpse of what God is like, since he has revealed himself, so we also don't have to spend our lives trying to be good enough to win God's favor, so that we can spend eternity with him. That road is nothing but a treadmill with no exit. What was offered in Jesus was salvation to anyone who trusts their life to Christ. There is no room for constantly trying to be good enough. Christ was already "good enough" for you. It is up to you to receive his gift. And, it gets better, with that gift come the assurance of salvation.
Allen Iverson, superstar guard for the Philadelphia 76ers and now for the Denver Nuggets, had a good friend murdered. It was such a profound loss for him. In the aftermath Iverson gave his thoughts about the afterlife: "I want to go to heaven," said Iverson. "When I die, I want to see Rah. I know he's in heaven, and before I die, I want to know that's where I'm going. I don't want to have to guess. I want to know that's where I'm going."
Ashley McGeachy, "Iverson Haunted by Death of Friend," Philadelphia Inquirer (1-29-02)
My heart just breaks for his loss and what makes the loss all the worse is the uncertainty about going to heaven. If salvation is left up to our own goodness, then we can never know if we are good enough. But if salvation was accomplished for us on the cross, then we can rest in the knowledge that we don't have to be "good enough" to win God's favor, we need only to receive Christ's forgiveness.
The same holds true for Tom Brady's situation. He wants hope and meaning in this life. He has tasted fame and fortune, but they left him empty. He wants more, but more of what? He doesn't know where to look. He has been on the top of what our culture says life is all about. He hasn't found the answer and there is nowhere else to climb.
Where is hope to be found? In Jesus. Where can you point people who feel like there must be more? To Jesus. That is our role. It is not to have all of the answers. That is too much for anyone. Our role is just to point people to the one in whom all answers are found. Jesus is the meaning of life, because he created all of life.
The answer to life's questions are found in the name of Jesus.