Christ is Worthy of a Healthy Church

Matthew 16 and the Central Focus of Missions

I want to look at Matthew 16 tonight, if you turn there in your Bibles. Matthew chapter 16, I will not try to hide the fact that even in my own life for a number of years, I don't think I understood missions the best that I could possibly understand missions.

I think that there are a lot of churches today that we just kind of misunderstand the grand focus of missions. I don't know much more to say about that other than just to say that the central focus of missions is centered in and about the furtherance of the kingdom.

That is in and about and through local churches. So I want to talk about that briefly from the scriptures. And then as we do that, I kind of want to leave that and I want to talk about the mission trip.

And so all this right now is being recorded, but at the end, we'll stop the live stream and we'll have opportunity for questions. That way, if you feel like you want to ask those, you certainly can want to be transparent.

And I told you this morning, I just wish there was a way I could have bottled up everything and just poured out. So, you know, and can feel what my heart feels and see what my eyes saw and just the conversations.

And, y 'all, these churches love us and they're praying for us. And on one hand, yes, we are absolutely helping them and pouring into them. But on another hand, they're helping us, too. And so it's it's really encouraging.

Christ Will Build His Church

So Matthew 16, would you stand with me as we honor the reading of God's word? I'm going to start in verse 13. And I'll end in verse 20. Now, when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say that the son of man is?

And they said, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah and others, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. He said to them, but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the son of the living God.

And Jesus answered him. Blessed are you, Simon of Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter. And on this rock, I will build my church.

The gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

Father, would you just give me grace tonight to exposit this text, to think through it well. And we pray, Lord, that you would bless our time together. Help us to receive from your word, to hear the gospel, to be encouraged by the trip.

We pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Let me just give sort of a brief walkthrough, not even really of this whole text, really mainly just that line there in verse 18. Others have walked through it this way before, and I will as well.

But Jesus says there in verse 18, that little phrase, five words in the English, I will build my church. I will build my church. We'll start with the first word, I. That is the Lord Jesus Christ. Now we understand because of the Trinity that each work one member of the Trinity does, that all the members of the Trinity are certainly involved in.

But we do note that it was only the Son of God who took on human flesh. Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ. It's Jesus who takes on humanity, who is the promised one. Peter confesses Jesus here as the Messiah.

Jesus is God in the flesh. Jesus says, you didn't come up with that yourself, Peter. Simon, that Simon was his Hebrew name, or Simon was his original name, and Jesus called him Peter. There's a play there on words with Petras and Rock.

But the point is that Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ because it's God who revealed that to him. In fact, we might even say this in terms of salvation. You'll never confess Jesus is the Christ.

You'll always reject him unless God reveals that to your heart, just like you did here with Peter. But the point is that this first word, I, speaks of Christ. I. Will. I will. That's a promise. Now we're in an election year, right?

Aren't we? So you guys know what a campaign promise is, don't you? Kamala Harris is promising all this stuff. Donald Trump is promising these things. You've learned over the years, haven't you, that you can't put a whole lot of stock necessarily into a campaign promise.

Sometimes you hear a campaign promise, and sometimes it's maybe brought to fruition, maybe, kind of. But a lot of times we hear campaign promises, and they're not brought to fruition. Something is promised, and it's not met.

But Jesus here makes us a promise in this text. He says, I will. Think about that for a moment. Can we depend on that promise? Can we depend that Jesus is going to do what he says he is going to do? Well, I hope that you understand the answer is yes and amen.

I will build. So now we're learning more about the promise. What is it that Jesus is going to do? He's going to build something. There's going to be a construction project. And we understand later, just a couple words later, that what he's going to build is the church.

But what you need to understand here is, this is what Jesus is doing in the world today. He's building something, right? His efforts, his labors, yes, they're completed in one sense, but through the power of the Holy Spirit, this project is being unfurled on and on and on.

He is building. He is working. Our God is working in the world today. What is he working and what is he doing? He's building. He's building what? He's building his church. You think about the text, and the text says, upon this rock, now the Roman Catholics take this the wrong way, and they say the church is built upon Peter, who is the first pope.

I'm taking it more as, I think the biblical way to take it is, Jesus builds the church upon the confession, and the church is made up of the confessors. The confessors are like Peter, who confessed that Jesus is the Christ.

The confession is, Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the one who came from on high. He is the second person of the Trinity. He is the one who is born of the Virgin Mary. He is the one who fulfilled all righteousness in our place.

And then picture this, Jesus is nailed to a Roman cross to take our sins upon himself. The wrath of God is poured upon the Son. And as the blood of Jesus flows, now figuratively speaking, but as the blood of Jesus flows into Jerusalem, and Judea, and Samaria, and all the uttermost parts of the world, into Arkansas, and Argentina, into Tuxtla Gutierrez, into El Pechote, Veracruz, into Villahermosa, Tabasco, as the blood of Christ flows around the world, local churches spring up.

As the gospel is proclaimed, as sinners are brought from death to life. What happens is churches are formed. People are covenant together to love and watch over one another under qualified leadership, rightly preaching the word of God, rightly observing church membership, rightly practicing the two ordinances of baptism in the Lord's Supper.

Jesus promises to build something. Then he says, I will build... This is an important word. What? My. Whose church are we talking about? You understand that this changes everything that we should think about the church.

At the end of the day, Providence Baptist Church is not Quattro's church. It's not Jacob's church. It's not your church. It's Christ's church. Therefore, what we must do in the church to seek health in the church is always seek to have the church aligned with and conformed to the words of Christ.

And by that, I don't just mean the red letters in your Bible. I'm talking about from Genesis 1 -1 to Revelation 22 -21. Is that right? That we would conform all our ways, our practices, everything about us would conform to the church that Jesus is building.

He's not building your church. He's not building my church. He's not building white church or black church or cowboy church or Mexico church or whatever the case may be. The church that Jesus is building is His church.

That's His promise. And then, of course, the last word. I will build my... And then what do we have here? Church. Isn't it strange that we still hear phrases like you don't have to go to church to be a Christian.

Well, what is Jesus building? Right? You need to ask yourself tonight. What is it that Jesus is building in the world today? We say, well, you know, we don't have to go to church. We are the church. What do you think the church does?

Look there. This is actually, this is going to make you maybe even a little bit uncomfortable. It's very heavy. We have to wait to think about it. But look at verse 19. I will give you the keys of the kingdom.

To who? Not just Peter. We're not talking about the Pope. Peter was not the first Pope, by the way. We're not talking about just Peter, I'll give you the keys. He's talking about He'll give the keys to the church.

The church possesses from her master the keys of the kingdom. And whatever is bound on earth shall be bound in heaven. And whatever is loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven. And if you just think that's a one-off, like I don't understand what that means, go over to Matthew 18 real quick.

Matthew 18. And look at verse 18. Matthew 18, 18. This is talking about church discipline. And in verse 18 it says, Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Two times in Matthew's Gospel he talks about binding and loosing and that would be a whole sermon in and of itself. But let me just give it to you like this. The church is entrusted with the responsibility to declare to the world who is inside and who is outside the kingdom.

You might say, I disagree with that. Well, that's in the text. Now, does the church get this wrong sometimes? Yes. In the history of the church, has the church said, we don't think that person's a Christian and they actually are?

Yes. Has the church sometimes said, we think that person's a Christian and they're actually not? Yes. So sometimes we get this wrong. But listen, it's the church's great responsibility to have the authority of the possessors of the kingdom of heaven.

This is weighty. And so if you say to yourself, I want to separate Christianity from the church, then you completely miss what Jesus is doing in the world today. It couldn't be made any plainer there, right?

Matthew 16, 18. I will build my church. What is God doing today in the world? It's not about... I'm not... These things I'm going to say are not... It's not that they're wrong. I'm just saying they're not the focus.

So it's not about soup kitchens. It's not about digging a well in Africa. It's not about... It's not about doing, you know, going and making people feel happy or sending Christmas shoe boxes or whatever the case may be.

I'm not saying these things are wrong, okay? But I'm saying if these things are done separated from what God is doing, then they're not actually biblical missions. Because what God is doing in the world today is He's building His church.

I'm not saying don't feed hungry people. I'm not saying don't clothe people. That's biblical. I'm saying if you're going to feed people and clothe people, it needs to be done under the overarching category here of God building His church.

It has to connect. It has to connect because this is what God is doing in the world today. He's building His church. Jesus is fulfilling this promise. Now, what I want to do is under this big umbrella is kind of walk through our mission trip.

Mexico Missions Report: Thursday Through Sunday in Tuxtla

So in one sense, I didn't really want to do this on a Sunday morning because it's not much of a sermon. It's a sermon and then it's a testimony. It's a testimony. It's a mess-stimony. A message and a testimony.

I don't know. Maybe that's just a mess, right? But I'm trying to communicate to you what the Scriptures say and also communicate to you the trip that I went on. I understand it's a big deal for the church to give up one of her pastors to be gone for eight days or whatever the case may be.

We had a great time and I want to just walk that. I want to walk through that with you now as you keep in the back of your mind here that Jesus is building His church. Okay? So let me just walk through these days.

So first was Wednesday. That was a travel day, September 11th, which that's just the providence of God that that was the day I traveled. But there was, in the back of my mind, it's kind of strange to be traveling on September 11th.

But I traveled that day. I left, I think, Stephanie, we left the house at like 5, 515, something like that. I don't remember. But we left early that morning and I got to the airport. Everything went well and I landed in Tuxla after going to Atlanta and then Mexico City and then Tuxla.

Finally landed at 530, which Mexico is an hour behind us, and then we went to the hotel. We had to wait on the other team members until about 7. At 7 o 'clock, we all went to the hotel. So anyway, just trying to recover.

Thursday, we begin our conference. The conference was called Twelve Signs of a Healthy Church. And so on Thursday morning, I led a devotion and then we had breakfast together and then actually me and a couple of brothers, not everybody, but me and a couple of brothers had a Q &A with the church and just some people in the church and they were asking really mainly questions about the book of Acts and the gifts of prophecy and Acts.

So we kind of walked through that together and that was encouraging. Let me just give you a big picture. In four days in Tuxla, we listened to 13 sermons and we had two Q &As and then we also had the devotions in there.

So that's a lot packed into four days. So that night, we started the conference. I started out, I preached two messages in the conference. I began the conference with the first message and that was I preached on the biblical ordinances.

So Jesus is building his church and he's given his church two ordinances. Baptism and the Lord's Supper. And if you want to think about the keys this way, we have the keys to unlock the door, as it were.

We should unlock the door to every person who gives a credible profession of faith. We should unlock the door and welcome them into the ordinance of baptism. Those who show themselves to have repented and believed the gospel, we should baptize them by immersion.

We should welcome them to the Lord's table. But we also have the Lord's Supper. We also have the keys to lock the door. Those who show themselves abandoning their profession or their life and their profession don't match up, they refuse to repent, they've been confronted and they don't do that, then we should bar the Lord's table from that.

It kind of gets into the next message that was preached, but I preached on the ordinances. The next message that was preached was on church discipline. So a healthy church, what I just said, practices church discipline.

And that's, I'll just read, since I'm right here in the text, Matthew 18, that was a text preached, A .J. preached that from Pastor Jonathan's church. Matthew 18, 15, If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.

If he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. That is, you turn him over. 1 Corinthians 5, etc., etc. So that's Thursday. Friday, we begin again with the devotion.

We have breakfast with the church. Then that day we have a pastoral Q &A. That was very encouraging. Some of the questions I answered in that is how to read the Bible covenantally, and that is understanding the gospel is not just a New Testament thing, but even in the Old Testament, they were saved by looking forward to what God had promised, looking forward to the work of Christ.

Then we had two messages that night. We had a sermon on tithing, which I thought was a really good message by Brother Jack from Pastor Randall's church. He talked about tithing even in the Old Testament, even before the Mosaic covenant.

Abraham tithed. He gave 10 of his money to Melchizedek. Jacob tithed even before the Mosaic covenant. Then, of course, you have the Mosaic covenant. Then afterwards you have the New Testament. So we have this idea of 10%.

You say, well, I think you should just give generously. Well, I think you should just give generously as well, except we do have at least a standard in the Scriptures that show us the floor is that we should tithe.

That's how God has chosen to fulfill and continue His work in the church. Then we heard a message on biblical fellowship, and that is being devoted to fellowship, not just letting fellowship be something you do every now and then, but loving it and caring about being with your brothers and sisters.

Okay, I'm moving along here. Now we're on Saturday. We had devotion again, breakfast with the church. Saturday morning we had two sermons. The first one, Dr. Jared Moore, who went with us, he preached on the roles of men and women.

He preached from Titus 2 that God uses both men and women in the church. Absolutely need both men and women in the church, but he has ordained that men and women function differently in the church, and this is a good thing.

It's good in our culture today that men are men and women are women, even despite what our culture may say and reject that. Then we heard a sermon on gifts, serving and loving one another in the church.

Jack preached that. Then Saturday afternoon we went to the mission. Some of you have heard about this before, but went to the mission there in Tuxa called Penetrating the Darkness. This is a mission that is now underneath the church there, Pastor Felipe's church, Sola Gracia.

This mission is underneath the authority of that church. We went there. I don't know how to describe the mission other than to say it's caring for mentally handicapped people, homeless people, drug-addicted people that no one else wants.

When the government says, so this is the lowest of the low, the government says, we don't want to take care of these people. It turns them out on the streets. This mission takes them in. Again, it's not just about being compassionate.

They take them in. They share the gospel. They teach them. I don't even understand everything that they can understand, but that's what the church is doing. At that place, Penetrating the Darkness, Brother Randall preached a phenomenal message on John 3.

He just pleaded. There's a men's house and a women's house. We only went to the men's house. He just preached John 3. You must be born again. He pointed them to Christ. He pleaded with them to repent and believe the gospel.

Actually, all these are on Facebook. I can point you to any one of the messages you want to listen to. Any ones that Brother Jonathan did, you won't be able to listen to unless you know Spanish. Any of the others, you'll be free to listen to.

Anyway, we went there. He preached that message. I didn't see any visible response, but I do know this. The gospel was proclaimed, and I was very grateful to be part of that. Saturday night, we came back, and we did two more sermons.

A .J. preached on Bible intake. Remember, this is Christ's church. He's building His church. If we want to have a church according to Scripture, then what do we need to do as a church? We need to listen to the Bible.

We should memorize passages of Scripture. We should meditate on the Scripture. Then, Pastor Randall preached one of my favorite messages I've ever heard him preach. I've heard him preach it twice now.

He preached from Ecclesiastes 11 about casting bread upon many waters, and his argument is, in evangelism, we've got to do something. So many times, we're immobilized by fear or questions or whatever, and we don't do anything.

The point is, if we sow nothing, we'll reap nothing. So we should be passing out tracts. We should be having conversations. We should be preaching in the streets. All this is aspects of biblical evangelism.

A healthy church cares about evangelism. And then that brings us to the Lord's Day, Sunday. You can imagine, we're wore out. Sleep is short. Different food is different. Air condition situation is different.

It's all a little bit different, and here we are on Sunday morning, and we begin the day with two sermons, one on worship, and then the other on preaching. So worship in the church should be regulated by the Scripture.

Preaching in the church should be something highly valued by the church. When we hear the Word of God rightly preached, we're hearing the very Word of God, the very words of Christ Himself, as we sit under faithful, expository preaching.

Then, that afternoon, we got to have a little bit of a rest, and then that evening, we closed out with the last two messages of the conference, and they were two messages on elders. So I preached one of those, and then Pastor Jonathan preached one of those.

But basically, a healthy church has qualified men overseeing the church. That is, biblically qualified elders. Christ is worthy of a healthy church. The singing there was beautiful. I shared some of that with you.

The fellowship there was beautiful and encouragement. We got to know a couple pastors better, Pastor Rodolfo, Pastor Gustavo. Now, Rodolfo and Gustavo also went to Tabasco with us. I'll talk about that more in just a minute.

Gustavo, there may be a connection there with Brother Jerry and Maria. They've been connected, and maybe they tried to go today. I don't remember. Sometime soon, they're going to try to visit that church because that church is just on the border of Belize.

So it's kind of neat how God puts those things together so we can pray about what the Lord may open up with that. Now, I'm going to move into Tabasco, then we'll close, and then we'll have time for question and answer.

The Tabasco Conference and Ordination of Pastor Carlos

So that's Thursday through Sunday. Now, that brings us to Monday. Monday, we take what I thought was going to be a two, two-and-a-half-hour trip. It's actually four hours. I knew it because I went last year, but I guess I just forgot.

It's a long trip from Tuxla to Via Hermosa, Tabasco. It's just windy roads. I don't do good with that. I get car sick. I'm sitting in the back. We've got stuff all over us. I'm just like, I almost rather just get out and run, right?

But we take that trip. That night, we have two messages. Pastor, I preached from Nahum. I preached about the jealousy of God, that a church that is a healthy church should be jealous for the glory of God.

And then Pastor Randall preached from Haggai. And then we came to Tuesday, and I didn't know this. I was tired. I was exhausted. You're starting to get ready. Countdown days to come back home. But of the whole trip, Tuesday might have been the best day.

And I'm going to try to. I can't. There's no way I can replicate this. I'm going to try my best to walk through this meeting that we had with Pastor Carlos. Now, we sat down with Carlos. We have known him, and Jonathan Randall has known him longer than me.

But we sat down with Carlos, and we're just trying to get to know him better to see if we're going to ordain this brother to the ministry. An elder should be ordained. Other elders should lay their hands on him, pray for him.

The church should officially set the man apart as pastor. So we're talking to him about this. And we really, in about two, maybe it was over two hours' conversation, we learned his story. So in Carlos' church, he drives about an hour to go to church.

He was looking at a place to go to church. He's just going to this church to be a member. He's there for a little bit of time, I think it's several years, and the pastor leaves. And so the pastor leaves, and they say, you know what, Juan Carlos, you should fill in for us.

And so he begins filling in for him. He tells us he has no clue what he's doing. He doesn't know how to preach. The way he talks about it, now we're working through a translator here, but he preaches thematically, meaning he preaches topically.

He's not taking a text and expositing the text. He's just preaching big picture stuff, but he really doesn't know what he's doing. Then he goes to a conference, and at this conference, they tell him, they talk to him about preaching through books of the Bible.

So he says, hey, that sounds great. So he chooses, I'm going to preach through Ephesians. Now, I thought that he was going to preach through Ephesians because he loved Ephesians, and he was just doctrinally sound and going to preach through Ephesians.

That's not why he just, he wanted to preach through Ephesians. So he gets to Ephesians 1, verse 4, and it talks about the doctrine of election. God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.

And he said it blew his mind. He's like, I haven't really wrestled with this before. If you had asked him before that, his predestination in the Bible, he wouldn't have even known. And so all of a sudden, that just rocks his world.

He begins preaching that. Well, guess what? Didn't only rock his world, it rocks the church's world, too. And he called it a bomb, as it were, in the church. Then he's rocking along in the church, and they have a situation with the Lord's Supper.

He begins to understand the Lord's Supper, it's not to just be given out to everybody. That is, there was people in his church, they wouldn't come to church, and then all of a sudden they just show up for the Lord's Supper.

And he said, look, this is not right to serve it. And so there was problems with that. Then he had to deal with the man. I want to be careful, I know this is being recorded, but he had to deal with the person in his church, church discipline situation.

We can talk about that more maybe when it's not recorded. But basically, this person was living in sin. The church was paying this person's rent. And Carlos said, look, this is not right, the way that this is being handled.

And he had to deal with that. And then finally he had to deal with the regulative principle, and that is worshiping God according to the Scriptures, having men leading in the right way and those things.

And with all of that, he went through a lot of difficult things. But here's what I'm trying to tell you. The reason I even tell you all that. He looked at me, and he talked to Jonathan and he talked to Randall, but he also looked at me and he said, one of the reasons that you guys went through what you went through at Providence is to help me.

And that brought tears to my eyes. To think about all that we've gone through as a church, the things that we're doing, the things that we care about here, the things that are precious to us. And sometimes I lay my head, you can ask my wife, because sometimes I verbally communicate this to her.

But sometimes I lay my head on the pillow at night and I think, are we doing anything here? Is what we're doing here, does it matter? Does the town just think we're weirdos? Do people who get mad at us or whatever, does it even matter?

Wouldn't it be easier maybe to do it another way? Does anything that we're doing, does it actually have an impact? And God just graciously encouraged me that yes it does. What we're doing here as a church is impacting positively these churches in Mexico.

It's giving these pastors resolve and encouragement and teaching and all these things. And it was quite amazing. That evening we met with some men from his church, we talked about ordination, and the Lord willing we plan in a few months to ordain this brother to the gospel ministry.

And then that night, two sermons, I was finished at this point, so Pastor Jonathan preached from Micah, Pastor Randall preached again from Haggai, and that concluded the conference in Tabasco. Wednesday we turned around and guess what?

Four hours there means four hours back. So that was a rough trip. That might have been five hours. It was a long trip back. The roads are rough. Look, if a person from Arkansas says the roads are rough, they're rough, right?

Because we got rough roads. Anyway, that night we go to the church at Sola Gracia, so we're back in Tuxla. We go back to Pastor Filipe's church to their Wednesday night meeting, and Pastor Filipe taught a lesson in Spanish, of course, and then the church just had a prayer meeting.

They broke up in groups, and I got to be in a group with a couple of brothers. And we'll stop the live stream. But if you'll notice, the overarching point of all this is that Christ is building his church.

He's building his church in Perryville. He's building his church in El Pechote. He's building his church in Tuxla and Via Hermosa. He's building his church, just like he promised he would, all around the world.

And so the focus of our missions, our time, our resources, our prayer, our efforts, it all needs to be in what God is doing, which is building his church. Amen.