WWUTT 2037 I Will Build My Church (Matthew 16:13-20)

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Matthew 16 -18 sure is a popular but controversial passage, where Jesus says you are

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Peter and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

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But it's easy when we understand the text. This is

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When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ that men and women of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

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Tell your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here's your teacher,

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Matthew, we have come to one of my favorite passages, not just in Matthew's Gospel, but in all of Scripture, where Jesus proclaims to his disciples that he will build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

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Let's read in Matthew 16 verses 13 -20, which I'll open with from the

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Legacy Standard Bible, hear the word of the Lord. Now, when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he was asking his disciples saying,

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Who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they said, Some say

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John the Baptist, and others Elijah, but still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

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He said to them, But who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said,

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You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said to him,

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Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my

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Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are

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Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.

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I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.

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Then he warned the disciples that they should tell no one that he was the

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Christ. Now in addition to this being a beloved passage, it is, of course, full of a lot of controversy and differing opinions as to what

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Jesus is saying, not just about the statement, You are Peter, and upon this rock

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I will build my church, but even the next statement that comes after that, I'll give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven.

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What was Jesus referring to there? There's even some myth and speculation that has come into this passage because of where they were,

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Jesus and his disciples coming into the district of Caesarea Philippi, and I will address that as well.

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So let's consider the structure of this passage first of all. We begin with Jesus asking his disciples some questions and Jesus giving answers, and because of Peter's answer,

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Jesus blesses Peter and says that this has been revealed to you by my

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Father who is in heaven, and then goes on to explain to his disciples that what they do through this church that Jesus is building has eternal, spiritual and eternal ramifications to it.

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I give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

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So there's our structure there. We begin with a series of questions, and then based on the answer that the disciples give,

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Jesus gives this teaching, and then he even establishes to them the outworking of this teaching.

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So we come back to the very start in verse 13 where it says that Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi.

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Now there is certainly some history here, and a lot of times when you hear a pastor preach through this particular passage, you'll hear some of that history come in.

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In fact, they may spend a significant amount of time talking about what Caesarea Philippi is.

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This was a place of a lot of pagan worship, and that was going on even before it was called

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Caesarea Philippi. It was the place where even the Jews would worship the

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Baals before it got this Greek name that it had now, and the pagans, the

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Gentiles, would even worship false gods. The god Pan was one of the gods that was most commonly worshipped.

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This was a Greek god who was the god of the wild, of shepherds and flocks and things of that nature.

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As a matter of fact, some of the pagan worship that would happen there, I don't know that this was happening during Jesus' time, but certainly before and after, is that there would be bestiality there since Pan was the god of the wild.

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That was part of the ritualistic sacrificing or worship that the pagans would do there to Pan.

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It would even include a certain act with goats. There was a cave that was there at Caesarea Philippi, and it was believed that this was a place where the gods would hibernate.

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You probably know about paganism that in the wintertime, as the days got really, really short and, of course, the weather got cold, you couldn't grow anything, harvest wasn't going on at that time, so the gods were not blessing us.

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Therefore, the pagans had this idea that either the gods were sleeping or they went away on sabbatical or something.

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There was this cave there at Caesarea Philippi where it was thought the gods would go, and they would party down there in the cave, the very entrance to the mouth of hell, or Hades as they would call it.

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And then when the springtime came, they would come back out of that cave, and they would go into the land, and that's where we could worship the gods again, and they would bless our harvest and so on and so forth.

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So Caesarea Philippi was that particular location. There was a lot of paganism, a lot of idol worship there.

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And because of some of that history, this is why you'll hear a lot of historians will drone on about the significance of Caesarea Philippi and why

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Jesus asked them this question there. That may be the case, but they did not actually go into Caesarea Philippi.

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Just read the text for what it says. When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he did not actually go into the city.

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This is talking about a conversation that he has with his disciples while they're journeying, while they're going on to the next location.

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And it's possible that a significant amount of time has passed between what we had just read in chapter 16 to this particular part, because they had previously been ministering in Galilee, and now they're wandering along and they have come to the district of Caesarea Philippi.

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But they would not have gone into the city. It was so pagan that it would have been the same as if Jesus was going to the

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Gentiles. And remember what he had said previously back in chapter 15, that he came not to the

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Gentiles, but to the house of Israel. Remember the Canaanite woman had asked that his daughter be healed.

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And Jesus said, I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So that would not put him in the city of Caesarea Philippi, which was mostly occupied by pagans.

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So they did not go into that city. Jesus is simply traveling by with his disciples, though, because they're in that region, they're in that district.

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That may have been why Jesus chose that location to ask his disciples this particular question.

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Now, Caesarea Philippi has been known by different names. In fact, even over the course of the New Testament, the name of Caesarea Philippi changed when

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Agrippa became king. The next Herod in line, and if you'll remember,

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Paul addressed Agrippa in the book of Acts. Agrippa changed the name of Caesarea Philippi.

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He changed it to Neuropolis or something like that, and that would have been in honor of Nero. Philippi, who was one of the

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Herods, this was Philip the Tetrarch, he named the city Caesarea. But there were already cities named

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Caesarea. And so to distinguish it from another Caesarea, he said

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Caesarea of Philippi or Caesarea of Philip, which was therefore where we get the name

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Caesarea Philippi. Caesarea is in honor of Caesar, and then Philip just attached his own name to it.

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So it's as if the name is giving homage. It's Philip giving homage to Caesar, which is incredibly blasphemous.

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Here is a man who has been appointed king over Judah, and he names a city that actually gives homage to Caesar.

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And remember, the Caesars expected you to even acknowledge them as Lord. So it's there at this place where you have this city that is named in a lordship recognition of Caesar that Peter is going to make this declaration that Jesus is the

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Christ. So you have a couple of things here that are attached to the question that Jesus asked his disciples and the answer that Peter gives.

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First of all, it's a very pagan area. And so Jesus says, who do people say that the

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Son of Man is? And then also it's a city that is named in honor or even in worship of Caesar himself.

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And yet the disciples are going to say, you are the Christ. You are the Son of the living God. Speaking of Jesus and not

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Caesar. And this, of course, later on, you will have that creed, the first creed of the church, that Jesus is

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Lord, Christ is Lord, Kyrios Iesus. And so that Jesus is declared as our king, the one whom we worship, not

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Caesar. So they come into this district and Jesus asks his disciples saying, who do people say that the

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Son of Man is? Now, the usage of the word people here, this may be in contrast to a declaration of who

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God says that the Son of Man is. It's like Jesus is contrasting the doctrine of men with the doctrine of God.

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Who do people say that the Son of Man is? Who do you say that I am? And the confession that Peter makes is the doctrine of God.

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It doesn't come from flesh and blood, but it is revealed by the Father who is in heaven. So you have that contrast with regards to this particular question.

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Who do people say that the Son of Man is? And Jesus doesn't say, who do people say that I am?

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He says, who do people say that the Son of Man is? Like, well, what is, when we talk about this theology of the

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Son of Man, what do people say of the Son of Man? The disciples' response here isn't, well, people are saying that you are

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John the Baptist or you are Elijah. They're answering the question as Jesus had asked it. Who is the

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Son of Man? Who do people think the Son of Man is? The Son of Man, of course, being a title of the

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Messiah that was given by Daniel in his prophetic book. And so who do people in the present, how are they interpreting that?

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How do they understand the Son of Man? And they respond, they say, some say

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John the Baptist. Now, like I said earlier, when we read about John the Baptist's death at the hands of Herod, that was back in chapter 14,

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Herod thought that Jesus was John the Baptist. He was

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John the Baptist or the spirit of John the Baptist that had come back into the Christ. And that opinion or that fear that he had, really, was probably tied to an understanding of who the

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Son of Man is. John the Baptist, wasn't it when John the Baptist showed up, wasn't he the fulfillment of the prophecies of the

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Son of Man? But then he died and then maybe his spirit came back into Jesus.

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And so now Jesus is supposed to be the Son of Man. The disciples go on to say, some others say

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Elijah. Now, that, of course, would be in fulfillment of prophecy as well. For there would be one who would come as Elijah.

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Elijah would return. And that's John the Baptist who fulfills the prophecy concerning the return of Elijah and would be the voice crying out of the wilderness saying, prepare the way of the

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Lord, make his path straight. And then the disciples answer. And then some say

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Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. One of these other guys is going to come along.

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He's going to come back up and he will be the fulfillment of the prophecy concerning the

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Son of Man. But then Jesus asked the question a different way. He doesn't just direct it at his disciples.

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He also personalizes it. And he says, who do you say that I am?

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Now, in asking the question this way, he is also declaring that he is the Son of Man. But he's asking his disciples.

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Forget all the opinions of everybody else. Who do you say that I am?

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And Simon Peter answered and said, you are the Christ, meaning Messiah.

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You are the one who was prophesied about. The son of the living

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God. And that declaration is to say that Jesus is God, not the offspring of God in some way, which is how many will twist this particular passage.

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Many evangelicals, as a matter of fact, the majority of evangelicals, according to surveys, believe that Jesus is some sort of literal offspring or creation of God, the father.

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It's astonishing to read those surveys that most evangelical

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Christians do not believe that Jesus is eternal with the father, but that he was someone who came along after the father.

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Peter's declaration that you are the son of the living God is to say that Jesus is God. He is eternal with the father.

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And to know that that is how the phrase is to be understood, that he is

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God, all you have to do is look at Jesus' enemies and how they responded to that phrase.

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Later on in Matthew, when we get to chapter 26, when Jesus is on trial, he is asked, are you the

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Christ, the son of God? And when Jesus answers in the affirmative, they go crazy and say that this man just committed blasphemy.

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It's the very same answer that Peter gives here. And so the

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Sadducees or the Sanhedrin, they understand this statement that you are the

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Christ, the son of the living God to be a declaration of divinity. Christ divinity is being confessed here.

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So that Jesus responds to Peter and says, blessed are you,

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Simon Bar -Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you.

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This is not the doctrine of man. All of these other speculations at who the son of man is, that's doctrines of men.

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It doesn't come from the spirit. It doesn't come from the father. But this that you have just declared, this has been revealed to you by my father who is in heaven.

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And this is very similar to a statement that Jesus makes in John 6. No one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up at the last day.

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We've also had Jesus say in Matthew's gospel back in chapter 11, that God, you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent, those who thought of themselves as wise and smart, those that the people considered to be intelligent, and you have revealed them to infants.

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And Jesus said, no one knows the son except the father, nor does anyone know the father except the son and anyone to whom the son wills, chooses to reveal him.

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You know the father because the son has shown you the father. You know the son because the father has shown you the son.

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It is not by any device or will of man that you come to know

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Jesus as the Christ, the son of the living God. It is only because the father has revealed him as such to you that you understand

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Jesus is God. But Jesus goes on to say, and I say to you that you are

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Peter, and upon this rock, I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.

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Now that is a passage, of course, that has been the source of much confusion and debate.

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And it really is the source of much confusion because of the debate, because everybody else infusing their opinions upon the passage.

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It's really not that hard to understand. Once you get a grasp of it, you're like, oh, okay, well, that makes sense.

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Why didn't I see that earlier? You know how the Catholics teach this with Jesus declaring that you are

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Peter and upon Peter, I will build my church. And so that the church is now upon the

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Pope. The Pope is in a succession of heads of the church that began with Peter.

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And this succession comes all the way down to Pope Francis today. So he continues in this line of succession through Peter.

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He is therefore the head of the church. Not what Jesus is declaring here at all. This statement that you are

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Peter and upon this rock, I will build my church is not that mysterious. There are two different Greek words here.

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Peter and rock, and they're not the same word. Now, if you were to translate this into Aramaic, it would be the same word.

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And it likely when Jesus and his disciples were having this conversation, they would have been speaking in Aramaic, but you can't do that.

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You can't do that to this passage and just assume that Jesus and his disciples are speaking Aramaic to one another.

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So that's how I need to understand this verse. Matthew wrote it in Greek. And so when he wrote it down like this, preserving the word of Christ as he gave it to his disciples, it was meant to be understood that Peter and rock are different things.

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They're not the same, even though there's a similarity in the meaning. Peter is a smaller rock.

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It is a is like a piece of the rock, whereas the rock is the rock upon which the church is built.

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So what is this rock on which Jesus says, I will build my church?

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The answer is himself. He is the rock upon which the church is built.

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And this is this is easily discerned through the rest of the New Testament. Christ is always referred to as the rock.

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Peter talks about Jesus being the rock, the cornerstone upon which the church is built in his first epistle.

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In first Peter, the apostle Paul says in first Corinthians 10 for all drank the same spiritual drink for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them.

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And the rock was Christ. Jesus is the rock upon which the church is built.

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And the rest of the disciples are smaller rocks. If you as you have declarations like in first Peter to like in Ephesians chapter two, where it is said that Christ is the cornerstone and the rest of the apostles are the foundation stones.

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So Christ being that main stone, that cornerstone that is the foundation in the direction of the rest of the building.

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But then he has appointed the apostles to go out and be the first to spread the gospel.

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So they become the foundation of the rest of the building that is going to be built up. That building, of course, being the church.

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So this is not mysterious. Take away all of the different controversies and stuff like that, that you hear about this passage and just read it for what it is that it is saying.

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If Jesus meant that Peter was going to be the rock upon which he would build the church, then he would have said,

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I say to you that you are Peter and upon thee or upon you, I will build my church.

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But that's not what he says. This rock is the statement that Jesus just made that you are the

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Christ, the son of the living God. It is upon this rock that the church is built, not

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Peter, but upon Christ. And on this,

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I will build my church, Jesus says, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.

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The church in the Greek, of course, that's the Greek word ecclesia or ecclesia. And it appears only two times in the gospels here and in Matthew 18.

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This is the first declaration of the church in the New Testament, and it's amazingly only one of two declarations of the church, or at least the word itself, church that we have in all four gospels.

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And again, the other one comes up in Matthew 18. And we'll talk about that one in context when we get there. But it is not the first place that this word has appeared in the

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Bible. Now, remember, when Matthew cites scripture, he is largely citing from the

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Septuagint, which was the Greek translation of the Old Testament. And in the Septuagint congregation is ecclesia in the

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Greek. So that word for Israel as church appears in the

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Greek Old Testament. Israel was called the church in the Old Testament, even during Jesus time, even before Jesus shows up, the

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Jews had understood that the congregation is the church. Israel was called church.

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Their congregation, their assembly was called an ecclesia. The same word that Jesus uses here to say that he is going to build his ecclesia and in contrast to what the

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Jews were expecting about what the Messiah was going to do. They were expecting an earthly superpower.

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They thought that when the Messiah shows up, when the Christ comes, he's going to make Israel great again.

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We're going to be an empire again, like we were under David and Solomon. But that's not what

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Jesus has come to establish. And here he is revealing his building plan to the disciples.

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They're all expecting Israel is expecting that their Messiah is going to come and build an earthly kingdom.

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But I am telling you that what we are doing here is spiritual and has heavenly significance.

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It will be done on earth and what is done on earth has heavenly significance. For what does

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Jesus go on to say from here? He says, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

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I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.

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Now, I truly think that Jesus says this part to his disciples. Verse 18 was directly to Peter.

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Verse 19, though, is to all the disciples. Now, how can I draw that conclusion? Well, because later on in chapter 18, he says it to the whole church.

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Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. So this is not a particular key that's been handed to specifically

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Peter that's then passed down through all the popes. This is something that the whole church has been given the assignment to do.

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We are entrusted with the truth. As Paul says to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 3, that the church is the house of God and a pillar and a buttress of the truth.

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So we're to hold up the truth and we're to even defend it against those who would try to malign the truth. And it is through the truth that has been given to the church, the gospel of Jesus Christ, that we go out into the world, the kingdom of Satan, really, and we declare the gospel and people are one out of the world into the kingdom of heaven so that the gates of hell will not prevail against this advancement of the church that is going out into the world.

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And it is growing as we continue to preach the gospel and more souls are added to the kingdom so that whatever is bound on earth shall have been bound in heaven.

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Whatever is loosed on earth, if we can say of a person that they have rejected this message of the gospel, then they will not receive the kingdom of heaven.

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And then finally, in this passage in verse 20, Jesus warns the disciples that they should tell no one that he was the

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Christ. It was not yet time for him to go to his death because once again, when it's said before the

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Sanhedrin that he is the Christ, the son of the living God, well, they accuse him with blasphemy and put him to death.

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It's not yet time for that. So they're not to tell others that he is the Christ. But later on, he will tell his disciples that they're to go out and proclaim the message of the kingdom and that they should make disciples of all the nations, baptizing in the name of the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you,

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Jesus says, and lo, I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.

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But here's the building plan. Here's what it is that Jesus is going to implement, and he reveals it to the disciples.

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And that's the extent of our devotional lesson today. We could go on and continue in this particular passage for days, weeks, because so much ink has been spilled on this particular section of Matthew.

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But I wanted to give you the basic nuts and bolts of it without all the distractions of every other opinion that comes into this.

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So you see quite plainly what it is that Jesus is declaring is going to happen. And we're continuing to fulfill that commission to this very day.

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The king has decreed that you should go into all the world, making disciples of the nations.

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And that is still happening today because Christ has commanded it. If he was not the Christ, the son of the living

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God, then this mission that he shares with the disciples here would have petered out after he died.

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But because he is the Christ who rose again, who ascended on high and is seated at the right hand of God and is coming back again to judge the living and the dead.

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So we are to declare that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living

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God. And upon this truth of the gospel, he is building his church.

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Let us go out into the world with this message so that those who are perishing under the judgment of God will repent and turn to the

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Christ who saves and they will become citizens of the eternal kingdom that Jesus is building.

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Heavenly father, we thank you for what we've read here. And I pray that you continue to work this in our souls, in our spirits, that we would have boldness to say that Jesus is the

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Christ, the son of the living God. And on this truth, we go out into the world calling people into repentance and may the gates of hell not prevail against our advancement against it, snatching them from the flames, as Jude says, so that they would be rescued and in fellowship with the king forever.

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Come quickly, Lord Jesus. We pray in his name. Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the

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Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt

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.com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page. Join us again tomorrow as we continue our