Another lesson for this morning comes from the book of Acts, Acts chapter 4. We read together Acts chapter 4. Please turn with me in your Bibles, Acts 4, page 1564, 1564 in the Pew Bible. We read together Acts 4, verses 1 through 12. And in the name of the ascended Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, Peter has healed a lame man, and he's now leaping for joy. And he's getting a lot of pushback now, there's intimidation, there's a vitriolic, just a violent response to the proclamation of the name of Jesus Christ. Peter and John go before a religious council to defend and proclaim the name of Christ. We also want to read this in connection with Lord's Day 11 of the Heidelberg Catechism. We find that on page 18 in the back of the Psalter Hymnal. We move on, to some degree, after studying a little bit on God as Father, we look at God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and picking it up with the significance of the name of Jesus Christ. Lord's Day 11, we'd like to responsibly read that together in a moment. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we are so thankful for a word from heaven, a word revealed in the Bible, and we pray that you would help us, O Lord, to believe and to trust the name of Jesus Christ as Savior. And as Lord, we pray that you would bless us, dear Father, help us to pay attention, help us to take to heart these Gospel truths and be bold proclaimers of the name of Christ. And we ask, Lord, that we may be faithful students of the Word and share what we have received with a lost and dying world. We ask, dear Father, that you'd hear us and answer us For Jesus' sake, Amen. If you're able, would you please stand with me at attention for the reading of God's Word in Acts chapter 4, beginning at verse 1. This is the Inerran Word of God. And as they were speaking to the people, the priests 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. And 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 five thousand. 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. 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 among men by which we must be saved. You may be seated. So far the reading of the Word of God. And let's confess together the Word of God summarized for us, Bible teaching concerning the name of Jesus summarized for us in Lourdes Day 11 of the Heidelberg Catechism. And there's also an outline in the bulletin to study the message with me from Acts chapter 4. I'd like to follow along there, Lourdes Day 11. Congregation, I just want to pause and think about how great it is to ask questions, really good questions. I think in religion and religious circles in the church and many situations where religious people find themselves in, you said, don't ask any questions, all right? Don't ask questions. Just go along with whatever the church says. Not here. You can ask lots of good questions. And you're going to get a lot of good answers. And I think that's one of the wonderful blessings we have in the resource of the Heidelberg Catechism. Ask questions. and God will give you good answers. Here's a good question. Why is the Son of God called Jesus, meaning Savior? Because He saves us from our sins. Salvation cannot be found in anyone else. It is futile to look for any salvation elsewhere. Do those who look for their salvation and security in saints, in themselves, or elsewhere, really believe in the only Savior, Jesus? No. Although they boast of being His, by their deeds they deny the only Savior and Deliverer, Jesus. Either Jesus is not a perfect Savior, or those who in true faith accept this Savior have in Him all they need for their salvation. So far, the teaching of the Catechism. I encourage you, as always, to keep the Bible and the Catechism available and open for the message on the sinner's Savior. your congregation of Christ, brothers, sisters in the Lord. In our time, there's a lot of people who know about Jesus, but they're not really sure why they need or if they really need Jesus Christ. And I recently read from Modern Reformation a great article on this whole idea, you know, who isn't Jesus in our culture today? You have the hip-hop Jesus, right? You have the hip-hop Jesus, you have Country music Jesus, right? You have hipster Jesus. Have you met them? Have you seen them? Have you heard about all these kinds of Jesus out there? Hip-hop Jesus, you know, with a lot of these rap stars. You listen to some of their lyrics. You listen to their... Kanye West, for instance. He talks a lot about it in his songs. He's just like this messianic figure, right? And they gotta get the word out. They gotta get the word out, right? They came from the bottom, and when you get religion, you go to the top, and you gotta spread the word. And that's what rap music is really all about, spreading the word. Or you get the hipster Jesus, where you... You know, this Jesus with his followers, right? They wear the nice trendy glasses, and they're really big on community. They're really big on social justice, for instance. And, you know, the beard has come back. You gotta wear a beard. Right, and you gotta get in touch. You wanna work with your hands, right? You're so often working in other lines of work, and you wanna do woodworking, and Jesus was a woodworker, right? And so you work with your hands, you get in touch with your carpentry skills, and that's the hipster Jesus. And I think one of their taglines, right, is follow Jesus, not just on Twitter. Follow Jesus, not just on Twitter. It's kind of catchy and it makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways. Or there's certainly the Jesus Christ of the American Jesus. The American Jesus with American values. He kind of looks like he's the muscle macho Jesus. Really big biceps, you know. Have you seen these pictures out there? Big bicep Jesus. He's really strong. And he has these moral values to him. And he kind of looks like Bruce Springsteen. Or he kind of looks like Billy Ray Cyrus. And that's who people think Jesus is. And dear friends, when you go to the Bible, When you actually open the Bible up, who's the Jesus that you meet? He's certainly not a Jesus who just lets us think of him any way we want him to be. He's a Jesus who's come to be the sinner's savior. That's what his name means. And that's what Peter is proclaiming. In this world and culture in which we live, who isn't Jesus? Peter's saying, I'll tell you who Jesus isn't, and I'll tell you who He is. As Peter proclaims salvation in the name of Jesus Christ. There's salvation in no one else. Verse 12, there's no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. He truly is the Savior. He's truly the Savior. He's the only Savior. And He saves completely. He saves you completely. He's truly a Savior. The Savior. And Peter proclaims that He truly is the Savior of a sinful world. The Savior. of the world. Jesus knows, in other words, that's what it means to be a Savior. The Savior knows what makes you sick, and He knows what's going to be the cure for you. He knows what's making you sick. So your big problem right now is not a downward turn, the downtick in the economy, an economy contracting or shrinking. Your problem, my problem isn't who's ever in the White House. So it's not going be our solution, more on that later, and who we elect to the White House in the year 2016. Our problem, dear friends, is not, first of all, ISIS. And terrorism, our problem, your problem is sin, and so is mine. It's the deadly disease of sin that deserves an eternal death sentence. That's our problem. Jesus knows your problem is a sin sickness. And Jesus comes with the double cure. The cure for the penalty. Your sin deserves and the power of sin in your life. In the name of Jesus Christ, there is salvation. His name is Jesus. Turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew 1.21. Who is the Jesus we meet? He's not the macho Jesus. He's not the hipster Jesus. Matthew 1.21. He's not the hip-hop Jesus as close, you know, as the colonels of truth we find maybe in some of those messianic messiah figures, but he's Matthew 121. Here's the name given by God to his son, Matthew 121. She will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins." The name Jesus. Boys and girls, you know what your name means? Jesus' name means salvation. Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament Scriptures, saves. He's the only Savior and He truly saves. And that is the name Peter proclaims as he is Questioned, right? He's questioned. And what name does this lame man walk again and leap and jump around for joy? He says, I'll tell you, let it be known to you, verse 10, 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, Jesus heals the sickness. of our sin. Jesus wants us to be very specific and particular about the sin from which He saves us. What I'm talking about, what God is talking about here, dear friends, is boys and girls, Jesus saves you and He forgives you of your sins. Your sins of disobeying your mom and dad. Your sins of talking back to your mom and dad. He saves you. And He cures you of those sins. Of stealing candy bars. Of cheating on a test. Jesus saves. It's His name. That's who He is. Nothing less than, nothing more than, the Savior of sinners. The sinner's Savior. And he saves, he knows how to do it. I mean, he's taken on a lot of chronic cases of hopelessness over the years. He's good at saving. He's really good at saving you from your sins. I mean, very specifically and particularly and concretely this morning, your sins and mine that of nasty deeds done. Of good deeds that we've left undone. You know, the sins of omission and commission. Of sly deceit. Sly deceit. He saves. The sins of lust. Of lust whispered. He saves. His name is Jesus. to save sinners from the penalty and power of sin. And He does that by the shedding of His blood. He's the crucified Christ, risen to redeem and rescue sinners. Many don't want to have salvation. They don't want Jesus on His terms. You think about that, brothers and sisters, and I ask you that question, do you really want to be saved? Do you want this Jesus? Do you want to be saved? Do you want His salvation? Because when Jesus Christ saves, He saves you from all of your sins. We tend to think, and rightly so, but it's not enough today, that Jesus saved me. He certainly did by His shed blood. He pardons each and every sin. But He's saving you right now. And He will save you later. There's power in the name of the crucified, risen Savior. And He's saving you now. But it's on His terms, not yours and not mine. Because there are people who want Jesus around. They want to hear about Jesus. They have projections of what Jesus should be coming out of their own hearts that don't match up with the message of the Holy Scriptures. And what I'm talking about is what Jesus Christ talked to us about when it came to John the Baptizer. King Herod had John the Baptizer in prison, right? Because John the Baptizer told him, you have your brother's wife? And it's sin. And you need to repent of that sin. King Herod said, alright, you're going to be locked up behind bars. But he still liked to listen to John the Baptizer, didn't he? We like to come to church and listen about Jesus. Jesus says, I'm here to save you from all of your sins. All of them. There are many who want to hear about Jesus, but can and won't have their eyes plucked out and their hands cut off. That's hyperbole, but that's what Jesus Christ talks about. It's all of your sins. And there isn't one case Jesus can't solve. There's no hopeless cases for Jesus Christ. When God names his son Jesus, he names you sinner and he names me sinner. Do you accept that name as Jesus is named the sinner's savior? Whatever your problem may be, whatever the sin is in our lives, it's gotta be cut off and cut out. by the crucified Lord Jesus Christ. Several of us went to see a play. The Great Divorce in the City Friday night, and some of us read that book, and C.S. Lewis wrote The Great Divorce, and The Great Divorce is, don't press the details, all right? If you want questions, I'll try to answer them afterward, but one of the main points C.S. Lewis is writing about is that people are, there's people in this book It's an allegory, right? But there's people in this book who are on a bus, and they're taking a trip. They're taking a trip from the outskirts of heaven, from the outskirts of hell to the outskirts of heaven. They're busy on this bus, and they get to the outskirts of heaven, and they meet people, right? They meet certain people in heaven. I want to have them saved from the traps of hell, whatever is trapping them in hell. And many of these people on the bus want to just go back to hell. They don't want to be set free by the name of Jesus Christ, ultimately. And there's all kinds of people here. There's the person who says, I want my rights, I need my rights, I don't need anyone's bleeding charity. It's my rights. There's also, I wanna, because this one hits each and every one of us. Talks about grumbling. Talks about grumblers. And C.S. Lewis says, that's where hell begins. All of us are grumblers. And that's what Jesus saves us from. Hell begins with grumbling. And you get to a point in your life, C.S. Lewis says, Or you can't stop it anymore. You can't stop the grumbling, the complaining. What I've been given, the raw deal God has given me, or what God has not given me. And that's what needs to be nipped in the bud right now. Because hell begins with grumbling. And hell is ultimately grumbling forever and ever and ever. Jesus saves. Jesus hasn't met a case where he can't cure. Think of all of the people Jesus Christ ran into. Mary with seven demons. The man with the demoniac who was living in the graveyard, who couldn't be tamed. Jesus Christ says, I'll save. I'm named Savior in order to save those who are named sinners. There's salvation in no one else. Jesus Christ truly saves. He truly saves because He's really the only Savior. He's the only Savior. Salvation can be found in no one else. So it's futile to look for any salvation elsewhere. Elsewhere. Many do. Many try. Every other way is false and any other system is a lie, dear friends. Every other way is false. And we need to know that because we're living in a society that's very, very similar to the Apostle Peter's culture, where there were numerous names for Messiahs and salvation. Just like in our pluralistic culture, no other name. Not the name of Mohammed. Not the name of Buddha. Not the name of Allah. Not the name of a new age guru. Not your name. Not my name. Not the name of the president. Not any other name. Only one name. Any other name is a lie. Any other way, any other system of salvation is ultimately a dead end. That doesn't win us any popularity contests. All religions are not the same. Flip it around, say it another way, all religions contradict. Christianity contradicts and cannot fit with any other religion. So that's why there's no such thing as a Christian Buddhist. There's no such thing as a Christian Muslim. It's like saying you're a vegan and your favorite sandwich is a bacon sandwich. It just doesn't go together. There's no other name given among men whereby we must be saved. He is, John 14 verse 6, the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except in the name of Jesus Christ. No one comes, nothing comes alongside of Him or stands beside Him. He is the one and only Savior. So stop looking for other salvations, other messiahs. We tend to look at every other way, right? First, second, third, fourth, fifth, and just the list goes on. Before we finally get to the only name, the only name of Jesus. There's no other name. The crucified, risen King, that name, that name dear friends, signals redemption. In other words, the name of Jesus Christ is salvation insofar as His blood pumps your sinful heart and my sinful heart whole. It pumps out all the sewage of sin and pardons. And He sets us free and releases from the shackles of sin so we're flawless. We stand flawless by faith alone in the name of Jesus Christ alone before a holy and righteous God. And Jesus saves, he's the only one who can do it because he has a unique identity, so he has a unique ability. He has a unique identity, so he has a unique ability. To do what? To save you. For instance, from the loneliness, from the loneliness. That tempts us all. That tempts us to believe the lie. That there's no safe place. There's no free place to go. Other than in drugs. Other than in alcohol abuse. Other than in pornography. Other than in lies. In Jesus' name. I mean, he's with us, he's the friend of sinners. What a friend we not just had or will have, what a friend we have right now to make us safe and set us free. Show the world then. That's what Peter is doing, isn't he? Show the world that in the name of Jesus Christ, you're not just seeking now. You're not just searching for the answers. You have the answer. You have Him. You have Him. That's the change and transformation that came over the Apostle Peter only in the name of the risen Savior, Jesus Christ. That's the change that came over the lame man who now leaps for joy, who leaps for joy. Jesus heals. He really does. They're no longer searching for it. They found it. Jesus Christ, the name of Jesus Christ, dear friends, is not a name like some sort of treasure He gives to you and me for us to bury in the ground. It's for us to wear. To wear that name loudly, proudly, to show that we're no longer looking for it. God has found us. And now we've found the meaning and answer of life. The name that charms our fears and bids our sorrows cease. It's like what our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ said. The lepers that He healed. Remember the lepers? He healed ten of them. Only one came back to thank Him. But He said what? I want you to go to the priests and show them that you have been healed. They didn't want to take the word for it. They showed themselves. Share and show others. Yes, I have been healed. Dear friends, that's what the watching world, this world that is dying, right? People without God or without hope, because they're looking for other names and other messiahs. Even if they attach the name of Jesus Christ to them. It's not the real, true, only Jesus. That's what this watching world, a world without God and without hope, really needs to see from you. Not just to hear, but to see in our words and in our deeds. And to stand up and speak out the name of Jesus Christ. It's not just for in church, it's for us to take that name. I'm not gonna let anybody do it for me. That's what it means today to say, Jesus Christ, His name is my Savior and salvation. I'm not going to leave it to anybody else. Peter didn't. The lame man didn't. He says, I'm not going to leave it to someone else at work, at school, in the neighborhood, on Sundays. I'm going to, first of all, go and I'm going to proclaim. And I'm going to share. The powerful name of Jesus Christ, crucified, now raised from the dead. There's no other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved. He's a true Savior, He's the only Savior, and He certainly is a complete Savior. Jesus means everything or He means nothing. It's not just a Well, it's the add-ons to Jesus Christ that's the issue too. Do those who look for their salvation and security in saints and themselves or elsewhere really believe in the only Savior Jesus? And this sounds harsh, but it's so true. No. Although they boast of being His by their deeds, they deny the only Savior and Deliverer. Does your walk, is your lifestyle at odds Does it contradict what you say this morning, what I say this morning? What the Heidelberg Anarchism is really getting at, first of all, is It's the cry of the Reformation. We celebrated the Reformation just a few weeks ago, and the cry of the Reformation was Christ alone, not Christ plus the Pope, not Christ plus the saints, not Christ plus Mary, not Christ plus the church. Christ only. Because He saves completely. And the Roman Catholic Church back then and right now will say, yes, we name the name of Jesus. But Jesus... we need more than Jesus. We need to add to Jesus. We add to the name of Jesus the name of Mary. Or the name of Saint Anne. Or this name. Or that name. There's only one name. Because through any other name, you will not be saved. And neither will I. Only in the name of Jesus. And that's what Martin Luther said so eloquently. And so bowling, and that's what we need today, is modern day reformers. Let's say what Luther said. Luther said, hey, you want to talk about my guilt? I'll talk about my guilt, but I'm going to refer you to my Savior. My Savior, Jesus Christ. And if you want to talk about my good works, I'll talk about good works, but I'll refer you to the name of Jesus Christ for my good works. That's what he actually said to the devil when the devil was tempting him. To give up on the Christian life. To give up on any reformation of the Church. To stand firm upon that name of Jesus Christ alone. You know, dear friends, there's a Pope inside of me. There's a Pope inside of you, too. I know I've said this before. It's so important to say again. I did it for years. That Jesus needs my help. And I don't want you to believe that lie this morning. You know how that one goes? It goes like this. I'm not going to profess my faith because I'm not ready. I've got to meet Jesus halfway. I've got to clean up my act before I can stand in church and profess publicly the name of Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord. Jesus saves all the way. Jesus saves 100% sinners. Are you tracking with me here? Jesus doesn't need your help. Jesus insists on not having your help. Jesus has come to me and named my name. as a full, free forgiveness of all your sins. He's a 100% Savior for 100% sinners. He's everything to me. Or he means nothing to me. Jesus suffered on the cross to solve all of our security issues. And that means, dear friends, I believe what the Catechism is getting at. Either Jesus is a perfect Savior, or those who in true faith accept the Savior having all they need for salvation and security. He covers all of our security issues. So I don't need a saint for my work. I don't need a saint for my business. I don't need a saint for this and for that. I have Jesus and he's a complete savior. He suffered in time so that God never will be an angry judge. but always will be my merciful Father in heaven who gives me my daily bread, who gives me work and employment. I can trust Him. The name of Jesus gives me a new security, security. So He redeems every, every area of life. Jesus, dear friends, is everything. He's everything. And now our Lord Jesus Christ comes to us on a day when, you know, who isn't Jesus around here? I told you who he isn't, now let me tell you who I am. My name is the only name to give you healing, to give you redemption for today, tomorrow, for all of eternity. It's time for us to admit and confess as Jesus looks us all in the eye. There are a thousand ways in which we love other things, other people, more than we love Jesus in his name for our salvation. And Jesus Christ says to us, as he said to Peter, as he says to Kevin, and he says to you by name, he knows you by name, He says, do you love me or will you deny me? Amen. Let's pray.