No Other Name Under Heaven

4. Acts chapter 4, we'll be reading verses 1 through 12.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 4, verses 1 through 12. Listen to this carefully,

Acts 4:1–12

because what you're about to hear me reading is God's holy and inspired word.

And as they were speaking to the people, the priest and the captain of the temple

and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed because they were teaching

the people and proclaiming in Jesus, the resurrection from the dead.

They arrested them and put them in custody until the next day,

for it was already evening.

But many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about 5,000.

The next day, their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem

with Annas, the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander,

and all who were of the high priestly family.

And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, By what power or by

what name did you do this?

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, Rulers of the people and elders,

if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man,

by what means this man has been healed,

let it be known to all of you 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, by him

this man is standing before you well this jesus

is the stone that was rejected by you the builders which has become the cornerstone

and there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven

given by men whereby we might be saved this is the word of the lord you can be seated.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we ask now quickly that you would send your spirit,

that we might hear and see what we ought to hear and see,

and that your word would become alive to us and work itself into our hearts

where you need to cut, Lord,

cut, and cut to the quick, and where we need to repent,

Lord, help us to repent and hear and see and follow you with all our hearts.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

So Acts chapter 4, the title of the sermon is No Other Name Under Heaven.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

I was, I don't know, I get to, sometimes I marvel, you pay me to do what I do.

I get to study the Word of God.

I get to think about it, read things, delve into little go down rabbit holes

and enjoy myself studying the Word of God.

And this particular, this phrase, no other name under heaven struck me quite amazingly this week.

And I was looking forward to it. I hope, by the way, you're also looking forward to it.

I don't know about the rest of you. At least if no one else,

I'm enjoying my study in the book of Acts. and I hope you are too.

But it's delightful to come to this phrase. I heard this phrase as a child growing up in the church.

There's no under a name under heaven whereby men might be saved except Jesus

Christ. I heard it my whole life.

But I think I want us to see it today as a powerful proclamation that's more

than just a proclamation about how to get saved, but the actual proclamation

of the rule and reign of Jesus Christ.

It's situated in the classical Roman context and it's actually taken from a

Roman coin and Roman statues and Roman poems.

It was quite startling in that sense because Peter in this sermon is marching

his way through redemptive history.

He's speaking to us. He'll quote from the Psalms 118. He'll quote Jesus' words.

He takes redemptive history and he weaves it together beautifully with ancient

promises, ancient prophecies, the recent work of Jesus Christ himself.

And then at the end, he startles us with this Roman phrase, this classical phrase

of the proclamation once used exclusively for Caesar Augustus and all of his descendants.

It's an amazing thing, but well, that'll be the conclusion. Peter's a great preacher.

I mean, his conclusions are startling and amazing. They conclude the way a sermon should conclude.

Over the years, I'll just be honest, concluding a sermon is one of the most difficult things to do.

Sometimes I've been told, my wife says, you just stopped.

You just stopped. There was no like, so I'll try to conclude as powerfully as

Peter did by just using Peter's words. Maybe that'll be the hope.

Let's begin looking at chapter four.

It starts out, they're in the open area, preaching and teaching.

Verse two of chapter four says, the Jewish authorities were angry.

It says, verse two, greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and

proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. Now that's interesting.

It's something that we've talked about at the very beginning of the book of Acts.

Jesus was raised from the dead and stood as a resurrected Lord and ascended

into heaven. and that starts the ministry of the church.

But here there's something particularly annoying and angering about the doctrine

of the resurrection that they're preaching.

Now, if you read most commentaries, all the commentaries say,

well, the Sadducees denied the resurrection, so that's why they were so greatly annoyed.

So be it. But there's something I think more powerful about the apostolic preaching

of the resurrection that's at the heart of the apostolic church and should continue

to be at the heart of our church and every apostolic church.

Because the doctrine of the resurrection, I don't know about the rest of you,

I tended to always think of it as a doctrine that was necessary to tick off in order to be orthodox.

The Trinity is often thought about like that. Do you believe in Trinity? Yes, Father, Son.

Do you believe in the resurrection? Yes, we just read it. It's in the Nicene Creed.

But Peter is preaching it as more than just a doctrinal statement that you would

pick up from a theology book or a catechism or a confession.

He's preaching it as a sobering new reality that has changed the world,

changed the world. It's more than a doctrine.

It's a historic, life-changing, moral-ordering event.

I was reading again this past week. Again, thank you. I get to read great books

in this job. It's a wonderful job.

There's two books I'd like to commend to you that have really helped to change

and order my thinking about the doctrine of the resurrection.

There are two books by Oliver O'Donovan.

And by the way, please note, I'll give this caveat because in the future,

I may not. When I recommend books, it doesn't mean I love this guy.

He's orthodox and everything in it.

Hopefully you know that. I don't think he's orthodox and everything,

but his books on resurrection and ethics are profoundly important.

One book is called Resurrection and Moral Order, an outline for evangelical

ethics. The other, that was, I think, 1986.

The next one is The Desire of the Nations, Rediscovering the Roots of Political

Theology. Like, wait a minute, politics?

Political theology? Ethics? What's going on? It's the doctrine of the resurrection.

Isn't this just one of these things we have to believe in order to get saved? Yes.

But O'Donovan is saying that there is a connection between resurrection and moral order.

From the time of the resurrection, at the moment of the resurrection,

and particularly in the preaching of the resurrection, Peter and the apostles

are saying, folks, everything's changed.

And now that Jesus is raised from the dead and he's seated at heaven,

everything needs to be morally, politically, and culturally ordered under him.

The resurrection changes everything. It's not just a doctrine on a piece of

paper or in our confession.

It's a history-changing, life-changing, culture-changing reality.

It's quite amazing. And O'Donovan develops it in technical language, and he goes rather deep.

But O'Donovan argues that the ground of all political theology and all ethics

is grounded and connected to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It's a new age. It's a new time period.

Now, this is going to be important for Peter's conclusion because the poem that

he quotes at the end of this little segue in this sermon or this confrontation

is a poem that comes from classical Roman thought that said Caesar had introduced a new age.

Caesar was the god. Caesar was going to provide salvation.

Caesar introduced a whole new world of hope, a whole new era of history.

The Pax Romana, the peace of Rome, Romanitas, the honor and greatness and glory

of Rome would reign forever.

According to the phrase that Caesar used of himself, but that Peter used in reference to Jesus.

There's a new time. You see it in the preaching and teaching of the apostles.

There is salvation in no one else, but there's no other name under heaven given

among men by which we must be saved.

Now, Donovan argues rightly so, as Peter does right there publicly,

that this is not just a mere private doctrine that we have in order to get saved.

By salvation, Peter is not just saying individuals accepting Jesus Christ into

their heart as their personal savior.

By salvation, he's indicating, yes, the rescue of souls from Satan and his dominion,

but also now the introduction of a new kingdom, a new way of life.

And everyone's on notice.

There's no one out from under it. It's amazing. Now he has entered history in

a unique and powerful and intrusive way that annoys people. That's why they were so annoyed.

It wasn't just that he had a different doctrine. What Peter was saying was that

brothers, Sanhedrin, Roman rulers, everyone in the world, everything has changed.

And you better bow the knee to this change. There was a time,

you see, in redemptive history,

maybe you haven't thought about it, but there was a time throughout all of history

where God was quite merciful to the nations by not bringing judgment or a point

in which he said, I'm going to judge you all the time.

In fact, he focused primarily on covenantal love and relationships with Adam.

Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, and the people of Israel,

and David, very narrowly focused on a unique family and the nation that led us to Israel.

And in those times, it looks as if God had overlooked some things.

He wasn't trying to push his reign or rule everywhere in the world as intrusively as he now does.

Paul describes this in Acts chapter 17. It's interesting. He says,

Acts 17 · chapter mention

he's in front of the Areopic, it's very similar scene.

He says, the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven

and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands

as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

And he made from one man, every nation of mankind to live on the face of the

earth, having determined a lot of periods and boundaries and their dwelling place.

Just outlining history, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way

towards him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each of us.

Down to verse 30. This is Acts 17, verse 30.

Acts 17:30

Brothers, he says, the times of ignorance are over.

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now, now he commands all people everywhere

to repent because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness

by a man whom he has appointed.

And of this, he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

Wow. This isn't a mere confessional statement.

This is something that gives notice to the whole world. Everything has changed in history.

It's why we used to designate history before Christ, B.C., and A.D.,

Anno Domine, in the year of the Lord, right?

And now I know your books at school always say, what, C.E.

B.C.E. and C.E. Common Era, I know. But in Christian history,

this was the point at which everything changed.

And this is the way that Paul preaches and Peter preaches.

Human authorities are put on notice of the judge who will judge all judges,

of the king above all kings, of the Lord of all lords, of the master of all masters.

And this is where O'Donovan is right. If Jesus has been raised from the dead

and is seated, everything must be ordered morally and ethically,

politically, culturally under this new king.

Fathers have to live a certain way. Mothers have to live a certain way.

Husbands and wives and children and employers and employees,

and yes, even governors and kings and governments.

It's particularly important because of the parallels, I think,

at least for me, I'm seeing in ancient classical Roman world and the present day in which we live.

It's surprising to most people, but the Roman empire was quite tolerable as

an empire, as an ancient empire.

You were free to believe and practice your religion all you wanted.

Want to be a Christian? Fine. Believe in Christ. We don't care.

But there is just this one thing.

There's this thing of ultimate authority. You have to, you know,

if you want to be a, whatever you want to be, Zoroastrian.

You want to be a Zoroastrian, fine.

But there is this one thing, you must pledge ultimate allegiance to Caesar.

Just this one thing. And in some cases, just this one pinch of incense.

I mean, when we get to Stephen's martyrdom, it's amazing when you speak about

the days of martyrs, where all they had to do is take a pinch,

a barely discernible pinch of incense, and drop it on a small flame,

showing their allegiance, their ultimate allegiance to Caesar.

And then you could go about your way doing whatever you want.

Keep your religion private. This is where I was tracking with the parallels

between the ancient Roman world and our world.

In our days, everyone's, yeah, you're free to be a Christian.

Sure. Just keep it to yourself.

Keep it private. Go to church, read your Bible, sing those Psalms,

wave your hands, do whatever you want.

But don't dare bring it into the public area.

Don't bring it into government. Don't bring it into culture.

Don't bring it into education.

Keep out of that stuff. There is an ultimate allegiance that we have to a neutral

secular authority that you must pledge.

And this preaching from Peter and Paul is going to cause the church to enter

directly into this kingdom battle. That's what we're seeing here.

A kingdom conflict between those who think they're over Christ and over the

church and over everyone else and the true reality of the resurrection.

That's why the church, right now you see the church, right? Where they're speeding along.

It's really glorious to be, you think to yourself, I wanna be in the Apostolic

Church. Yeah, from Acts chapter one to Acts chapter four.

And then now the rubber meets the road. Now these guys are going out in public

preaching the resurrection of Jesus Christ and they enter the battle and it's not as fun anymore.

It's not as fun and we'll see people start dying and persecution starts coming. Why?

Because they're following the Great Commission. Remember in the Great Commission,

that's where we started in Acts.

At the end of Matthew, at the end of Luke, Jesus said, all authority in heaven

and on earth has been given to me. go therefore and make disciples of the nations,

baptizing them and teaching them whatsoever I have commanded.

Ordering everything under the resurrected Lord of glory. Moral order and resurrection go together.

That's what the Great Commission says. Go and proclaim Christ to the world and

have them and everyone order their moral affairs and their allegiance to Jesus

Christ. Make disciples of everyone.

And for this, of course, what happens? They're arrested.

They get arrested. And Peter later is very sarcastic because Christians today

even wonder, why am I being hassled?

Why am I being bothered? For doing good things? Yes, yes.

Yes. So they're arrested and it says they came upon them. In the Greek,

it's a little more important.

They didn't just say, hey guys, you want to come with me? It looks like these guys surrounded them.

It seems like Peter is one of many preaching. But as we see early on,

the focus of the apostolic authority is on Peter, not because he's the first

pope, but because he is the first representative, the first among equals,

the head, if you will, of the apostolic preaching.

And it says they laid hands on them. They grabbed them. They surrounded them

and grabbed them and arrested them.

And they referred there to the captain of the guards, the priest and the Sadducees.

Now it's interesting too, remember I said maybe in a sermon or two ago that

these people to whom Peter is preaching were people who probably were yelling,

crucify him, crucify him.

But now we know these are the actual guys who did arrest Jesus.

These are the man, the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council in Jerusalem says,

verse five, on the next day, their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together

in Jerusalem with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander

and all who were of the high priestly family.

This means the elites of Jerusalem. These were the elites.

People today think Elon Musk and Bill Gates have power. In Jerusalem,

these guys were the elite families, the ruling families of Jerusalem.

They were revered and feared among the people of Israel, especially Jerusalem.

They were a body who, I love this, they were able to fill their own vacancies

with families and friends and son-in-laws and other people who were from the priestly family.

The same guys, Luke chapter three says, in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius,

Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod, he lists some others.

Then he says, verse two, while Annas and Caiaphas were high priests,

the word of God came to John, son of Zacharias.

So these guys were the rulers when Jesus was born.

Self-appointed elites, of course, but they're the rulers. John chapter 18 says,

John 18 · chapter mention

When Jesus was arrested, the detachment of troops and the captain of the officers

of Jews arrested Jesus and bound him.

They led him away to Annas first, where he was the father-in-law of Caiaphas,

who was the high priest that year.

And it was Caiaphas who advised the Jews that it was expedient that one man

should die for the people.

Whoa, this is the guy.

This is the man that says, we have to kill Jesus. and it's perfectly okay because

we're gonna sacrifice him for the sake of saving our own power.

These self-appointed elites were the ones who arrested Jesus,

plotted against Jesus and killed Jesus.

Verse 24 of chapter 18 of John says, then Annas sent him and bound him bound

to Caiaphas, the high priest.

And it was there in John 11 where we find out when Jesus was being smacked,

it was Caiaphas and Annas and the others standing around mocking him.

Now Peter is face to face, not just with crowds who may have yelled crucify

him, but face to face with the actual murderers of Jesus Christ.

Pretty powerful. It's a pretty powerful scene.

Kind of spine tingling. Like what would you say of all these elites who you

know had just killed Jesus, who was your leader?

They kill people. They arrest people and kill people.

Technically, they weren't supposed to have authority to murder.

They had all authority to do anything within their realm of punishment except

capital punishment, but they could certainly hand you to the Romans to have

you killed because they did it to Jesus.

As you can imagine, that's why it's so powerful when Peter begins to speak,

it says, then Peter filled with the Holy Spirit.

It's like, uh-oh, he's not gonna be intimidated.

He's powerful. His proclamation is confrontational and authoritative.

The Sanhedrin's question is also informative, isn't it? By what authority are

you doing this? And then they connect it. And by what name?

Pointing right back to Jesus Christ and the resurrection and the ascension.

And Peter is gonna hold them all together.

It links the authority and power of someone with the name by which they perform

the act. It's the same question they asked Jesus.

In Luke chapter 20, it happened on one of those days as he taught in the temple

Luke 20 · chapter mention

and preached the gospel, the chief priest and the scribes together with the

elders confronted him and spoke to him saying, tell us by what authority you're

doing these things and who gave you this right?

Shortly after that, by the way, that Jesus told the parable of the vineyard,

which is apropos for our story, because this is the section that Peter quotes from the Psalms.

The stone that the builders, these guys, rejected would become the chief cornerstone.

We'll get to that in just a moment. But I have to get to Peter's sarcasm because I really like this.

Chapter 4, verse 8, and his statement is dripping with sarcasm.

Maybe you miss it as you're going through it, but imagine standing before the

murderers of Jesus and they said, what are you doing?

What authority did you have? How did you, who do you think you are?

And he goes, so you're telling me, listen to what he says.

If we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, oh my goodness.

So you're saying we're on trial for helping a guy that's been crippled since

birth? Are you kidding me?

It's a very sarcastic and ironic and disrespectful thing to say to these guys.

We're on trial for healing a man? Are you out of your mind?

And then Peter just goes on. I love that. Oh, so we're being,

this is concerning a good deed done to a crippled man.

And by what means he has been healed? Then he jumps to the question of authority,

but he insults them certainly as he goes.

He takes an offensive tactic, face-to-face, forward-thinking.

If we're being examined today concerning the good deed done to a crippled man,

and then he begins to move on.

Verse 10, he says, Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel

that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, same name we keep hearing,

this humiliated, disrespected, outcast of a Savior, Jesus of Nazareth, that scorned city,

whom you crucified, he does the same thing he's been doing in his pre- you crucified,

but God raised from the dead.

By him, this man is standing before you well.

This is that body of doctrinal knowledge you're going to see throughout apostolic

preaching and which you should demand of me and any other preacher as preachers are preaching.

They don't just preach vague and abstract thoughts. They preach a body of doctrine.

Jesus Christ historically came, he died, and he was raised from the dead.

And this changes everything.

It's a body of historical doctrine that the apostles are always preaching.

This Jesus, the stone that was rejected by you, verse 11, the builders,

which has become the cornerstone.

That's amazing because now, again, like I've said, we see Peter doing the same

things Jesus has done in his ministry, letting us know that the ministry of

the church is the ongoing continued ministry of Jesus.

Jesus was asked the same question, what authority?

And he quotes the same Psalm, Psalm 118.

But it's interesting, isn't it? And after Jesus was told this,

we find a story that he tells.

Suppose there's a guy, a rich man, a king who has a vineyard.

And he plants this vineyards and gives it over to these workers to till it,

to be stewards of the vineyard on his behalf.

And suppose, think about it, suppose, and there's no supposition,

he's talking to these leaders. He's talking to Israel.

Suppose they become rebellious and reject when the master wants to go collect

what he's deserved. Suppose they beat him up and throw him, and they do.

The prophets that have gone before, suppose they do that.

Suppose they do it over and over again so much that he gives them one last chance

and sends his only son. man, heir of the vineyard.

Then these foolish, murderous, hateful people think, let's just kill the son and take the vineyard.

Mark chapter 12, verse 6 says, he still had one other, a beloved son.

Mark 12:6

Finally, he sent to them saying, they will respect my son.

This parable just ringing in the ears of these foolish men who are now standing

with one last chance, even beyond the death of Jesus, one last chance to give it up, to repent.

And there they are in this parable. But those tenants said to one another,

this is the heir, let's kill him.

And this inheritance will be ours. And they took him and killed him,

threw him out of the vineyard.

What will the vineyard, the answer is, what will the owner of the vineyard do to these men? Well, duh.

That owner will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.

Have you not read this scripture? And Jesus quotes the same scripture that Peter's

quoting directly to these murderers.

The stone that the builders have rejected has become the cornerstone.

This was the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in his sight.

Amazing. The prophets of ancient times prophesying of Jesus coming,

the work of Jesus now working his way into the life and ministry of the church.

And these men still standing there trying to wield authority over Jesus Christ and his church.

And they were given, they were being given, as we saw in Peter's sermon,

mercy upon mercy upon mercy, grace upon grace.

Even standing there in that court, and it looks like they would sit in council

in like a semi-circle so that the people were in the middle.

And it looks like the crippled guy was there too. Poor guy, can you imagine?

I just got healed, what did I do? There he is.

This man that you see before you, this man here, that guy's there,

they're all judging. and Peter gives them yet another opportunity to say, will you repent?

Look what you've done. The mercy and grace of the gospel that's preached in

the early part of Acts towards Israel and these Jewish leaders and the whole nation is amazing.

They already killed Jesus and yet there he is through his apostles saying,

here's your last chance.

Mercy and mercy. The preaching of the gospel sounds harsh. He's pointing at

them, he's blaming them and yet he says, repent.

People of Israel disowned Jesus but God raised him up, mercy,

exalted him and glorified him.

This is throughout most of Peter's sermons so far.

You delivered him up by your lawless hands. You crucified him to put to death,

whom God raised up and God loosed

the pains of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

You bound, but God loosed. You killed, but God raised up.

And he says, this Jesus, this Jesus, you'll notice last sermon I mentioned,

this is in the gospel and in Christianity, It's never a generic faith.

It's never just have faith. You can do it. You can believe it.

If you believe in miracles, they will happen.

No, it says this Jesus is the only way, the way, the truth, and the life,

the only way. And it's not a generic faith.

It's amazing how the apostles are demanding. They don't go, they're not pleading anymore.

You almost wonder, I mean, are they asking to be killed? Are they asking?

There they are standing before these guys who could judge them.

And right to their face, directly in their eyes, they say, you murdered Jesus.

You're guilty. And you are the ones who rejected him.

The builders were the law, the teachers of the law, and the scribes,

and the Pharisees, and the Sadducees.

Those were considered in Jewish rabbinical history to be the builders of Israel.

And they rejected the stone, which is a rock of offense. This is the offense of the gospel.

People don't want to repent. And it's amazing that we have a similar situation

in America, but we have a lot more timidity than the apostles did.

This is the same demand in our day, I think. Keep quiet about Jesus in public.

Why do you parents keep going to school-born meetings and asking us to take

pornography out of third-grade libraries?

How dare you? Yeah.

We're told, shut up, keep quiet. I'm not supposed to say shut up,

am I? That's what Peter said.

They're saying, keep quiet, be quiet. We're told that all the time.

There's Mark Green, who's the head of the London Institute for Contemporary

Christianity, has pointed this out.

He says, if you want to know how it is that a culture can get secularized,

that is how paganism can just dominate everything,

one of the main ways is for Christians who have a tendency now to disconnect

their faith from activities that connect them to their neighbors and connect

them to the structures of their culture, if we privatize our faith and keep

it as a leisure or private activity,

not participating in the public life, but only private, it's not connected to

the structures of public life. It's not connected to the culture.

And this is how the public square is simply given to the secularist.

Just here, you take it. We're gonna read our Bible. All I need after all is Jesus and my Bible.

The name of Jesus is that by which this crippled man was saved,

but it's also the name that condemns those who won't bow the knee.

This is no private faith that we have. This is a faith that needs to be opened

up and unleashed from the public so that people can be told,

you're going to be judged.

Jesus has been raised from the dead. Don't you know that? Everything's changed.

There's no hiding place. There's no times of ignorance anymore.

All the more reason to be urgent about publicly proclaiming our love for Jesus Christ.

Private faith leads to secular faith. We're dominated now by secular faith.

And it may well be simply because we've retreated.

These apostles, I just wanna remind you, are not retreating.

They're getting grabbed and arrested.

And you might think, whoa, what do we do? He stands face to face with the very

murderers of Jesus and said, you guys are to blame for this.

And you're the ones who are going to lose the vineyard. They would have known,

I'm sure, because they went away insulted at Jesus' parable.

They knew what was happening.

Jesus said, if this parable is true of Israel, who are you in this parable?

And they're like, we're the wicked people in the vineyard.

Roman history isn't repeating itself here, but there are a lot of parallels

between ancient Rome and Christianity in that context and the world in which we live today.

And if we increasingly retreat and keep our religion private,

we're not following in the footsteps of the apostles who took this public.

It has to be public, by the way, because Jesus has been raised from the dead. He did it publicly.

Hundreds and hundreds of people saw him, and then the church proclaimed it publicly.

You also have to keep in mind, these are the Sadducees who denied the doctrine

of the resurrection so vigorously that when it happened, they're like,

ah, so they lied and bribed the guards to lie about it. These are the same guys.

They were bribing the guards. They knew that something had happened,

but they were stubbornly unrepentant.

If we retreat, then we give people like this, people like these leaders who

are stubborn and arrogant and murderous and hateful and have their own agenda

and believe that their authority is ultimate over all of us, then they will have it.

Instead, we have to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in public all the time.

If we retreat, I wanna use just one example.

I'm really tempted to just go on and on and on because I love this stuff.

I mean, this whole Christianity and culture stuff, I've been accused of being

a transformationalist.

But I will only use one example to prove that I'm a temperate transformationalist.

Just the subject of education. I was talking with one of you this past week and the subject of R.L.

Dabney came up and it sparked my memory of Dabney's just almost prophetic words.

In 1879, he wrote a book on secular education.

What's fascinating about him is Daphne said, if you give education to the government

in a secular sense and not to the parents, then guess what's going to happen?

They're going to take prayer out of school. They're going to take catechism

out of school. They're like, wait, what?

They used to catechize kids in school? Did you even know that?

Public schools used catechisms to teach people the way of the Lord.

They even, in the New England primary, they even used it to teach the ABCs.

It wasn't Apple. It was Adam's.

They taught theology when they taught phonics. Dabney said, if you retreat,

if you give this over, and Dabney's assumption was that education is the sanctification

and nurture of our children.

If you give that over to pagan authorities or pagan people of any kind, what will be the result?

He said, well, eventually our children will become secularized.

The overly individualized and privatized version of Christianity is really popular

today, but it wasn't popular with the apostles.

They didn't preach this. They preached the ultimate confrontation with the authorities.

And I wanna end here, a conclusion, with Peter's conclusion.

And it's a powerful conclusion.

It's actually surprising to find that, as he's working his way through all of

this redemptive history and scriptures and prophecies that he ends with a classical Roman phrase.

There's a book by Ethelbert Stauffert called Christ and the Caesars.

And Stouffert has an extended section on this particular phrase, where it came from.

According to Stouffert, and I'll quote, he says, Augustus saw himself as the

world's savior who was to come.

When in the year 17 BC, a strange star in the heavens, think about the parallels

here, a star shines in the heaven to announce the advent of a savior.

He says he saw the cosmic hour had come and this inaugurated a 12-day advent

celebration, which was a plain proclamation of Virgil's message of joy,

quote, the turning point of the ages has come.

Can you imagine the audacity and importunity and almost out and out arrogance

that Peter would borrow this phrase from Caesar Augustus?

Salvation, it says, is to be found in none other save Augustus.

And there is no other name given to men in which they can be saved.

As Stouffer says, from this point, conflict between Christ and Caesar was thus inescapable.

Anyone who claims that he's God, he's Messiah, he's the Savior,

he's the ultimate authority is inevitably going to come into conflict with the one who actually is.

The symbolic meaning is clear. A new day had dawned in Roman history.

The divine savior king, Augustus Octavian, was born in a historical hour ordained by the stars.

And he came to power on land and sea and inaugurated a cosmic era of salvation.

The Romans believed this.

Rome was going to bring peace eventually to the whole world.

And Caesar, who took the title Augustus, which at least means he's a god,

was the inaugural emperor or king of this whole period.

Salvation is to be found in none other save Augustus. And that was the phrase.

And Stalford evidently found it on coins, on statues, in poems, all over.

I don't know how popular it was. I don't know how many Jewish people were Peter.

And it's odd that Peter would even do that.

You'd think that he would quote a Jewish rabbi or quote a scripture.

Instead, he moves the redemptive history with prophecies, with scriptures,

and then he stuns everyone with his statement, borrowing or taking or stealing Caesar's own phrase.

According to Stouffer, you could have picked up a coin in those days and you

might've seen that very phrase on a coin.

Could have been the same coin that Jesus picked up and says,

whose picture's on that?

Render to Caesar what Caesar's, but to God, what is God?

And now Peter is saying, everything belongs to God, to Jesus Christ, everything.

And everything must be morally ordered under his rule. Nothing and no one is

free from the authority of this new king.

Consequently, the name of Jesus becomes the ultimate touchstone of conflict.

We're gonna see it all throughout the book of Acts now and all throughout early

church history. If we did a study of early church history, this will be the

touchstone of that conflict.

These Christians with the arrogance and pride and audacity to say that the government

is not our savior, Caesar is not our Lord, Jesus is Lord.

And Oliver O'Donovan reminds us, he says, with the resurrection,

the whole of created order was vindicated.

From this point forward, all of creation is going to move forward to the consummation

in Christ. It's a vindication of Christ's authority.

By raising Jesus from the dead, God establishes Christ's ultimate authority

over all earthly powers and all rulers and everything in our lives.

It's a witness to the coming of the true kingdom, not Augustus,

not Caesar's kingdom, but Christ's kingdom.

And the church is now put as the community that lives under this direct rule

of the risen and ascended Lord, and by its very existence bears witness to the

final post-political kingdom that God will bring when all things will be made right.

And now as we live in between that, the resurrection and ascension of Christ

to the consummation, we're called by this same resurrection to be faithful to

the King Jesus, to the true King, and to bring the lingering presence.

With the lingering presence of sin to bring the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. Why?

Because as Peter said, there is no other name under heaven whereby men might

be saved except Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Amen? Let's pray.

Lord, how we thank you for your word. We thank you that it is startlingly relevant

even in its ancient context.

The battles into which the apostles and Peter were forging their way just by

preaching the gospel are also our battles.

And so we pray now as we approach the Lord's table that you would feed and strengthen

us for such battles that we might ourselves not even look to the long political

horizon, but just to our own personal lives now, that we might repent,

that we might reject the sins that are distracting us and we might order our

lives morally and ethically under the reign of the resurrected Lord Jesus of Nazareth,

that we would love and that we would love God with all our heart and our neighbor

as ourselves feed us now as we eat the body and blood of christ confirm and

strengthen us in all that we have heard for we pray in jesus name amen.