The following message is by Pastor John Piper.
More information from Desiring God is available at
www.DesiringGod.org The Star Tribune reported on
Friday that a perceptible change had taken place
in the image of Saddam Hussein from a
secular strategist to a Muslim zealot.
In these words, with the outbreak of war,
some sense an almost messianic tone, particularly in
his speech Thursday after the first wave of
Allied bombing raids, using images of President Bush
as Satan and courageous Iraqis as descendants of
prophets and believers.
Now what that does is make crystal clear
for us that we live in a world
of radical pluralism, in which radically contradictory claims
are being made on our lives.
It's a global village, you can follow the
war moment by moment halfway around the world.
So, is President Bush Satan?
Are zealous patriotic Muslim Iraqis true sons of
the prophets and true believers?
Which is another way of asking, is Allah
the one true God and is Mohammed his
prophet?
Which is another way of asking, is Islam
a pathway to God or the pathway to
God?
Now I want to be real clear at
the beginning and I'll say this again at
the end, that in what I'm saying here
I'm not implying or saying that the war
is a conflict between Christianity and Islam.
I don't believe that it is because I
don't believe America is a Christian nation.
One of the glories of our faith is
that it has no national identity, it has
no geographic center, it has no national shrine.
Christians, if they are real Christians, are aliens
and exiles in every country and are out
of step with every human authority and every
human institution even when we submit to them.
Is that clear?
America is not a Christian nation and Christians
cannot be identified with any national or ethnic
group.
We are aliens and exiles upon the earth.
Out of step with every government and every
human way of thinking.
But there is a powerful religious impulse to
this conflict.
President Bush did call Billy Gray.
Hussein did kneel on his carpet.
And he does want to cast the war
in terms of a holy war.
But all of that points to this crucial
fact.
We live in a world that is radically
pluralistic with radically contradictory claims being made upon
our lives for our allegiance.
Nationally and it is happening more and more
and more at home.
You know the consensus that once existed in
this land.
You could call it Judeo-Christian or you
could call it Protestant.
There was once a consensus that enabled the
social structures of our land to proceed upon
a fairly coherent set of moral expectations.
And it is disappearing very rapidly if it
is not gone almost entirely.
Now in the place of that coherent sort
of broadly Judeo-Christian ethic.
There is coming not an open and mutually
respecting pluralism where all views are equally approved
or equally heard.
That is not the alternative that is emerging
upon the scene of American culture.
Rather what is emerging in the name of
pluralism is a secular orthodoxy.
And that orthodoxy is being used to judge
the parameters of the pluralism.
And the old views are not respected.
They are intensely disapproved of and hostilely treated
and forced to the margin of our corporate
and public discourse.
That is the reality in America today.
And therefore not only does the war highlight
the radical pluralism and contradictory claims upon the
lives of human beings in the world today.
But American civilization does as well.
The old consensus is gone.
The new consensus is emerging as a secular
one.
Christianity and all of the old views are
being pushed to the perimeter and are becoming
increasingly offensive because of their moral claim on
the emptiness of relativism.
That is the world in which we live.
That is the world in which you and
these little ones that we just dedicated are
going to increasingly have to bear witness to
the uniqueness and the supremacy of Jesus Christ,
Lord of the Universe.
And it's not going to get easier or
safer.
Now the text, remarkably, and I praise God
for it, in my trek through Acts, I
have not had to change the text for
today or for next Sunday on abortion.
Let me bring you up to date.
It's been some time since we've been in
Acts.
Here's where we are.
Chapter three, Peter and John going up to
the temple.
Jesus Christ, the living Lord, heals a man
through them who was lame from birth.
He leaps and runs through the temple.
A great crowd gathers and Peter has a
great opportunity to preach the gospel.
And he preaches and he moves from the
local and the particular to the global and
the universal with words like he, this Jesus
who just healed this man, is the author
of life.
This Jesus who just healed this man is
the fulfillment of fifteen hundred year old prophecy.
This Jesus is the one who in heaven
now waits and will come again and restore
all things to paradise.
This Jesus will bless all the families of
the earth including Iraqi families and Saudi families
and Russian families and American families.
The Jesus who just raised this man from
the dead is Lord of all and maker
of all.
That's the way this Peter in this out
of the way land called Palestine over this
one little event preached.
He moved from the local to the global
and then he got arrested.
Chapter four verse one.
He got arrested and he got put in
jail overnight and then he is brought before
the rulers and verse seven tells us how
it goes now.
By what power and by what name did
you do this?
Meaning heal this man.
And now watch again how Peter moves from
the local and the specific and the particular
to the global and the universal.
Verse ten.
Be it known to you all, Peter says,
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.
Now do you see the movement there?
Now can anything good come out of Nazareth?
Remember those words?
Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
No, it's a no count Galilean village where
nobody who's anybody came from.
And not only that, he is less than
a nobody.
He was crucified by you people.
He says, and only miserable, no good criminals
get crucified on the killing hill of Golgotha
outside Jerusalem.
So he's real specific.
He's real nobody.
He's real low.
And God raised him from the dead.
And he's the Lord of the universe and
just healed this man.
A shock effect.
Peter's doing that intentionally.
To move from the particular, which is so
offensive in the world, so offensive, that our
Savior has to be a Jew.
What if you don't like Jews?
What if you don't like Galilee of the
nations?
What if no good can come out of
Nazareth?
Well, Peter is saying, that's it.
That's reality.
That's God's choice to humble us and get
us off of our proud ethnocentrism.
And then, he takes up a picture and
says the same thing again.
Verse 11.
A picture taken from Psalm 118.
This is the stone, which was rejected by
you builders, but which has become the head
of the corner.
So now we get the picture.
The kingdom is pictured like a building.
And stones are people who might have some
significant or more or less insignificant place in
the building.
A brick in the wall maybe.
And the stone from Nazareth is examined by
the builders, the Jewish leaders, and he is
rejected.
It's not a good brick.
And they throw it out on the killing
hill of Golgotha and it gets buried in
a tomb.
And the architect comes forth from his heaven
and sees the brick, his brick, insignificant, thrown
out, rejected by men, buried.
And he picks him up, cleans him off,
and puts him as the head of the
corner of the kingdom.
Same move from the local, the particular, the
specific, the out of the way, the rejected,
the no good, no count, to the Lord
of the universe.
Oh, how offensive this is in our world.
And then he draws out an awesome implication
in verse 12 and says it flat out.
There is salvation in no one else.
For there is no other name under heaven
given among men by which we must be
saved.
That's the implication of having been recognized and
seen as rejected and found by God, lifted
out of death, installed at the right hand,
made Lord and Christ over all.
Now we might respond to Peter and say,
whoa, wait a minute.
Don't you really mean that you're in a
Jewish context there and when you say there's
no other name to be saved by, you
mean Jews have to go through their Messiah,
right?
That's all you mean.
There's one Jewish way of salvation.
They better believe on their Messiah.
You're not saying anything about Chinese or American
Indians at 33 AD, are you?
And the answer is that he is.
He is not just speaking about Jews.
The reason is given right here.
There is no other name under heaven.
Not under the Jewish heaven or the American
heaven or the Iraqi heaven or the Saudi
heaven.
There is no other name anywhere under heaven
by which you can be saved.
Moreover, there is no other name under heaven
given among men, not just among Jews, but
among people by which you must be saved.
It won't do to say he's only addressing
the Jewish context.
Peter explicitly universalizes it.
And then here comes another objection.
This is very common today.
It says, okay, there is salvation from no
other source but Jesus and his atoning work
on the cross.
But you don't have to know him to
benefit from his salvation.
All you have to be is a faithful,
sincere Muslim.
Or a faithful, sincere Buddhist.
Or a faithful, sincere Hindu.
Or a faithful, sincere animist.
Or just faithful and sincere and God in
mercy will apply the death of Jesus to
you and you'll be saved by him incognito.
Real common view running through academic types especially.
Will that work?
It won't work.
It won't work in this verse.
It won't work outside this verse either.
Let me show you why I think it
won't.
Peter says there is no other name under
heaven given among men by which we must
be saved.
Now why name?
What's the implication of the word name?
He is saying more than there's no other
source for salvation that you can have under
other names.
Get that?
He is not saying merely there is no
other source of salvation which you could get
under another name.
He's saying there is no other name to
appeal to.
Salvation comes by calling upon the name of
the Lord.
And there aren't any other names to call
upon.
If you try to call upon another name,
you lose.
The name is very important here.
Let me try to buttress that a little
further.
Acts chapter 10 verse 43.
Peter is preaching and he says, Everyone who
believes in Him, Jesus, receives forgiveness of sins
through His name.
It's a faith issue in the name.
When you believe in Jesus, you get salvation
and forgiveness through the name.
If you don't believe in Jesus, you don't
get it through the name.
Here's the way Paul put it.
It's even more clear in Romans 10, 13.
Everyone who calls upon the name of the
Lord will be saved.
But how are they to call upon Him
whom they've not believed?
And how are they to believe in Him
of whom they've not heard?
And how are they to hear without a
preacher?
And how are they to preach unless they
be sent?
Now, do you get the implication there?
You must call upon the name to be
saved.
How can you call on one you don't
believe?
How can you believe if you haven't heard?
How can you hear without a preacher?
How can you preach if you're not sent?
Missions is the only answer to people who
have not been reached with the gospel.
There is no incognito road to heaven.
There is no Muslim road to heaven.
There is no Hindu road to heaven.
There is no Buddhist road to heaven.
There is no Judaism that leads to heaven
apart from their Messiah, Jesus.
There is no animistic road to heaven in
Irian Jaya.
There is no secular or moral road to
heaven.
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the
life.
No one comes to the Father but by
Him.
Peter pushed the universality of Jesus, this no
count Nazareth born teacher to the limit, and
said He is absolutely supreme and Lord of
all, and everyone must come to terms with
Jesus.
Listen to how he calls for repentance in
Acts 17.
The times of ignorance God overlooked, but God
commands now all men 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 men by
raising Him from the dead.
Jesus is Lord of all.
Jesus is the universal and the only way
of salvation.
This is a radical, crucial, biblical truth with
which we must come to terms in our
pluralistic day.
It is the kind of truth that either
makes converts or makes enemies.
It isn't a live and let live truth.
We're aliens.
We're exiles.
We don't fit in America, nor have we
ever fit in America.
We don't fit in the America that's coming
with its laissez-faire morality.
We don't fit in do-your-own-thing
religious atmospheres because we make a universal claim
to our faith.
There is salvation in no one else, for
there is no other name under heaven given
among men by which we must be saved.
Now, in closing, let me ask, what does
this imply for us today?
One, it implies the urgency of understanding our
faith.
If all ways lead to God, it doesn't
matter if you know the right way.
It doesn't matter if you know how to
stay on the Christian road.
It's not important, and therefore you don't need
to read your Bible.
You don't need to study.
You don't need to be vigilant over your
mind because understanding is of very little significance
if all roads lead to the kingdom.
But if Peter is right and the Bible
is true, there is one road that leads
to heaven, one way of salvation, and therefore
knowing it, understanding it, following it, staying in
it, is all important.
There isn't anything more important in your life.
That's number one, understanding.
The second implication of the supremacy of Jesus
is courage, brothers and sisters.
Courage, courage today.
The supremacy and absoluteness of Jesus among all
the religions of the world is the cause
of all Christian martyrdom.
If Christ is not unique and supreme, no
one should die for him.
If all ways lead to the kingdom, you
would be a fool to die for Jesus.
If the state says, confess Caesar as Lord,
or more relevantly, if the state says, confess
that Allah is the only God and that
Muhammad is his prophet, a Christian must say,
I will not and I cannot because Caesar
is not Lord, Allah as he is known
in Islam is not the true God, and
Muhammad is not a true prophet.
Jesus is Lord of the universe and Jesus
alone is the way to truth and everlasting
life.
You must say that if you're a Christian.
And the question will be put to you
sooner or later in more or less dangerous
circumstances.
Finally, and thirdly, it means understanding, it means
courage, and the supremacy of Jesus means that
we must have a radical interpretation of war
in the Middle East.
A radical interpretation of war in the Middle
East.
I will ask you a trick question, don't
answer it.
The trick question is, is there a war
going on in the Middle East?
And the answer is no, there are two.
One of them is being fought with cruise
missiles and scud missiles and fighters and bombers.
It is a war between states that are
not Christian.
I'm going to emphasize again where I began.
This is not a conflict between Christians and
Muslims.
Most of the pilots in the fighter planes
and most of those who are manning the
missiles from the allied forces are secularists who
believe less in Jesus than Muslims believe in
Muhammad.
We are not a Christian army in Saudi
Arabia.
This is not a conflict between Muslims and
Christians in spite of there being many of
our brothers and sisters there.
There's another war going on.
The first one is between a Muslim state
and secular states over national boundaries and rights
of nations and securities of states and availability
of natural resources.
The other war is vastly more important.
The other war is more important because the
stakes are infinitely higher.
They are eternal life and eternal judgment.
The one war is risking the earthly death
of thousands.
The other war is risking the eternal death
of millions.
This isn't being fought with missiles or bombers
or tanks.
It's being fought on the Christian side with
weapons of love like faith and prayer and
spiritual wisdom and sacrifice and the glorious good
news that Jesus Christ forgives any race, any
ethnic person, person from any background who will
simply repent in belief.
And it is being resisted on the part
of Iraqis and Saudis with oppression and anti
-Christian state sanctions.
In Iraq, Patrick Johnstone says, quote, It is
virtually impossible for a Muslim to confess Christ
and live.
Close quote.
No open Christian witnesses allowed in Iraq.
Missionaries were expelled in 1969.
14,000 believers under harassment left Iraq between
1972 and 1977.
There are today in Iraq 12 million Muslims
and 2.8 million Kurds, Arab Muslims and
Kurdish people and many smaller ethnic groups, all
of whom are without Christ and without hope
forever unless someone goes to tell them.
And Saudi Arabia is almost the most un
-evangelized country in the world.
There are no known Saudi Christians in Saudi
Arabia, though just as she was leaving, one
woman said to me of a contact she
had about 500 underground Christians in Saudi Arabia,
which was a great encouragement to me.
No known Christian workers.
No Christian is even allowed to set foot
in Mecca, the holy city of Islam.
Christian literature and Bibles are banned, though many
of our troops took them against the rules.
There are 10 million Muslims in Saudi Arabia
without Christ and without hope in the world
and in eternity because there is salvation in
no one else.
For there is no other name under heaven
given among men by which they and we
must be saved.
So there are two wars going on.
The one is risking the loss of thousands
of people to temporal earthly death and the
other is risking the loss or possible salvation
of millions in view of eternal life or
eternal death.
And the question I want to close with,
and I'm not sure what God wants to
do with it in our lives, is this.
What does it mean that we are almost
addicted to this war?
That we are totally consumed and taken up
with this new war and almost totally oblivious
and indifferent to the more important war?
Let's pray.
Father, I pray that you would take Peter's
perspective now, your apostle, and apply it to
our hearts to make us strong and courageous
and radical and loving.
Oh, that we might not believe the accusation
that the claim of Christ's uniqueness is an
arrogant claim, but know that it is the
only loving claim that can possibly be spoken
in downtown Minneapolis or in school or in
our neighborhoods.
Let not the world interpret for us what
is loving and caring and what is not.
May we hear your voice to know that
the most important war of the ages is
the spiritual war to overcome obstacles in the
cause of love, to reach people with the
gospel of Jesus Christ by which alone people
can be saved.
I don't know what you want to do
right now in people's lives, Lord, but I
invite you to come in power and minister
to people.
And I invite you, to whom he's ministering
and calling, to pray.
People will be standing at the front here
afterwards.
They're here to pray with you about anything
at all.
You may have brought it or God may
have spoken to you about it.
And just seek the Lord together for a
few minutes after this service.
Now unto the king of ages, immortal, invisible,
the only God, be majesty and glory forever
and ever.
And all the people said, Amen.
Thank you for listening to this message by
John Piper, pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist
Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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