Matt

Matt. 16:13-28

7/13/2008

“I Will Build My Church”

In Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Someone eavesdropping this conversation might have found Jesus’ question laughable. Was this not a young carpenter from Nazareth, of which it was said all throughout Israel, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” And He had the audacity to ask such a question, especially in Caesarea Philippi? It was a city dedicated to Caesar Augustus, the greatest of the Roman Caesars (thus Caesarea), and it was named after King Philip, the son of Herod the Great (thus Philippi). Who cares about this humble, unknown carpenter from Nazareth when I am concerned about what my career should be, whether I will ever be able to get married and have children, whether I or my loved ones will ever get better and be healthy, what course to take in times of crisis, what will happen to me and my family in the future, etc.

But it turns out that there is no question more important than this question Jesus asked. When we stand before God in His judgment seat, our answer to this question will determine our eternal destiny--whether to spend eternity in hell or in heaven. A question of such gravity has and ought to have bearing on how and for what we live our life, and how to answer all the things that we wonder about and struggle with in our life everyday. There are all kinds of wrong answers, of course, concerning who Jesus is. The people of Jesus’ time thought Him to be a great prophet. And wrong perceptions of Jesus have abounded all throughout history.

But when Jesus directed the question to His disciples, Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Amazingly Peter was saying that this man, this carpenter from Nazareth, was the Christ--the long-expected, -awaited Messiah!--and the Son of the living God. As we will see presently, Peter gave the right answer without understanding the full significance of what he said.

Peter’s answer seems to have been quite clearly, and rightly, based on Ps. 2. As a good Jew, he knew his psalms and he knew that Ps. 2 was one of the messianic psalms. After all, it talks about the Lord and His anointed (which is x;yvim' (m¹shîaµ)) in v. 2). As many of you know, “Christ” is the Greek translation of the Hebrew, x;yvim'. In Ps. 2 we are told that this anointed one--the Messiah, the Christ--is the King, whom the Lord set on Zion (v. 6). And to this Messiah, the Lord says, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you” (v. 7). As you can see, Peter’s confession, which comprises of the ideas of Christ and his sonship to God, is neatly derived from this messianic psalm.

But, of course, Peter, by this confession, could not have meant that he believed Jesus to be the Second Person of the Trinity when he said that Jesus was the Son of the living God (N.T, Wright, Matthew for Everyone, p. 7). But that is exactly what we mean now when we confess Jesus as the Son of God. And that was what Peter himself came to know and believe later as a result of further and more revelation concerning Jesus Christ. We cannot fault him for this lack of understanding at this point, of course. Even to see that this Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah, for whom the people of God had been waiting for all these years and centuries and millennia, was an amazing thing. So Jesus said, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (v. 17). In this answer, Jesus not only praised Peter for his answer but also affirmed the truth of his confession. He showed Himself to be indeed the eternal Son of God by referring to God as “My Father”.

Consider also the title by which He often referred to Himself, “the Son of Man” (v. 13)? This title was used numerously throughout the Old Testament to simply refer to a man or to a human being. Often, prophets were addressed as “son of man”. But this title was used in a very unique way in Dan. 7:13. In one of his night visions, Daniel saw “One like a Son of Man” coming with the clouds of heaven. This figure was not just an ordinary human being. We are told in v. 14 that He was given an everlasting dominion over all nations. This did not just mean a dynasty, which would last forever by an unbroken succession of kingship from one generation to another. Notice that this figure like a Son of Man is coming “with the clouds of heaven”, which is a unique expression even in the Old Testament. And the Hebrew word for “clouds” “occurs about eighty times in the OT, and three quarters of those refer to the pillar of ‘cloud’ which directed the Israelites through the desert and represented God’s presence over the tabernacle (Exo 13, 14, 16, 33, 40; and Num 9-12,14,16, et al.)” (TWOT, !n"['). The coming of the son-of-man figure with the clouds of heaven reminds us of God descending upon Mount Sinai in the glory cloud. What is implied is that this “one like a Son of Man” is a divine figure. In fact, when Jesus called Himself “the Son of Man”, He was referring to this mysterious figure in Dan. 7. For He said in vv. 27-28, “For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (By the way, the first part, v. 27, must refer to Christ’s Second Coming. The second part, v. 28, must refer to His appearance to the disciples after His resurrection, having been given all authority in heaven and earth (28:18). And it is true that not all of them witnessed Christ’s resurrection--Judas Iscariot died before Christ’s resurrection.) By this reply, Jesus asserted not only His messianic identity but also His divine origin.

Blessing Peter for his confession, Jesus said, “And I tell you, you are Peter (petros), and on this rock (petra) I will build my church…” (v. 18). Thus Jesus changed Simon’s name to petros, which means a stone. His new name shares the same root with petra, which means a rock (as distinguished from a stone). This distinction, as well as what happens later in our passage, in which Peter is rebuked by Jesus in a harsh way, makes it clear that the rock foundation of Christ’s church is not the person of Peter. Rather, the foundation is the confession of Peter that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. This is to say that the rock foundation of the Church is Jesus Christ Himself since the confession is all about who Jesus Christ is!

Let us note that it is the church that Christ will build. As many of you know, the Greek word for “church” is evkklhsi,a (ekklesía). It refers to “regularly summoned legislative body, assembly” (BDAG). What is at the foundation of this word is the idea of being summoned or called out in an official way. We can sense the exodus motif here as well: the people of Israel were called out of the bondage of Egypt and assembled at Mount Sinai to be organized as a nation under God’s kingship. The church of Jesus Christ is made up of those, who are called out of the sinful world: once they made up the sinful world but now they are called out of the world to be part of the church of Jesus Christ. What a radical change in position and membership!

And it is His church that Jesus will build. The church belongs to Jesus. It is His. It is His, first of all, because He is, as we saw, the foundation of the church. Since a building cannot be built without any foundation, the church owes its existence to Jesus Christ. How, then, did He lay the foundation? We read in v. 21, “From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” Here we see a significant turning point in Jesus’ ministry. What was the turning point? Jesus’ question and Peter’s confession concerning Jesus’ messianic identity. Now that His messianic identity is made known to His disciples, He begins to reveal and define His messianic mission to them: to suffer and die at the hands of the religious leaders and to be raised in glory.

But the messianic program He outlines horrifies Peter. It is as though he were so disturbed by the prospect of Jesus’ suffering and death that he did not even hear the part about Jesus’ resurrection. Peter rebukes Him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you” (v. 22)! His reaction shows that his understanding of the Messiah consisted merely of power and victory and did not include suffering and death. Just a minor misunderstanding? After all, Ps. 2 spoke of the Messiah mainly as a victorious figure--receiving the nations as His heritage, breaking them with a rod of iron and dashing them in pieces like a potter’s vessel; the kings and rulers of the earth warned to pay homage to the Messiah lest they perish in His anger. But this was only a partial understanding of the messianic mission and of Ps. 2 itself! For the Apostolic church saw the persecution Jesus and received and the church was receiving as the fulfillment of Ps. 2:1-2: “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his anointed….” Besides, there were also other messianic passages, such as Isa. 53, which spoke of the Messiah as the suffering Servant of the Lord. So, was Peter’s misunderstanding just a minor oversight?

Not according to Jesus! To Peter’s protest that Jesus should never suffer and die, Jesus replied, “Get behind me, Satan!” Did you hear that? Jesus just likened Peter to Satan! And we understand why. Remember Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness? What were the temptations about? Why did Satan tempt Him the way he did, challenging Him to turn stones into bread, to jump down from the steeple and to bow down to him to receive all the nations? Was it not to redefine Jesus’ messianic mission? Was it not to tempt Jesus away from the difficult path of suffering and dying into the easy path of comfort and glory? And was it not an attempt to make Jesus into an earthly messiah, whose mission amounted to no more than satisfying the hunger of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life? But Jesus came to seek and save the lost. Jesus came to save His people from sin and death and hell, to bring us into righteousness, life and heaven. This, Jesus could not do without suffering and dying for our sins and rising up from the dead! Peter’s messianic expectation was not just a minor misunderstanding! To misunderstand the real point of Jesus’ mission is satanic in spirit! All those, who make Jesus out to be no more than an earthly Messiah of health and wealth and fame, ought to be afraid, very afraid. Remember what Jesus said to the church of Smyrna: “I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan” (Rev. 2:9). The church that makes Jesus out to be an earthly messiah risks the same judgment. That Peter did what he did probably out of his love for Jesus did not matter. For the Jesus that he loved, no matter how sincere and devoted his love was, would not be the true Jesus.

Now consider the meaning of this messianic mission in view of who Jesus is. He is not only the expected Messiah. He is also the Son of the living God, the Second Person of the Trinity, equal in power and glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit! He came to suffer and die in our place and to rise again for our justification. Consider a criminal locked away in prison for life without the possibility of parole. He is suffering the consequence of his crime and he knows it. But does that make it easy? Probably not. But imagine an innocent person serving time in prison. Can we imagine what it is like to be there day after day, year after year? Every minute he spends in prison must feel like his life is being drained out of him little by little for nothing. That he is innocent of the crime may comfort him a little. But that truth is also what torments him more than anything. You can imagine, then, the unimaginable magnitude of Christ’s suffering, the righteous suffering for the guilty and despicable. Think about all kinds of people whose sins have been forgiven because Jesus bore them! Jesus, whose name is Truth and Amen, suffered the sins of liars and cheaters and frauds and scammers. His throne is founded on righteousness and justice, yet He laid down His life for the sins of thugs and tyrants and crooks and bribers. He, whose name is Faithful, bore the sins of idlers and lazy bums and thieves and burglars. He, who is pure beyond praising, suffered the shame and humiliation of fornicators and adulterers and prostitutes and all kinds of sexual perverts. He, who is the Fountain of life, laid down His life for murderers and serial killers and fratricides and parricides. As the Lord of glory, He died for the dregs of the society and the scum of the earth. If anyone was saved, it was because Christ bore the guilt and shame of their sins.

This could not have been easy, though He was the almighty God. See the intensity of Jesus’ response to Peter: “Get behind Me, Satan!” But what fascinates me is what He says next: “You are a hindrance to me!” A hindrance? How could something Peter said be such a hindrance to Jesus? Was He not certain and confident about His identity and mission? Something that a mere mortal said could not have affected Him so much! But Jesus’ reaction shows how Peter touched a raw nerve with Jesus. Fasting for forty days did not affect Him this much. I dare say that being spat upon and mocked and stripped and whipped did not affect Him this much. Even the gruesome physical pain of the crucifixion did not affect Him this much. Because these were the words of His beloved disciple. As a caring friend Peter urged Him to forsake the way of the cross. This must have pierced Him with the sharpest of sting. For the cross was the cup that Jesus wished not to drink, if possible, if there was another way--not because of its excruciating physical pain (in fact, the word “excruciating” comes from “crucifixion”), but because of the pain of being forsaken by His heavenly Father in condemnation and wrath! Because His love for the Father was infinite, to be forsaken by His Father even for a second would be infinitely painful! But Jesus did not waiver. He did not flinch from His messianic mission as the suffering Servant of the Lord! By His unspeakable suffering, humiliation and death and by His victorious resurrection, Jesus became the foundation of His church!

It is upon this foundation that Jesus will build His church! Can you imagine how glorious His church will be? When we look at the size of the foundation, we can imagine how big the building will be. If you see a massive foundation, going deep and wide, you know you have a massive structure in the making. Think about the foundation, upon which Christ will build His church. Its foundation is none other than the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God! This foundation, therefore, is infinite in its size, if it were possible to quantify. It is as deep as the deepest recesses of hell, from which we are delivered. It is as wide as the expanse of the universe, able to embrace all kinds of people and all kinds of sins and to bring renewal to all creation! The church, which is built upon such a massive foundation, will be as high as the heights of heaven, able to bring us there; as strong and firm as the faithfulness of God, able to preserve and protect us from the gates of hell; as glorious as Christ’s triumph over sin and death, able to make us perfect, without any blemish or spot; and as enduring and lasting as the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, giving us everlasting life and eternal inheritance that will never perish!

Consider also what Paul says in Rom. 5:10: “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” We may say that Jesus laid the foundation with His death and now He is building His church with His life as the resurrected Lord. If Jesus was willing to die for us while we were yet enemies, what will He not do for us, now that we are His beloved church, His beloved Bride, His body? If the foundation that He laid by dying for His enemies was amazing, how much more glorious will be the building He is now building, now that He lives as the resurrected Lord, now that we are His brethren and friends?

As we have seen, the church owes its existence to Jesus Christ. It owes its preservation and its perfection to Him. All that it is and all that it has and all that it can ever be, the church owes it all to Jesus Christ. So then, we can imagine in what sense the church belongs to Jesus. It belongs to Jesus in a most absolute way! Jesus Christ is its Head and King, Master and Lord. Jesus Christ is its life, its purpose, its strength, its glory, its inheritance, its hope, its joy and its peace. Jesus Christ is its shield, its fortress, its refuge and its rock, cleft for it. Jesus is the air it breathes, the bread it eats, the water it drinks, the wine it imbibes and the abundant feast it feeds upon.

The church of Jesus Christ is not a democracy. It is a colony of the kingdom of heaven until Jesus returns. It is not of the people, for the people, by the people. It is of Jesus, for Jesus and by Jesus. So the church does not belong to itself or to its members but to Jesus. The church does not exist for itself but for Jesus. The church does not glory in itself and its accomplishments but in Jesus and His accomplishments. The church does not live by its own rules but by the rules of Jesus. You may ask, why then do we vote in the church? In the coming months, you will vote your elders and pastor. How can we do this?

Jesus declares that it is He, who will build His church. But He goes on to say to Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (v. 19). Think about how amazing this statement is! Jesus just said, “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (v. 18). If the gates of hell cannot prevail against the church, on whose account is it? Can it be on account of Peter? As we saw already, only a few moments later, Peter is called Satan! If so, how can he defend the church against gates of hell? No, it is only on account of Jesus Christ! Because it is Jesus, who builds the church, the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. And yet, Jesus gives Peter the keys of the kingdom. Amazingly Peter (along with all the church officers throughout history) is made the gatekeeper of the church against the gates of hell! So powerful is Christ, so efficacious is the redemption of Christ, that He can suppress the gates of hell even with His redeemed (yet still sinful) people like Peter and like us!

Paul once asked, “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound [because we are saved by grace, not by works]” (Rom. 6:1)? In the same way we can ask, “Shall we do nothing because it is Jesus, who will build His church?” May it never be! If the church will be built and perfected in its glory, it is solely on account of Jesus Christ the Son of God. But Christ has entrusted the keys of the kingdom to the church, which is far from perfect. We will falter and fall, we will stumble and trip over. But we will not stay down. We will rise again. We will rise again not because we have an indomitable will. We will rise again because we know that Christ is the One, who will build His church and He will not fail! He will succeed in spite of us, despite all our failures and mistakes and weaknesses and even sins! After all, who is the Rock, upon whom we stand? Is He not the Christ, who came to save hopeless sinners through His death and resurrection? Is He not the Son of God, who loved us to the point of laying down His life while we were yet His enemies? Is He not the resurrected Lord, who attained His glory through suffering our miseries and dying our death?

When we look at ourselves and the state of the church, we may be disheartened. The criticisms that the world has of the church, the criticisms that our unbelieving friends have of us, the criticisms that we have of one another--they sting because many of them are true. If Jesus is who we say He is, the life we live should be so much more radical than it is now. We should have greater joy. We should be so much more thankful. We should be so much more generous. We should be so much more patient and forgiving and loving. And we need to repent of that. But the courage to reform our ways comes from the fact that Christ will not fail in spite of us, despite us. In fact, He will succeed because He is able to use all of our weaknesses and failures and even our sins to build up His glorious church! Therein lies His glory--to build a glorious church out of wretched sinners like us! Though a trivial analogy, it will be like a coach leading the Jamaican national team to win the Luge event at Winter Olympic Games. Let us not forget this wonderful truth lest we grow weary and disheartened! Let this glorious truth cause us to be all the more gracious and patient with one another while not compromising the truth!

In C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, Screwtape, an undersecretary of hell, advises his nephew, Wormwood, how to tempt his human patient with effectiveness. One way is to use people’s unrealistic and irrational expectations of what the church should look like and be like, what other Christians should be like; to confuse one’s personal pet peeves with sins; to major in minors and ignore the majors. Then Screwtape goes on to say,

“I have been writing hitherto on the assumption that the people in the next pew afford no rational ground for disappointment. Of course if they do--if the patient knows that the woman with the absurd hat is a fanatical bridge-player or the man with squeaky boots a miser and an extortioner--then you task is so much the easier. All you then have to do is to keep out of his mind the question ‘If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?’ You may ask whether it is possible to keep such an obvious thought from occurring even to a human mind. It is, Wormwood, it is” (Ch. 2)!

Christ said, “I will build My church!” It is in future tense because the church will not be completed and perfected until the appointed day. Let us keep that in mind as we deal with one another, again remembering that we are not to give up the truth and speaking the truth with grace.

Stand on the Rock of Jesus Christ! That is how you will be built into the glorious church of Jesus Christ. Stand upon the rock of Jesus Christ for His glory, for His honor! Go back to this again and again, especially when you fall and tumble. Go back to the Jesus of the Bible. Resist the temptation to make Him an earthly Messiah, or anything we want Him to be, a Champion of our own agenda. Rather, let us deny ourselves and take up the cross and follow Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God. He did not come to establish an earthly kingdom with earthly means. He did not come to satisfy our lust of the flesh, our lust of the eyes and our boastful pride of life. He came to save us, to bring in the kingdom of heaven. And flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven. As we are being built upon the foundation of Christ, we cannot lose sight of, and stray from, Jesus’ messianic mission. His mission is our mission. And we fulfill that mission by preaching Christ crucified and seeking first His kingdom of heaven and His righteousness.

So when we vote in the church, we vote for the glory and honor of Christ. And those who seek to serve do so not to further their agenda, not to expand their influence, not to gain honor, but to serve Jesus out of gratitude. I hope that you shall serve the Lord by standing firm upon the rock of Jesus Christ, that you will not say, “Since it is Christ, who will build His church, I don’t have to do anything.” Rather, I hope that you will shed many a tear for the church, as it struggles with its weaknesses and failures--not out of despair but out of the true and living hope that Christ shall not fail but He shall succeed in building and perfecting His church for His glory! May that vision spur you on to toil for the building up of the church! Start from the very basic things, which are most important--being diligent and punctual in attending our worship service; regularly participating in our fellowship and Sunday school and prayer meetings; serving as ushers; doing our lunch; cleaning up after church events; checking up on those who are missing; showing hospitality to one another and to those who are visiting--the list can go on and on.

Brothers and sisters, you belong to the church of Jesus Christ, destined for unspeakable glory. All that you do for Christ and His church will not be in vain. When we stand before God and behold the perfected glory of Christ’s church, our only regret will be that we did not give more to the building up of Christ’s church, that we held back so much! Let us shed tears and toil for Christ and His church while we have time!