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Living Hope SDA Church

Chris Holland

One Name

Heavenly Father, we have gathered here for worship.

But we have gathered here, Lord, to hear a word from you.

And so now as we spend the next few moments studying your word, we pray and we ask that you would speak in clear and distinct ways.

And Lord, inspire us that we might be more like You.

Many years ago in Minneapolis, Minnesota, The leading paper was the Minneapolis Tribune.

The Minneapolis Tribune was published in a six-story building, which was considered by many at the time to be the finest newspaper establishment in the United States.

However, 1 of the great defects in the building as they built this fine six-story tower was that the stairwell was built around the elevator shaft.

This meant if a fire would break out in the elevator shaft, there would be no way of escape.

And in fact, in 1889, that is exactly what happened.

A fire broke out in the elevator shaft and the flames swept up the building floor by floor.

However, there was a brave young elevator boy who went through the flames and through the fire and through the smoke a number of times, rescuing individuals on the upper floors.

Some people went to the fire escape stairs on the exterior of the building.

However, there was 1 man, 1 lone man on the sixth floor.

He was a dispatcher for the Associated Press.

He was urged by many to escape, but he simply refused to move.

He sat by his telegraph, the precursor to the iPhone, sending text messages by the telegraph.

He was sending messages to all parts of the country, and he was reporting about the building and the fire that was coming up the floors in the building he now sat.

There were many times that he could have left the building by the fire escape, but he had the hottest story in town, so to speak.

And so he sat there while the flames made their way up floor by floor.

This all came in the context that not many months before the Minneapolis Tribune fire, there was a woman journalist who sat in a telegraph office below the dam at Johnstown telegraphing about the Connemara river that was about to breach the dam.

She was swept away to her death, and her bravery and self-sacrifice was heralded around the world.

And now this man sitting in the Minneapolis Tribune building desired the same notoriety.

The telegraph began, I am in the Tribune building in the sixth store and the building is on fire.

The fire has now reached the second story.

A little while later, the fire has now reached the third story.

Soon after, the fire has reached the fourth story, but I am in the sixth.

And then there came the ominous telegraph.

It was at that time that he thought it would be good to leave.

But in order to do this, he needed to cross the hallway to another room where the window to access the fire escape was.

He went to the door, he opened it, and to his dismay he found that the fire was not just in the fifth story.

The fire was in the sixth story and the hallway was full of smoke and flames, and at the moment he opened the door, those flames were now swept into the room in which he now was sitting.

He shut the door quickly and he asked himself, What should I do?

The stairway, the elevator, the fire escape were all cut off.

He was a brave man, and so he would not give up easily.

And so he went to the window, he threw open the window, and there down below stood a great crowd 6 stories down.

They could not reach him with a ladder, though.

They could not get under him to spread a net to catch him.

But then he looked up, and he saw a long guy rope wire, and it passed from the tribune building roof to another roof.

He grabbed on to that guy rope and he began to go hand over hand, hanging 6 stories above the ground.

Hanging by 1 hand, they wondered, will He let go?

And I must wonder aloud, my dear friends, if we are living in a time where we're on the sixth floor, ignoring what's happening on the fifth floor below.

Maybe we don't really care what's happening on the fifth floor.

Or maybe we think like that man thought that there would be a last minute way of escape.

Is it possible that we have lost sight of the most important thing that has ever happened in human history?

The most important event ever to happen in the history of humanity, and more importantly, the most important event that could happen in our own history.

If you have your Bibles with you, I'd invite you to open to Acts 4.

There in Acts 4, 8-12, we find the Apostle Peter and the Apostle John preaching in the temple.

They run into the Sadducees as they preach about the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Sadducees, of course, would have a big problem with this because the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, let alone resurrection by a man named Jesus whom they thought they had rid themselves of by killing Him.

And so Peter and John were arrested and then they appeared before the Sanhedrin, the religious council comprised by the Sadducees and the Pharisees.

And in verses 8-12, John and Peter making an appeal to these religious leaders, it says, Peter filled with the Holy Spirit said to them, rulers of the people and elders of Israel, and let me hit a pause here, in a 21st century context, we often refer to Pharisees and Sadducees in a negative sense.

Pharisees were highly respected because they were thought to be the most devout individuals as they tried to follow the law more closely than anyone else.

And so these highly respected leaders, Peter and John, standing before them say, rulers of the people and elders of Israel, if we this day are judged for a good deed done to a helpless man..." Remember, they had healed the lame man.

Let it be known to 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 stands here before you whole.

They leave no shadow of a doubt that the lame man was not healed by some magic, the lame man was not healed by some snake oil healing powers, but He was healed by the power of Jesus Christ." But then Peter and John step it up just a little notch.

And then they say, this is the stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.

Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." If we're talking about being exclusive, Peter and John give 1 of the most exclusive statements ever in the New Testament.

Well, not quite as exclusive as when Jesus said, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.

Yet here in the 21st century, dominated by relativistic thinking, we think there are multiple paths and multiple ways.

But Peter and John make it clear, there's only 1 way, there's only salvation in 1, And His name is Jesus Christ.

And at face value, sitting in church, we lean back and say, Hallelujah!

Do we care to know what it means to be saved?

And most fundamentally, why do I need to be saved?

In a 21st century context where the fastest growing religious group in the world is a group referred to by the nuns, not N-U-N-S but N-O-N-E-S.

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One Name

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