Let me invite you to take your Bibles and turn to our scripture text. It's found in the book of Acts. In Acts chapter 4, Acts 4 and verses 1 through 12. Acts 4, 1 through 12. As they, that is Peter and John, were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to them being greatly disturbed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them and put them in jail until the next day for it was already evening. But many of those who heard the message believed and the number of the men came to about 5,000. On the next day, the rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem. And Annas the high priest was there, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and all who were of high priestly descent. When they had placed them in the center, they began to inquire, by what power or in what name have you done this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit said to them, rulers and elders of the people, if we are on trial today for a benefit done to a sick man, as to how this man has been made well, let it be known to all of you and to all of the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, By this name, this man stands here before you in good health. He is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders by which became the chief cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved. May God bless his word. Please be seated. If you were to come up with a plan to build the church, if man would come up with a plan, this would not be it. What we find in the book of Acts would not be what we would think would be necessary to build the church. What we find in Acts is Jesus is building his church, and he is doing it primarily by the word preached in the power of the spirit. Jesus is building his church by the public announcement of the truth of his word. And specifically we see here through the announcement of the death and the resurrection of Christ. And then with that a call to repentance and faith in Jesus alone. Jesus is building his church with a message of the gospel that proclaims Jesus and Jesus alone saves. And to the human mind, that just sounds weak and ineffective. And as we read elsewhere in scripture, it sounds foolish. And it even sounds offensive, as we'll see. The apostles, though, in the early church went out with a confidence. In fact, we'll read later in verse 13 that the Jewish people saw this confidence in them. They went out with a confidence in the word of God to literally call into being things that are not. Whether it is as we saw the legs of a lame man, as Peter and John just did in the temple. or whether it is the dead soul of a sinful heart. God calls into being, by his word, things that are not. That's the creative power of the word of God. Martin Luther, we'll hear a lot about Martin Luther this year, Lord willing, as it's the 500th year of the Reformation. Luther rightly believes in the creative power of the Word of God. He understood that God made the world and everything in it, and that he did it by his mighty word, and that God sustains all things by his word, and that God does, in fact, all things by his word. Luther famously said during his time in the Reformation, he said, I oppose the indulgences and all papists. But he said, never by force. I simply taught and preached and wrote God's word. And then he said, otherwise, I did nothing. He said, I did nothing. He went on to say, the word did it all. The word did it all. Beloved, the preaching of the word, the proclamation of God's truth isn't a time just to hear a religious lecture or just some kind of spiritual pep talk. It's never just a self-help seminar with some religious words or just a bit of chicken soup for the soul. When the word of God is proclaimed, it is not a time to be entertained or to have our ears tickled, but it is a time when everyone who hears is being confronted with the one true God by his word. It is a time to raise the dead, literally, raise the dead spiritually. It is a time to shake the forces of hell. It is a time to awaken sinners to repentance. It is a time to set Christ before those who have been purchased with his blood and who belong to him by faith. I believe that God does more on a Sunday morning in the faithful preaching of the Word than at all other times of the week. Now God certainly works in our quiet times. He works in our prayer times, our private prayer times. He works through the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper. He works in our jobs and he works in our homes. He works in all the ordinary events of the week. But it is by the word preached that God is determined to shake the nations to terrify the powers and the principalities in the heavenlies, and to build his church. It is the time when God gathers, the church gathers rather specifically, to hear the word of God proclaimed. And God has ordained that mighty things happen. And so the preaching of the word isn't just a spiritual lecture you hear once a week or however many times. It is a unique event in the world. It is a unique moment that God has ordained for the church. It's not the preacher who's special in it at all. It is the word of God proclaimed. And I want you to know and understand that it is a time when God is doing something massive and creative, creative. He specifically is building his church and he is creating life in dead sinners. That's the power of the word of God. That's what's happening in the book of Acts as the apostles preach. It's what's happening every time the word of God is faithfully proclaimed. That's why Paul came to Timothy, as we've seen before, and said to Timothy, Timothy, preach the word, in season and out of season. He told him to preach the word because God was going to do something every time his word was sent forth with authority and with clarity. That's why you ought to come to church with this expectation that God is going to move. God is going to act by his word preached. And let me plead with you that you would come with that expectation and that you would pray for it. Pray to that end for all your worth. This is what's happening in Acts. This is why Christ builds his church upon the word preached. It's the only power. It's the only power that can call forth things that are not. The same word that made the world is the same word that is also making the church. and calling forth into being life where there is not life. Well, the church is going pretty well up to this chapter. The first three chapters of the book of Acts, things are going along pretty smoothly. Many are being saved. The church is being well-received, it seems, in Jerusalem. Until this chapter, where Peter and John get arrested, where the word preached now is bringing opposition, as well as creating things. Men try to stop the growth of the church, and they try at this point with jail, jail. They try to hold back the Word of God with bars and locks and keys and doors. They've been at the temple. They watched as John and Peter heal a man who was lame from birth. And then they hear Christ preached in the temple, and then they grab hold of them and they throw them in jail. They spend the night in jail. You wonder, perhaps, what they were thinking. That is, Peter and John, what were they thinking now as they just did this amazing work? They preached the gospel and now they're in jail. They are the first ones to go to jail for the gospel and the scriptures. Not the last, but they're the first ones to get marched off, and the door slammed behind them. And part of the reason why God allows this to happen here, and he allows it to happen later as well to the apostles, and even to have them killed, part of the reason is that God is demonstrating that you can jail the apostles, you can kill them, but you cannot stop the word of God in building the church. I'm sure Peter and John were at least beginning to wonder a little bit what was happening, why was it happening, what had they done wrong? All they did was heal a man, what was their crime? But you know, they never once seem to waver in their confidence in the risen Christ. Never once do we find the apostles through the New Testament, no matter what the opposition seems to be, we never once find them struggling as to whether or not they should keep on preaching. This doesn't even seem to be part of their world. They have great confidence in the word. They have great confidence because Jesus said in Matthew 16, 18, I will build my church. I will build it and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. As we go through the book of Acts, the testimony of Acts and the testimony of the entire New Testament is that Hell and wicked men will throw everything at the church, and yet nothing stops the church. They will throw the threat of jail, as they do here, and they will again. They will throw the inward corruptions at the church by, as we'll see in the next chapter, in Acts chapter 5, with Ananias and Sapphira. They will throw moral corruptions at the church as we'll see in Corinth and they'll come with doctrinal corruptions of the gospel as they do to the church in Galatia. They will throw starvation, literal starvation at the Apostle Paul at times. They'll throw shipwreck at Paul. They'll throw all sorts of heretics and false teaching. They will literally throw stones at Stephen and Paul. They will throw the very weight eventually of the power of Rome against Paul. And they will throw the apostle John into exile on the island of Patmos. They will do all they can to stop the church. But it's all like trying to stop water from flowing downhill or trying to stop the sun from rising. As you read the Bible, you find there's absolutely nothing that man can do in all his wisdom, in all his nuclear power and creativity and money to stop the church. Nothing. There's nothing the world can do to keep Jesus from building his church, both here and in Ely, or amongst the nations. And when Jesus said that, when he said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it, it is this picture not of the church holding back hell, as though hell were seeking to storm its gates. It is the picture of heaven, the church as well, storming the gates of hell, and hell cannot hold it back. It is not hell looking to overcome the church. It is the church overcoming all that hell puts up. to keep it from moving forward. Jesus is building his church. Here in the early stages of the life of the church, the church is growing immensely under the providence of God. We find in this chapter now the church is up to about 5,000 men in just a few days, really. In the New Testament era, the numbering, the way crowds were counted and so forth, they did it by numbering the men. And it was assumed then that there would be a number of women and children along with that. And so when we read here of the crowd growing to about 5,000 men, this certainly included women and children, youth who had believed. So you could easily say that the number was double. who had come to faith in Christ. And the persecution in this moment that's coming on the church is from those who should know better. They should know better. It's coming from the priests and the Sadducees and from The high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and all who are from high priestly descent, these are the people. These are the Jewish ruling class, the elites. Anybody who is anybody is now coming against Jesus. Now at this point in the life of the church, the Romans didn't really care. They didn't really care. They didn't really care if Peter and John were healing or preaching the gospel in the temple. To read the New Testament, you'll find at the beginning the powers of Rome were pretty indifferent to the gospel, as long as it just didn't disturb the peace of Jerusalem or cause any riots. It's only later that we'll see that the church becomes an issue for Rome. When Rome begins to see that Christians, when push comes to shove, are more loyal to Christ than to Caesar. The church then becomes persecuted by Rome because she refuses to worship Caesar along with Christ. It's not that Rome was angry that she refused, that she worshiped Christ. But is it that she wouldn't worship Caesar and Christ together? Rome never demanded that Christians give up Christ and just worship Caesar. Just that you worship both, which seemed entirely reasonable. Until we get to this text in the New Testament and others. Where in verse 12 of chapter 4 of Acts, Peter proclaims, there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved. When Jesus then is proclaimed as the only means and way of salvation, then the sparks begin to fly. Then the church's loyalty is exposed. That's a radical message that Peter's preaching here in Acts. It was a radical message in that day, and it still is in our day. In Peter's day, you were free to believe in Jesus as long as you finally didn't make ultimate claims about Christ. If you saw him as a good teacher. Didn't make any ultimate claims of his deity or of his resurrection. As long as in the end you held an equal allegiance even to Caesar. But we see the hatred coming toward Christ in the preaching of the cross. Begins now to be exposed as Jesus is lifted up as the only way. And he's being lifted up that way before those who ought to know better from the Jewish people. They had come to hate the message of Christ, and they were willing to put Peter and John in jail for preaching it. Now, as Peter is answering them, they want to know by what power you did this, and Peter makes it plain. He lets them know that it is Christ, and Christ who is healed, and it's the name of Christ they did this. Verse eight and nine, when Peter first addresses them, he could have sort of left it though there, when they wanted to know by what power or what name you have done this, Peter could have said something like this, well, what does it matter? What difference does it make? Why can't you just be happy? The lame man is walking. Let's just move on, shall we? But Peter presses the gospel. He presses on, he makes it as clear as day that it is Jesus who did this, and it is the Jesus you just killed. And yet who was raised from the dead, this Jesus did this, and it is this Jesus that you rejected. you rejected him, and he has become the chief cornerstone. This text draws, that Peter quotes in verse 11, draws from Psalm 118, verse 22. Peter quotes it. Peter likes this quote. He'll use it again as he writes his letter to his first letter to the church of the fact of Christ being the stone rejected becoming the chief cornerstone upon which God builds everything. And the Apostle Paul will help us more as he shows us in Ephesians that Christ is the cornerstone of the church. He is the cornerstone upon which the church itself is built along with the apostles and the prophets. So Peter presses the gospel, and he presses the exclusivity of that message. The church doesn't grow out of any other message, but the message of Jesus and Jesus alone, Jesus exclusively and no other. The church doesn't grow on other messages. If you look around, you'll see large groups, religious groups that grow immensely, unbelievably on other messages. But if they're not growing on the message of Christ and Christ alone as the way of salvation, faith in Jesus alone, they're not true churches. They're not. They have no Christ in them. They have no Christ as a cornerstone. But the true church, as we see in Acts, grows on the message of the exclusivity of the gospel, that is Jesus and Jesus alone being proclaimed as the way of salvation. The church believes and proclaims with confidence, as Peter does here, that there's no other way, there's no other means of salvation other than Jesus. You see, the offense here of Christ, the offense that was to the Jews and the offense that continues to come to the world in Jesus is that Jesus declares that every other religious system is false, patently false. And this text, verse 412 and others like it, mean that Hinduism, and Buddhism, and Islam, and Mormonism, and Jehovah's Witnesses, and Baha'i, and Christian science, and Scientology, and Shintoism, and Sikhism, and every other ism is false. But that's a message that people just won't tolerate. They didn't in Peter's day, and they don't in our day either. It's just plain offensive to say that what you believe about God or what Jesus says, it's not that we make it up, but what Jesus says is ultimate truth. and anything else is false. Sinful man just hates that. He hates to be wrong. One of the solutions that our world has come up with, and especially in the West, is we have sought to say that, well, everybody's right in some way. Everybody's right in some way. It's sort of like giving everybody a participation trophy for their religious beliefs, right? and saying that it doesn't really matter what you believe as long as you don't hurt anybody or make someone else feel bad. It doesn't really matter what you believe. It's really all good. That's what the world says. But the message of the gospel we find in the scriptures is a message that says, no, there is no other way. There is no other way to be saved. There's not a Hindu way to be saved. There's not a Muslim way to be saved. There's not a Mormon way to be saved. They do not exist. Some people like to think of spiritual truth as sort of being many doors that are out there as possibilities. You can open up any one and they're all going to get you to the same place. They all go into the same room. But in reality, every one of those are brick shut when you open them. And it's only Christ, and Christ crucified, and Christ risen from the dead that is the way. Jesus said this, in fact, about himself. He called himself the door, the door, in John chapter 10. He said, truly, truly, I say to you that he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep but climbs in some other way, he is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. To him, the doorkeeper opens and the sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. A stranger, they simply will not follow, but will flee from him because they do not know the voice of strangers. And then John, as he writes these words, goes on to explain, he says, this figure of speech, Jesus spoke to them, but they didn't understand what those things, which he said, which he had been saying to them. So they didn't quite get it yet, even as Jesus said that. And so Jesus, John says, went to say to them again, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters through me, and the implication is there me alone, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. Jesus will drive this point home farther later on in John chapter 14 where he says in John 14 6 to his disciples, I am the way and the truth and the life, not a way or a truth or a life, but the only one and no one, no one comes to the father but through me. There's no Jesus plus other ways in the scriptures. Or Jesus and the other truths, or Jesus and other ways to find eternal life. It's Jesus alone who's the source of truth and the source of life, and who is the very way of salvation in himself. And so, part of the offense of Christianity, part of the proclamation of the gospel, is that you cannot simply believe whatever you want and be saved or just believe what your family or your culture says you must believe or what the religious leaders in your day say you must believe. You must believe in Christ and in nothing and no one but Christ to be saved. The New Testament knows no compromise on this point. When Paul preaches in the book of Acts later on, In chapter 17, he will go on his missionary journeys and he'll end up in Athens, that center of pagan worship. Paul doesn't affirm them in their false beliefs. He doesn't go to them and say, I just want you to consider Jesus along with all your other gods. He doesn't act as though. As though it's really the same God no matter whether you call him Zeus or Apollos or Yahweh. It doesn't really matter as long as you call him something. That's not what Paul says to them. He doesn't speak of God in some generic form so that everyone there in Athens can just sort of press their own views into that word God. preaches to them the exclusivity of Christ, Christ alone, Christ is the only way. And that's what finally gets Paul into trouble there. And Paul is civil as he does it. He's civil, he's not a jerk. But he's crystal clear about Jesus. Paul, as he gets to Athens, walks through the city first and he sees all the idols set up and we're told that he was greatly disturbed within him. I'm sure there's part of Paul that would love to have gone around with a bat and just smashed idols. But he didn't. He doesn't stand and just laugh at the ridiculous beliefs of the Greeks. But he stands and makes clear. how they are wrong and Christ is right. He tells them that the true God is not as they thought. He's not an image, Paul says there in Acts 17, he is not an image of silver or gold or stone as your gods are. That's offensive, but it's not jerky. Actually, it's the Greek philosophers, as we read in Acts 17, who are the jerks, really, towards Paul. Because as Paul's teaching there, they say that he is just an idle babbler. Which is sort of like saying Paul's like that homeless person who stands on the street corner and just speaks into the air foolishness and crazy words. Paul's just an idle babbler. when Paul is speaking the sanest of all truths in their hearing. Now there are times to identify the sin of your hearers, I think, in stark and even shocking terms. You find that in the ministry of Christ. Christ came to the Pharisees, and there are moments where Jesus turned and said to them that they were whitewashed tombs. They were snakes, even. But there, Jesus is not merely calling them names, but calling them out in their sin. It's really a final call to repentance. So the New Testament really gives no room for other systems of belief, none. Christ is preached and upheld as supreme over all the beliefs of all the peoples over the religious Jews. He's supreme. He is supreme over the beliefs of the pagan Greeks and Romans and he's supreme over those who would say there is no God at all. But the Jews want to know by what power you've done this. They knew that something happened in the healing of this lame man. No one had denied it. We see later on in this chapter that they can't deny it. They acknowledge that. That everyone knows what happened. So what do they do? This is what happened to this layman was so unlike anything that they had seen except for the ministry of Christ. It's so unlike so many of the faux healings, the fake healings that seem to be offered up in our day. The kind of healings we often see are those that no one really knows if anything has really happened. A pain is gone or so says the one who's healed. But no one heals someone like this man in Acts but Jesus. When even your opponents know something happened. Now, to get the weight of what's happened here, it would somewhat be like Stephen Hawking. If you know Stephen Hawking, he's this brilliant mathematician, physicist that many people sort of look on as kind of the Einstein of our era. He is an atheist, though. He's also a man who since I think about 1963 has been afflicted with Lou Gehrig's disease and spent most of his life now in a wheelchair. His only means of communication is he can control a muscle in his cheek that he's able then to control a computer with and speak through. Everyone knows what Stephen Hawking is like. If Stephen Hawking were to get up and walk and talk, that's what happened here. That's what happened here with this lame man. Everyone knew what had gone on. And so they want to know of Peter and John, how did he do this? They weren't looking for other causes. And they wanted to know because they knew that only Jesus could do these kinds of things. The Jesus that they had put to death. And so there was in their mind some kind of crime. Because Jesus was an outlaw whom they had killed. They were seeing the power of Christ being put on display and they wanted to know how this could be. And if you're doing this by the power of Jesus, you got your power from Jesus, you are guilty as Jesus. The healing of a man lame from birth, lame for 40 years, is something only Christ can do. And so is the giving of life to a dead soul. That's only something Jesus can do. The apostles here proclaim that only Jesus can do those things. No one else. Only faith in Christ alone can save. It is not Jesus plus the other gods or Jesus plus me. It is the work of Jesus alone. It is the message and it is that message proclaimed that God used in the book of Acts to build the church. It is the message that God used there to call into being things that do not exist. And it is the same message that God will use in our day to build the church, to continue to call into being that which does not exist. That's the confidence the apostles had in the word of God. That's what they went out with. They didn't go out with anything else but the message of Christ and him crucified. That's what God has used through the centuries to build his church. Beloved, as you hold your Bible in your hand, you hold more power in your hands, in that book, in the truth of that book, in the message of the gospel there in it, than if you were standing atop a nuclear power plant. The power of the word of God that has made the world is what God is using to make the church and to save everyone who would look to Christ and Christ alone from their sins. That's our message, and that's our confidence. Let's close with prayer. Father, we confess that your ways are not ours. Lord, we would come up with so many other things that would be necessary and needed, and we would be about in trying to build a church, taking the gospel to the nations, Lord, we see that you are one who has sought to lift up only your power and your son in the word preached. Give us great confidence in it. Lord, give us a great sense of expectation as well as we come to hear it read and preached as we spend time in it through the week. Lord, may we know that you have put there the power that made the heavens and the earth, the power that gave us new life in Christ, and the very same power that will build your church and that will win lost people, Lord, both here in Ely and among the nations and among unreached people groups who have yet to hear. We pray it all now in Jesus' name, amen. invite you to stand as Aaron comes as he leads us as we sing number 552 my Jesus I love thee. So Dave how many times in Psalm 119 did they say delight in the word? Nine times just in Psalm 119 though it's a