What Child is This?

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Don Filcek; Matthew 16:13-20 What Child is This?

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called
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Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in. Good morning,
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Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here, and I want to start off just by saying how glad I am that you have gathered together this morning to worship him.
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I am really grateful for the way that God has brought us all together from a variety of backgrounds, really to worship him in community here in Mattawan.
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I recognize that I've said this a few times over the years, that you look around you, and a lot of you would be strangers were it not for Christ.
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A lot of you would be strangers. You'd run into each other in the shopping aisle at Meijer and just kind of get out of each other's way on the way by or whatever, but because of Christ, he brings together a bunch of people from a variety of backgrounds, and it's just exciting to see how he does that.
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The fact of the matter is, we need each other, and others need us. We cannot do this life well with God on our own.
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We need others, and I'm grateful for this community that is here supporting one another.
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This morning, we're going to be taking a long look into the manger and considering the identity of that little baby from a strange passage.
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It isn't necessarily a Christmas passage at all, but the title of this message is, What Child is
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This? It's interesting to note that if you had lived during that time, you would have been asking that question, if you had been asking that question, what child is this?
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It wasn't until many years later that you might have been able to discern an answer. You see, in the far northern reaches of Israel is the place that his identity would be discerned by a ragtag band of misfits, and particularly one outspoken fisherman.
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So, year after year, thousands and possibly even millions of people will sing the refrain,
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What Child is This? And this morning, Matthew will answer that question for us definitively as God has revealed that answer to us.
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Our text this morning is a key passage for understanding the identity of Jesus, the uniqueness of Jesus, and the mission of Jesus.
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And the same faith given by the Father to Peter in this text this morning is the only basis on which anyone here could possibly believe the incredible identity, the incredible uniqueness, and the incredible mission of Jesus Christ.
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So let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to Matthew chapter 16, and we're going to be looking at verses 13 through 20 of Matthew chapter 16.
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If you don't have a device to navigate to the Bible, or you don't have a hard copy in front of you, then you can just grab the
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Bible that's under the seat in front of you and get over to Matthew 16. Again, it's going to be verses 13 through 20.
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And God's very word to us, and in a more specific way than others, this text is going to tell us that the things that it says comes from the
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Father. And so just a reminder in this text that the very things that are revealed in this text are indeed a word from God to us.
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So follow along, and let's read God's precious word together. Now, when
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Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say that the
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Son of Man is? And they said, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others
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Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. And he said to them, but who do you say that I am?
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Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, blessed are you,
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Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my
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Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you're Peter, and on this rock
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I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 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.
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Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you so much for the opportunity that we have to just reflect on your word, even just briefly, to take it in and to consider the glory that you are a
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God who speaks, you are a God who reveals, you are a God who is interested in disclosing himself to us.
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And Father, I pray that, just as I would confess that it's very easy to take for granted that I have your written word,
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Father, I pray that that would not be novel to any of us, that it would not be something that is trivial to any of us, but we would let the weight of the reality of your revelation to us settle on us in ways that produce humility in us, but also an awe and wonder, especially this season where the stories can become so routine and everything kind of can turn into traditional mode for the next three weeks, and we do the same patterns and the same things year after year.
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Father, I pray that you would break into this holiday season for each one of us with fresh eyes to see the glory and the beauty of your revelation to us, and most importantly, through the sending of your
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Son, to be the sacrifice for our sins, the one who would cover and atone for us.
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Father, and from that place of being recipients of your great love, I pray that our voices would be raised and set free to rejoice in you as we sing these songs this holiday season and even this morning,
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Father, that our voices would mingle together as a great offering to you here in this place, because we are elated, excited, enthusiastic about your salvation toward us and the gift of your
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Son sent to us, and it's in his name that we pray, amen. Well, you can go ahead and be seated and make yourself comfortable over the next minutes as we dig in deeper into God's Word.
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If you need more coffee or juice or donuts, you can take advantage of that. Restrooms are out the double doors down the hallway on the left -hand side down there, so if you need that at any time.
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And then please keep your Bibles open to Matthew 16, verses 13 through 20. That's our text for this morning. It's good for you to have that open in front of you so that you can just follow along and see the things that I'm saying are coming from God's Word.
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I just want to point out, I spoke last week on the first part of chapter 16, and now we're picking up where we left off, and at least a couple of days have passed since last week's text where, yeah, since last week's text that happened down near the
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Sea of Galilee. And the reason that we know that a couple of days have passed is because the location has shifted 30 miles.
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Well, during that time for them to shift 30 miles took some travel time. And so now they are north of the
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Sea of Galilee in an area called Caesarea Philippi, a bustling pagan city of this time ruled by the
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Romans and named after Philip and the center of the worship of Caesar for this area was located there as well.
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The geography of this location only matters in that it's the northernmost location that Jesus ever traveled during the time that he was here on this planet.
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If you think about the reality of the Savior coming in flesh, and he was very isolated in terms of the places that he traveled.
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So this is literally, as far as what we have recorded in the Bible, the northernmost place that Jesus ever visited while he was here on earth.
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It's also kind of important for us to note, like I mentioned, that it was a deeply pagan territory, steeped in the worship particularly of the
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Greek god Pan. Some of you, you know, think of pan flute or the half goat, half man kind of imagery that was
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Pan, the Greek god there, and primarily considered to be the god of shepherds and sheep.
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I think this was kind of a little bit of a rural area, but then Caesarea Philippi was the main city of the area. So Jesus pulls his disciples, what's interesting to think about is
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Jesus pulls his disciples far away from the prying eyes and ears of the oppositional Jewish leadership.
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They would never travel to this place. The Jews would not go here. This was a place that was steeped in, like I said, paganism.
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It was a place where everybody, almost everybody was a Gentile and so they would not be found there and so he takes them out to this kind of remote location, far away from the religious leaders in order to reveal his true identity and that's our first point, the identity of Jesus found in verses 13 through 16.
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So if you're taking notes, that's step one, the identity of Jesus. In verse 13, Jesus initiated a question to his disciples.
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It's very intriguing to think that sometimes Jesus kind of pokes at them a little bit. He's the one that's pursuing.
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He's the one that's asking. He's a really gifted and good teacher and so he asks questions that kind of whet their appetite and get them thinking about things so they can have a discussion together and he asks the question, who do people say that the son of man is?
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Well, so the son of man was a title, a favorite title of Jesus for himself. I think it's interesting to think in terms of I would never call myself a son of man.
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That doesn't really gel because all of us are, right? Isn't everybody in the room? But I think there's something that's really unique about Jesus using that.
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I actually believe that Jesus Christ, the incarnate second person of the triune God, actually found it novel and unique.
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I think he kind of chuckled every time he called himself the son of man. Like me, the son of man, I'm the son of man. Like I was born of man.
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That was unique to him. So every time he says that, I think he had a little twinkle in his eye because he was like he knew where he came from.
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He's like, I'm a son of man. I was born among mankind. And so he asked them, who do people say that I am is basically what he's getting at.
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You know, the question that he's asking, the question that he's asking is a very significant question and Jesus didn't need their answer.
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He didn't need to know. He didn't have to have them tell him so that he could figure out what other people thought.
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He wasn't asking for his own benefit. He wasn't asking his campaign advisors for stats. He wasn't fishing for compliments from his
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Instagram feed. He was asking them for their benefit, not his own.
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He wanted to get the juices flowing in their mind for the follow up question he's about to ask. But we benefit from some insight into the way that the world without faith during that time was viewing him.
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Without the revelation of God, what would people think of the Messiah? I mean, consider, have you ever thought about what it would be like to live in that time?
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Where would you have stood? Would you have been with the Pharisees? Would you have been with the Sadducees? Would you have been with the disciples?
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Have you ever thought about that? Where would you have fit in with that? Those who didn't understand by faith what
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God was doing still had some religious assumptions about Jesus and that's revealed by the answer to this question.
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What are people saying about me, says Jesus? And first, every answer indicates that the general population thought of Jesus as at least a prophet.
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General population thought he was prophetic. Some of the more mystical and more misinformed types thought that he was a reincarnation of John the
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Baptist who Herod had put to death. Others thought he was either a resurrected or embodied spirit of Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.
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But everyone thought, the general population thought he was a man who brought forth
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God's word, who is bringing some form of revelation. So chances are that if you had lived during this time, if you had met him while he walked on this planet, you would have thought of him as at least a conduit for God's wisdom.
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You would have thought of him as a great teacher. You would have wanted to hear him. You would have connected him to the fiery, direct, and authoritative
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Old Testament prophets whose favorite phrase was, thus says the Lord.
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You would have thought of him in those terms, but you would have been only, merely scratching the surface of his identity.
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You would have actually been dangerously wrong if you got no further than just thinking he brought good teaching.
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Satan would love for you to think that Jesus was a good man with some good wisdom. He would love to leave you there.
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He'd be fine for you to live out a religious life with the assumption that Jesus had some good ideas. He was a good example, even.
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He had some things that you should act like, some things that he said that you should emulate. And in verse 15,
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Jesus takes the question posed to them and personalizes it, and he personalizes it for all of us, as his followers and as those who
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God has, by his sovereignty, brought into this place this morning. The emphasis in the
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Greek text makes verse 15 the emphatic, the start, Greek word order doesn't matter, only unless you want to emphasize a specific word, so this verse in Greek begins with the word you for emphasis.
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Who do you say that I am? I now know what you think the people think of me, but to his inner circle of 12, what do you think?
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What child is this? Who do people say that he is? Who do you say that he is?
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This question is the most defining question that has ever been posed to you. The most defining question that would ever be posed to the disciples, but even to you in this room.
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And that is because Jesus here is indicating that our answer to this question is fundamental to the core nature of who we are.
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In this text, the you, by the way, is plural. He's talking to his disciples and he says, you guys, he's asking his 12 disciples for one common answer.
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Who do you guys, talk about it for a second, who do you think that I am? And he gets one common answer through the mouth of Peter, who proves throughout the gospels, by the way, to be a spokesman of sorts for the 12 disciples.
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And as often as Peter puts his foot in his mouth, here he nails, he hits the nail squarely on the head.
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Who do we think you are, Jesus? You are the Christ, the Messiah, and by the word
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Messiah, the word Christ there, Christ is just the Greek word, Messiah is the Hebrew word, both meaning the same thing, the anointed one, the promised one from ancient times, the anointed one of God who will save his people prophesied in the
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Old Testament. So many notions are wrapped up in the term Messiah. There's a lot of confusion about that term during this era and during this time.
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Many thought that he was gonna be a great military victor who was gonna come in and crush the Romans and set up his kingdom and just completely take care of business there.
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There are a lot of notions wrapped up in that, and some misguided, some correct, but it's gonna be clear next week, by the way, that Peter himself, even declaring this title for Jesus with boldness this week, will prove next week that he didn't have the right idea fully formed in his mind about what that word meant.
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The notion that the Messiah would suffer, of course you won't suffer, you're the Messiah. Had some misunderstandings about what that meant.
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But Peter's confession didn't end there. He doesn't just say, you're the Messiah, you're the one that was promised from the Old Testament, and leave it there.
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He adds to it a very significant phrase that we would do well to contemplate and consider what this phrase means, the
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Son of the Living God, God in flesh. It's not easy to discern all that Peter had in mind with this phrase, but it's intriguing to note that he said, who do people say that the
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Son of Man is, and Peter's response is, the Son of God. You hear that? Not just Son of Man, but Son of God, Son of the
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Living God. Not these false gods, remember this is being uttered in pagan areas, where Pan was worshipped, where Caesar was worshipped, and he says, no, you're the living
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God, the true and living God. We don't know all that Peter had in mind, but he certainly understood the unique relationship that Jesus had to the
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Father, the Son of the Living God. Jesus identifies that Peter had been blessed to be the first to verbalize this.
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He says, you are blessed, and the way that I know that you're blessed is because you have this information.
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If you're here today and you can utter in honesty the belief that Jesus is the Christ, the
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Son of the Living God, then you also have been deeply blessed. But here, with Peter, he is the one through whom the revelation of, rather,
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God is the one through whom this revelation has come. He is the, Peter here, though, is the first recorded person to put voice to this conviction that Jesus is the
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Messiah and God's Son. He's the first person to testify of that with his mouth, and that puts him in a unique place among humans.
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What child is this? What child is this? The one promised way back in Genesis that the offspring of the woman would crush the head of that ancient serpent.
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What child is this? The very Son of God come in flesh. What child is this? The one who represents the only true and living
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God. And who do you say, recast, who do you say that Jesus is today?
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Is he the rightfully anointed King over your life? Do you believe that he is
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God in flesh? If not, maybe the word of God that is telling you who he is today would plant a kernel of faith in your heart today.
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And maybe today would be the day that your eyes would be opened to see that Jesus is indeed the chosen one who has been sent to save his people.
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He is the rightful heir of all things, and therefore, he is the King over all creation. So let me encourage you that if you have even this morning the tiniest, tiniest thread of trust that Jesus is who
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Peter says he is here, then all you need more is to ask him to save you and to be the King over your life.
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And you will be saved. But for those of us who came to this conclusion long ago, let's take the next aspect of this text to heart.
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Not only does Matthew reveal the identity of Jesus, but he also reveals how unique he is, the uniqueness of Jesus in verse 17.
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And surely the answer that Peter gives shows how unique Jesus Christ is. He is the
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Christ. He is the son of the living God. But in verse 17, we see that Jesus is unique in a very surprising way, a way that might be abrasive to some of us, a way that might be abrasive to some of our theology or the way that we viewed
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God or the way that the universe works. His identity is hidden from the masses.
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That's what he's declaring here. It is not materially discerned. It is not physically discerned.
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Flesh and blood cannot tell you who Jesus is and convince you. You see,
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I get to know people in a very material and physical way. I watch you. I talk with you.
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I listen to you. As your vocal cords vibrate, it sends vibrations through the air that I then pick up with my ears and I'm able to discern a very physical process by which we get to know one another, right?
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I mean, you already knew that. Like, you don't really think about that very often, but it's a different kind of way of getting to know one another.
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The more time I spend with you, the closer I come to understanding your nature. Now, you're going, wait a second.
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People hide their identity from one another all the time, and there's a reality that you can wear a mask. You can put forward a face.
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You can say things that are not true of what's going on in your heart and all of that, but I would suggest to you that with enough surveillance, Big Brother or at least
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Google knows who you are, okay? Scary, but true. Maybe Google knows you better than anyone.
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I don't know. So we discern people all the time.
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We get to know one another. We chill with one another. We figure out what your likes and dislikes are, what's your favorite color, who do you listen to, you know, all that kind of stuff.
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But look with me at what Jesus says about himself in verse 17, about what he says about his nature.
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Peter, he says, you've been blessed to be given the right answer as to my identity.
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You've been given that answer. For flesh and blood has not revealed the true identity of me to you,
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Peter, but instead revelation from my Father in heaven has revealed this.
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How does one come to know the identity of Jesus Christ? How does one come to faith and trust that Jesus is indeed the chosen one, the
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Messiah, and that he is indeed the son of the living God? I think
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Jesus is messing with our minds here. I think he loves to do that from time to time. He loves to peel back the curtain and show us some of the behind -the -scenes intricacies of the way that God really is working in our lives to kind of blow our minds, to melt us down a little bit.
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He is stating truth that is hard for us to accept here. He is saying that every single one of us in this room who can declare with our lips that Jesus is the
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Messiah and the son of God did not come to that conclusion by material means.
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Think about this for just a second. If anybody should have been convinced by material means, it was
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Peter. Peter walked on the water. Peter spread out the five loaves and two fish and fed 5 ,000 people.
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He collected the baskets left over. He watched Jesus call in the storm. He saw people who were born blind see.
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He watched the lame walk again. Do you think that material means might have convinced him of Jesus' identity?
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And here Jesus says it wasn't any of that. That wasn't it. It's not what
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Jesus credits to the cause of Peter's confession. Of course you believe. Of course, Peter, you know who
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I am. You've been with me all this time. You've seen with your eyes. You've been part of this. You ever think about the one of those 12 disciples saw all the same things that Peter did?
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One of those 12 who is standing here in this event saw all the things and still rejected the
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Messiah. It was not enough. It was not enough for his eyes and his ears and his senses to take in those things.
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And there's still no faith. You see here it's directly declared that this knowledge of the identity of Jesus was a revelation from the
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Father that caused Peter to believe. His faith was a gift from on high.
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And I know some of you may be tempted to think back and say, well, it was mom who shared the gospel with me.
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It was a Sunday school teacher. It was a pastor. No, it was my own brain taking in God's word and believing.
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It was me. But Jesus is saying quite directly here to Peter that he wasn't bright enough to figure it out on his own.
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The uniqueness of the nature of Jesus is discerned in a unique way. It is a gift from the
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Father in heaven. Now, in case you might be tempted to think, no, this is a specific statement for Peter alone.
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He was kind of a thick fisherman. And so he needed an extra dose of revelation, but not me.
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I'm a little bit brighter than Peter. I can figure this out. So to clarify that,
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Jesus later in John 6, 44, Jesus says this, a general spiritual principle teaching the masses, not just merely his disciples.
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He says it even more directly. No one can come to me, Jesus speaking, unless the
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Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. Do you see the implications of this?
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Jesus is saying that you didn't come to understand his identity by merely material means. I think that many of us can testify that we heard the good news many times before it clicked and made sense to us.
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And we all know someone who has heard it many times and still doesn't know the identity of Jesus Christ as Messiah and Son of God.
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Even the Jewish religious leaders who saw miracle after miracle after miracle, even Judas himself who saw all of these things, were not convinced of his true identity.
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And this matters because none of us can take credit for our salvation. None of us have any room for arrogance when it comes to our faith.
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None of us have any room to be prideful of our salvation or our standing, and that's very vital to the way that we walk among one another in this world.
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God has caused it to be that way for his honor and for his glory. Really, ultimately, that's the main point. So that all the glory, honor, and thanks, and praise from all the redeemed for all time will go to God alone forever and ever and ever.
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And it is only ever to his credit that we get it. It is his from beginning to end.
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Where does faith come from? Does it come from enough evidence? Does it come from our intelligence, our knowledge, our capabilities?
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Does it? Does faith come from believing parents or from gifted evangelists or from persuasive speech?
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No, it comes from the Father. Give credit where credit is due in your life.
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Do you testify this morning that Jesus is Messiah and the Son of God? Go ahead and say amen together if you believe that to be true.
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All right. Now, everyone that just said that with genuine belief, if you said that and you weren't just following the crowd, then
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I'd encourage you just now in your own heart, thank God for that faith.
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If you can say that with your mouth and you can attest to that and you can agree to that, then that is a gift from God.
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The Father has given you the faith to believe. Jesus is the Messiah and the
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Son of God. That is his identity, and that identity is revealed directly from the Father, and that makes it very unique.
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And then the end of this text reveals the mission of Jesus in verses 18 through 20. Maybe some of the most hotly contested.
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I read a lot this week. I read a lot because these two verses have a lot of different interpretations and different thoughts, and I had to really work my way through this.
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But Jesus began by asking his disciples about his identity. Peter, blessed by the
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Father, answered correctly. And now Jesus reverses this and gives the identity of Peter.
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He says, Peter, who do you think that I am? Now let me tell you who you are.
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So who do you say that I am, says Jesus? Now let me tell you who Peter is. And he starts with a really interesting phrase that could be quite confusing.
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And we overlook these kinds of things sometimes, and it just kind of skim right over the top of the surface. If you're reading the
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Bible in a year or whatever, you read through this passage. And how many of you just think that, like, if I know somebody for a while, we're hanging out a lot, and then
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I'm like, oh no way, you're Mike. Like, you're Mike. Like, that's a weird statement.
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Like, I mean, hey, I'm going to tell you who you are. You're Rusty. That's who you are. Oh, whoa.
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Wow, great insight, right? I mean, impressive wisdom. I mean, whoa.
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First statement, you're Peter. Now Jesus isn't making a petty observation about Peter's name.
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Like, whoa, I just realized who you are. Like, you're Peter. Instead, Jesus is playing off the meaning of his name, and he's getting down to the core of it more than he is the name of it.
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He looks Peter square in the eyes and says, because Peter means rock in Aramaic or in Greek.
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I mean, in Hebrew. So Peter means rock. And so you are just like the meaning of your name is what he's saying.
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You're solid, Peter. Jesus shows enthusiasm over Peter's correct assessment of his identity.
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I wanted to say it's interesting that he's enthusiastic towards Peter. He's enthusiastic towards his confession.
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At the same time, he was quick to remove credit from that revelation, from Peter to God, right?
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Remember that? You got to hold that intention. Peter is not all that in a bag of chips here in this text.
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As a matter of fact, next week is going to reveal something very intriguing after this text comes next week.
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The fact that he just removed this credit from Peter is what makes it hard for me to believe that Jesus is now holding up the man
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Peter as the rock upon which he will build his church. I firmly believe that Peter had a unique role in the early church, but I only think that it is his profession of faith as revealed from the
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Father that Jesus here is commending as rock solid. He is not here instituting the
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Pope or the papacy. He is not launching out Peter as the first among many. He is not saying you will always be rock,
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Peter. You will always be solid from this day forth. I declare thou art Peter and you will be steadfast forever.
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Next week, Peter is going to try to sidetrack Jesus from his central mission and Jesus is going to rebuke him and say, get thee behind me,
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Satan, to Peter, who he's commending here. How many of you can just identify for just a minute that you didn't just become rock solid one day and now you're just, you're mature forever?
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Do you know that that's not how this life works? That there are good days and there are bad days.
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There are days that I'm very close to God and days that I feel very distant from God. There are times when I'm being a good husband and a good father and there are days when
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I'm just not, I'm not getting it. So you're not always on top of your game and Jesus isn't here commissioning
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Peter to be perfect for the rest of his life. Whatever thou speak, Peter, will always be truth from this day forth.
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Not by any stretch of the imagination. He is commending Peter for a good confession. Peter has done something well here.
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He's confessed with his mouth that which the Father has revealed to him. Good job, Peter, rock solid. That is the kind of truth that I could build a church on, says
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Jesus. See, Peter is not rock solid in himself but he is rock solid in the faith that was given to him from the
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Father and that rock solid kind of confession will be the solid foundation of his church.
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Notice the possessive pronoun there, my church. I will build my church, says
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Jesus, on this rock. In this we see the amazing and even scandalous mission of Jesus He has come to form a church, a gathering of people.
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The word church just simply in Greek, it comes from the word aklesia and then we get it from a translation over into German, kirk, and then we change it to church.
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I don't know why in the world languages change sounds and phonetics and all that stuff but at the end of the day, that's where we get the word church.
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It just means a gathering of people for a common purpose. It's a very generic word in Greek times.
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A gathering of a mob that showed up to basically try to push
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Paul out of a city in the book of Acts and that mob is called a church. Sometimes mobs are churches.
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And a gathering for the purpose of shopping at the market during this time would have been called a church, a gathering, an assembly of people.
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But here he designates the thing that he is building. Jesus is building and he says I will have a gathering.
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I will have my people. I will have my assembly, an assembly that is defined by me.
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And it will be built on a testimony like Peter's. Jesus, by the way, is building his church.
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He says I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. But Jesus speaking, not Peter, I've got a job for you.
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You've got to build a church for me. I want you to go out and gather people so that they'll follow me. No, Jesus said I'm in this.
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I'm starting this. I'm going to do this thing. And it's going to be based on the shoulders of people who confess the same confession that Peter just made.
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Peter isn't tasked with building a church. Jesus is the only builder of his church. He shares some responsibility in that with us, but it's his job.
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And he says this, I think this is really intriguing. Death will hold no sway over my gathering. Now we've misunderstood this.
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The gates of hell will not prevail. I've heard this so many times taught. I've heard this so many times used. I've heard it used in prayer.
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I've heard it used in a variety of ways as a pastor over the years. And I think only this week in studying this has it really started to snap and pop for me.
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Because I've heard it said, you know, gates are not offensive. Gates are not, you know, they don't attack.
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They don't do this. They don't do that. And how many of you ever heard those kinds of phrases or heard this phrase used in terms of spiritual warfare?
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Guaranteed victory for the church because no political entity can push us down. Nobody can suppress the church because the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.
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Well, the gates of hell, when you really study that and you get down to it, the Old Testament would have called it the bars of Sheol, used multiple times in the book of Job, used in the book of Psalms, the bars of the underworld, so to speak.
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Sheol, Hades, unfortunate translation in the English Standard Version of hell, which is to us a place of judgment.
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The word that's used in Greek here is not for the place of judgment. It is the generic term Hades, where every
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Greek speaking person thought you went when you died. It was the grave. That's the image that we have here.
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And the gates of death will not prevail against his church.
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Those within his family cannot be held by the bars of the grave. No gate can hold us in.
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No stone rolled over a tomb will be a barrier for the people of God. His church will be a people of hope.
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Death will not swallow up his assembly. Death will not swallow up his gathering.
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The phrase that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church has been watered down, I tell you, watered down to bring forth images of spiritual warfare.
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It guarantees a victory for his church here on earth. It's been minimized by some of the way that we've talked about it.
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But this phrase need not be brought back into the church. This phrase needs to be brought back into the church as a much more powerful image that Jesus had in mind.
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He didn't have in mind by the phrase gates of hell that the church would be protected from demons or that we would be protected from governments or that it would be protected from persecutions or that we'd be protected from wolves from within that would tear apart flocks.
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No, he had a much bigger image than that. Jesus is saying the greatest, most formidable, final boss fight that we will face will end in victory for his church.
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Death is going down. Death will not keep us forever.
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The mission of Jesus was to come and start his victorious church. And in his church, he will undo the effects of sin slowly but surely.
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And to Peter, he gives a unique role in the start of his church. He gives to the apostle Peter the keys that open the doors to this new form of the kingdom of heaven, this ecclesia, this gathering of people, not just Jews anymore, the kingdom of God not defined by a nation, but the kingdom of God that can't be contained by national borders, that cannot be contained by ethnicity or by race, that cannot be contained by any of the things that we think of as boundaries or borders to the way that we segment people off.
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No, this will cross all boundaries and it will be a massive people.
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And it started with Peter having a special role in that. He was given keys and you go, well, wait a minute.
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If he was given keys, then did he have the right to pass those keys on? Did he have the right to pass those on? And then that person passed that on.
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And that's where, again, the papacy comes from is the idea that Peter here was granted something unique that was a gift to him that he then became the first pope and was able to pass those keys down.
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But I don't believe so for a second. We look at the way that Peter worked in the book of Acts at the start.
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And when you wanna know the foundations of the church, go back to the book of Acts and read that. And that's where we see Peter applying what
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I believe are the keys to the kingdom. I think he had a unique role for a specific time. And so it's very interesting to think that the call to the early disciples was to go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.
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And that was the expansion, and that's almost kind of the outline for the book of Acts. The spread of this church from its infancy through the testimony of people who believe by the
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Father's revelation that Jesus is indeed the Christ and the Son of the living God. And they were going out and they were spreading this and they were advancing the church that Jesus is building.
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And we see Peter have a very significant role in that. Thinking about to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
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In Acts 2, 3 ,000 people believed one day and the church was started on the day of Pentecost where Jews from all around the nation came into Jerusalem for a festival.
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And 3 ,000 of them left dispersed as new followers of Jesus Christ, the
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Father revealing to them this truth. Who preached that sermon that day? Who preached on Pentecost?
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Peter, keys opening the kingdom to the Jews. In Acts 8,
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Peter is sent to Samaria to pray for the new believers that are there and the spirit falls on the first Samaritans.
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Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth. The keys of the kingdom opening among the
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Samaritans. In Acts 10, Peter is sent to the Gentile household of Cornelius and the gospel is embraced by the very first non -Jewish person.
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A glorious and beautiful story in Acts 10. I encourage you to go read that. It's amazing to see how God works in Peter to break down the barriers and the animosity that would be between the
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Jews and the Gentiles. Through Peter, the doors of the kingdom are opened to the
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Gentiles. Key, open door, key, open door, key, open door. After these three openings, we see
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Peter fade into the background in the book of Acts. Not that he rises exponentially in power and authority over the church to the point where he is pope and what
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I say goes, but no, not at all. He is the keys, opens a few doors, and his role is done.
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He fulfilled the mission that Jesus gave him here in this text by opening the gospel to the Jews, opening the gospel to the
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Samaritans, opening the gospel to the Gentiles. The keys here in this text is a metaphor for opening doors to the gospel.
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And he was clearly used to do this and the church spread significantly. Yes, gloriously through Peter, but that doesn't make him any more significant than any other follower of Christ.
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The concept of binding and loosing that you see here in this text has a ton of different interpretations, but let me just briefly share with you my conclusion after my study this week.
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It's been a wrestling match, different commentaries saying different things and trying to go back and forth and it's very confusing and I don't even need to feel like I need to get into the nuances because my hunch is that many of you don't even have the deep questions that many of the commentators were asking about this, but you're just kind of saying,
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Don, just give it to me in bullet point form, like what is this passage saying? Well, this is not merely a task for Peter.
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He's not the only one who has the authority to bind and loose. Later in Matthew chapter 18, verse 18, a passage in a text about church discipline that is broadened to the entire church.
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All the disciples are brought into the ministry of binding and loosing and all the churches are brought into the ministry of binding and loosing.
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I believe here Jesus is passing along to his followers the power of the gospel. We have no control over the results, but the message we bring is one of binding and loosing.
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That is the very nature of the good news that we bring is that also there's a bad side to it. There's a binding side to it and there's a loosening side to it.
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The binding side is that anybody who does not believe this message will be condemned and that anyone who does believe this message will be brought into glory.
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Our message brings a sense of bondage to the one without faith, but a serious freedom to the one who believes.
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Used in conjunction with the keys of the kingdom here in the context, Jesus is telling Peter he will be used to open the kingdom to this new church of Jesus and his will be a ministry of bringing the message that binds or looses.
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And Peter will find that those who are set free on earth will prove to have already been set free by heaven. Now I confess that this text is hard to understand, but at minimum you should walk out of here with an understanding about verse 19 that it's about the ministry of the church to expand the kingdom of God.
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Jesus came on a mission to start the church and he commissioned his followers to expand his church.
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So it's ironic that here when we come to the very end of the text in verse 20, I mean he's talking about expanding the kingdom, about starting his church, about the mission that we're all called to and then it's ironic that he tells them keep this on the
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DL. Could you keep the, I mean here, here, I want you, I'm commissioning you, I'm sending you, but could you keep it quiet for a minute?
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See timing mattered in the life of Jesus. That's one of the reasons that they're so far removed. He didn't ever use the term
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Messiah for him, for himself. He let others use that title for him. But I believe that that's in part because it was such an easily misunderstood word.
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If people began to spread the word that he was the Messiah, eventually he would have a confrontation with the Romans on their terms and on their timing.
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Even Peter didn't grasp the significance of the title Messiah here. Honored his master's request to keep it silent but was even up till the point after the resurrection saying is, so when are we gonna do this whole conquer
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Rome thing? When is that gonna happen? And it's still misunderstanding right up to and through the resurrection.
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Just some things that they had to grasp and some history, I mean, every little Jewish boy raised up with the notion that our deliverer is on his way.
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And they didn't mean by deliverer the one who would hang on a cross. They meant by deliverer the one who would bear the sword.
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Every little Jewish boy and little Jewish girl raised up thinking one of these days, one of these days our champion is coming for us.
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Do you understand all the depth of misunderstanding that came in that first advent? Why do you think he came in a manger?
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Why do you think he didn't come shining bright on a white horse? Because he's going to one day but that wasn't his plan the first time.
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The first time he came in humility and meekness to save us and rescue us from sin.
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See our fundamental problem isn't the oppressor. Our fundamental problem, the Jewish problem during that time was not the
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Roman occupation. It was the occupation of sin over every single person's heart.
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That's our problem. That's why he came first to deal with our hearts so that he can come later to deal with the oppression and justice and righteousness.
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Do you get it? Are you seeing why that flows that way? And so it's not that ironic that in verse 20 he tells him to keep it on the down low.
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Even Peter next week is going to get harshly rebuked for misunderstanding this idea of Messiah.
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So he didn't want his disciples running around saying, Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus is the Messiah because every little
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Jewish boy and girl who was raised to hear that was going to make a confrontation out of that.
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So I hope we all leave here with an understanding of the identity of Jesus. He is the
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Christ, the son of the living God. And the application is to trust him more and more day by day with your lives.
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I hope you see the uniqueness of Jesus with the application to humbly thank the father for revealing to you the nature of his son.
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And lastly, we saw the mission of Jesus. He came to establish his church and he commissioned his first followers to expand it.
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And they passed that on and they passed that on and they passed that on. And so the application should be to love his church, recast, and to seek to expand this gathering by sharing the good news of the gospel with others around us.
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If you're, if you've been granted a faith by the father to see
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Jesus as the Messiah and the son of God, then I would encourage you to come to the tables in the back during this next song.
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Take a cracker to remember his body that was broken for us and take the juice to remember his blood that was shed for us.
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And as you do this, I would encourage each and every one of us to recommit our life to his mission.
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The mission, and by the way, the word missions, I don't really like the plural of that. We all have one mission.
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Whether it's here or whether it's globally, Zach and Lee, the couple that we sent out that helped us get started, they live in Indonesia and their mission is no different than ours.
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Different context, different culture. We only have one mission. That's one of the beauties of what unifies us.
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And so recommit your life to that mission to bring this truth. Faith comes only from the father, that is true.
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And we see that clearly from this text. But don't miss the reality that he often uses you and me as the means to open blind eyes.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this mission that you have granted to us. I thank you first and foremost though for the identity of Jesus Christ that has been brought into many hearts here through a revelation in the father.
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Father, I pray that if there is no one, if there's someone here that you have not yet revealed that to, that today might be a day of really deeply contemplating and considering the identity of Jesus and coming to the conclusion that he is indeed the
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Christ. He is the chosen one, the one who was sent to save us from our sins. And he is indeed your son,
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God in flesh. And father, I pray that you would commission each and every person here, recommission us this morning that belongs to you.
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Those who trust you by faith, that we would go out with a boldness and a passion to share the glory and the beauty of what
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Christ has done for us. The forgiveness and the salvation that we have in his name. The very salvation that we remember when we take the cup and we take that juice.
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Father, a reflection that we are not enough in ourselves. We can't get there on our own. We needed a rescue and you sent
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Jesus to rescue us. Thank you for that rescue. And I pray that we would never get over that rescue.
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Father, the gospel, the good news, that Jesus died for our sins, was buried and rose again three days later.
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that would be all -consuming to us. And I ask this in Jesus' name, amen.