Upon This Rock - [Matthew 16:13-20]

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

The Most Important Question in Life

Well please take a Bible and open it to Matthew, Matthew chapter 16. We�re going to be in verses 13 to 20 this morning. And if I were to ask you, what is the single most important question in life, what would you say?

The most important question in life, well, I asked an expert, and he sent me these five, because, you know, experts can�t be settled with one. By the way, this was not Pastor Mike who sent me these answers, in case you�re wondering.

Number one, most important question in life, am I happy? Number two, am I grateful? Number three, do I like my job? Number four, do I feel good? Now something about that question makes me want to dance, I don�t know what it is.

Number five, do I spend enough time on my education? I guess that�s for the kids. Do I spend enough time on my education? I read those and I thought, hmm. That was the number one answer that came up when I searched for it, by the way.

Number one. He goes on to say, this expert does, the reason why these quick questions are important is that you want to adjust your strategy if you answer no to any one of them. Often we go through life unhappy, ungrateful, and feeling bad for way too long.

If something is wrong in your life, acknowledge it quickly and then find a solution. Now listen to this part, he says, these questions are not only about yourself. When you�re happy and in a good mood, you can lift the spirits of people in your own life.

That�s why I focus on fixing my own happiness first. Otherwise you can�t make your spouse, family, or others happy. True or false? I mean, you start out with bad and it just gets worse, right? If I can give you a quick hint, those are not the most important questions in life.

I mean, terrible. We�ll get to the most important question here as we read this text, Matthew 16, verses 13 to 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 or 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 Bar-Jonah, 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, 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. Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

Matthew’s Gospel and the Kingly Identity of Jesus

As I've said many times, as I taught through John, each of the Gospels has a specific theme, a key theme. Matthew, where we are, is that Jesus is the king, okay? Mark is that he's servant. Luke is that he is a man, he's truly man.

And then John is that he is truly God. But we're in the Gospel of Matthew, where the emphasis is on Jesus as the king. And if we think about it this way, by earthly lineage, in fact, Matthew takes a long time just kind of going through, you know, so-and-so begat so-and-so.

I guess that's New Testament, but, or King James. But the point is, he shows that he is a descendant of David, and thus eligible to be king. And then on the heavenly side, his heavenly lineage, Jesus is king by virtue of being the eternal Son of God.

Now this morning, I mean, my outline, it's going to sound like, you know, as I just read through the chapter, this passage, and just kind of thought through it and everything, I'm like, you know what, really, this is kind of like a police interview.

Or, you know, best case scenario, for those of you who've never been police officers, it's kind of like a staff meeting where the boss calls everybody in and cleverly walks them through something. And this morning, we have two questions, and really, the two questions are one question asked twice.

And that one question is the single most important question in history. Why? Because the answer to it, your answer to it, determines your eternal destiny. Who is Jesus Christ? Who is the Son of Man? So this morning, we're going to see two questions, and it's really one question with two answers three results, and one warning.

Question number one. And first, I have to set it up, sorry, it says here, the text, verse 13, now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, and I know some of you are probably thinking, what's the big deal about where this takes place?

It does matter. Firstly, it shows that Jesus is in control. Notice the action doesn't start until Jesus comes into the district. He's the initiator. He is the king. He sets the tone. Now where is Caesarea Philippi?

It's about 25 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. So they're outside. This is as far north as we ever see Jesus go any time in the Gospels. And it's interesting because Caesarea Philippi is really kind of, what's a good way to, what's the place way down on the Cape where all the, yeah, Provincetown, yeah.

It's kind of, I wouldn't say it's really known for its homosexuality, what it's known for is just being a hotbed of pagan activity. This is the home where people go to worship Pan, the Roman god, or the Greek god.

And where they go to worship the first Roman Caesar and where they go to worship Baal. I mean, this is like, there's everything there except for the true religion, much like Provincetown. It's a, you know, just a cornucopia of false teaching and false doctrine and false everything, false gods.

So why Caesarea Philippi? Why are they there? What happens if Jesus is in Galilee? Huge crowds follow him. He's surrounded by mobs because he does miracles and everybody wants to be around Jesus and see what's going to happen next.

Why not in Jerusalem? Because if he's in Jerusalem, the Pharisees are out to get him. There'll be confrontation. He might even get arrested. So he's in a place basically where, you know, opposite the old TV show where nobody knows his name, where he's, where he could just kind of blend in, right?

Where he's no big deal. And what he's going to embark on with his disciples is a time of intensive training, getting them thinking about what really matters. These disciples who are soon going to see Jesus transfigured up on the Mount of Transfiguration right now are still kind of finding their way and he's going to put some steel in their spine as it were.

So that's why they're there. Kind of a quiet, for them, a quiet place where nobody's going to bother them. Again, back to verse 13, the second half of it. He asked his disciples, who do people say that the Son of Man is?

Now if you just read this superficially, you might think to yourself, okay, he's just like, come on, give me the scuttlebutt. What's the scoop? What's the skinny? What are people saying about me? Like he's some kind of concerned about his image or whatever.

But in reality, he's just, I mean, have you ever done this? I don't know if you guys have ever been a supervisor in charge of other people. Sometimes you have a little staff meeting, you call everybody in and you ask them a general question, right?

You ask them a general question, you let them give you their feedback to this general question. You know where you want to go, but you just kind of want to get their input, make everybody feel good. But you also want to have, because there's something that you're really after, you're hoping maybe somebody will give you the right answer.

But if they don't, that's okay, because you're going to kind of keep pressing on it until you get to the right place. And that's what's going on here. He's just asking this generic question, tell me who people say that I am, right?

And there's a motive to this. There's a method behind this. Now look at verse 14, and they, the group, the disciples, again, generic, said, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.

Interesting. I mean, like, you know, you can almost see, obviously this is anachronistic out of time, you know, but like a whiteboard where the supervisor or somebody he appoints goes up to the board and starts writing down these answers, you know, let's talk about each one of these, let's talk about, you know, now that's obviously not what happened, it's just in my head, sorry.

Let's talk about John the Baptist first on the list. This is really, John the Baptist was the first prophet Israel had seen for 400 years, and he's already been beheaded by Herod. Now it'd be really interesting, you know, to understand why people thought that.

I mean, Herod cut off his head, so John the Baptist, that's an interesting thought. Could he really be back from the dead? I'm not going to go there. Second guess, Elijah. Why Elijah? Best experts guess that it's probably just a misunderstanding of Malachi 4 -5 where it says this, behold, I will send Elijah, send you, Israel, Elijah the prophet, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.

Well the great and awesome day of the Lord is coming, so why can't this be Elijah? And Elijah was also mentioned in conjunction with John the Baptist. In fact, when his birth, John the Baptist's birth is prophesied, it's said of him by an angel of the Lord that he would go before the Lord, quote, in the spirit and power of Elijah.

So there's some connection between Elijah and John the Baptist, but that really doesn't have anything to do with Jesus per se. They're just kind of, they're confused, right? The people of Israel are confused about who he is.

What about Jeremiah? Why him? I found this one kind of interesting because the idea that the weeping prophet would come back, why would they think that? It is interesting because Jeremiah said things like this.

Tell me if this doesn't sound like Jesus, Jeremiah 23 verse 1, woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture, declares the Lord. You know, he was calling out the religious leaders of his day, Jeremiah was.

Jesus called out the Pharisees, didn't he? So there's some connection there, right? We can see that. Then they go on and they say the disciples do, well, the people say one of the prophets without even naming who it is.

Why would they say that? It's not hard to see even Nicodemus when he came to Jesus at night, understood that he said what he said, we know that you are sent from God. We know that you are someone that God has specially gifted because we see the things that you do.

Nobody can do them unless he's of God. So it seems that this man, Jesus is some kind of prophet, they said, okay, now notice Jesus gives no response. Doesn't say anything. Again, I just go back to, he's got an agenda, right?

And arguing over all these silly answers isn't his agenda. So he asks again, he reframes it a little bit and he goes from the generic and he just zeros in. Okay, enough of what the crowd says. I want to know what you guys say.

Verse 15, he said to them, but who do you say that I am? And the Greek, there's great stress placed on you, right? Those who don't know me have a lot of different opinions. They have a lot of ideas about who I might be.

What matters most right now is what you think, what you guys think. You men who have given up everything to follow me, you've given up your businesses, your homes, your regular lives to be with me each and every day.

What do you think? And here comes the answer in verse 16, Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Now again, when the question was generic, who do people say that I am? The answer was from the nondescript, they just to the disciples generally, but when it gets specific, what do you think?

What happens? One person gives an answer that one person, kind of the leading disciple, their leader. He was imperfect. He was impulsive, you know, but it's probably like shot out of a can and he couldn't wait to answer.

And for a change, he was right. His answer is the best statement, maybe in the New Testament, but certainly until at least until after the resurrection that Jesus is the Christ. As Peter says, the Messiah means that he's the fulfiller of the Israel expectation of a deliverer.

Hendrickson put it this way. He's the one who as mediator was set apart by the father and anointed by the Holy Spirit to be his chief prophet, only high priest and eternal king. That's the Messiah. That's the Christ.

Now does Peter get all that completely? Nobody knows one thing. He goes, this is the long promised Messiah. This is the Christ. Then Peter also says that he is the son of the living God, which led one commentator to say he could not have Peter could not have a higher place for him.

His words bring out the essential being of our Lord in the most comprehensive expression in the gospels, the son of the living God. There is no one else. There can be no one else who could be described as the definite article son of the living God.

There's one God, and this is his son eternally begotten. As we've been saying frequently begotten before time began, this is his nature to the nature of the father to be the father. It's the nature of the son to be the son.

His unique son eternally begotten. And as a second person of the Trinity, Jesus came to earth for what reason? The behest of the father, right? The plan of the triune God. He came to the earth to Matthew 121 to save his people from their sins.

And to do that, he had to become truly human, being born of a virgin so that he didn't have a sin nature. Then he lived a sinless life, paid the penalty for every sin of every believer, and rose triumphantly on the third day.

And Peter, we know about all the issues he has, you know, people describe him. I mean, it's like cliche to say that Peter is the apostle with the foot shaped mouth. This is this is what he does, right?

Stick his foot in his mouth. But today, his foot is firmly on terra firma, and he's speaking the truth. He has moments of brilliance, moments of idiocy, and this is him at his most brilliant. Why? Because it's not him, right?

And we see that right away. Verse 17, the response, the response of Jesus. He didn't respond to the first answer, you know, to all the answers. He just listened. And then he reframed the question. Verse 17, he gives his response, and Jesus answered him.

Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you. But my father who is in heaven, Simon Bar-Jonah. I mean, this is like a very formal way of it. You know, it's like very good, Mr. Cooley, like that, like that answer.

Well, I mean, you know, you get that like I think my eighth grade algebra teacher used to do that kind of thing. You know, when you are really spot on, you know, and if I wasn't, then it sounded like my mom, you know, Stephen, you know, that kind of thing.

Mr. Cooley. But here he's Simon Bar-Jonah, Simon, son of Jonah. Or, you know, if he were alive today, what would his name be? Simon Johnson, right? Bar-Jonah, son of Jonah, son of John. So it'd be Johnson.

But notice Jesus here says he is blessed. He is blessed. You know, here's the truth. Along with Peter, every person who reads about Christ, who hears about Christ and then says this, Jesus is the son of the living God is blessed.

Why? Because you can't do this on your own. You can't answer the question, who is Jesus on your own? You can't do it. You can do it intellectually. You know, and certainly books are written by unbelievers, but they never come to this conclusion that this is you can't be an unbeliever and say, well, I believe that he's eternally God's second person, the Trinity.

You would never come to that conclusion. You can't do it because without a work of God, you're falling. You're depraved. Your mind is spiritually dead. No one can. Not even a man like Peter, who spent more than three years with Jesus daily, can't come to this conclusion on his own.

When Jesus said, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, he means that Jesus or that Peter could not have reasoned it out on his own. He means that nobody could have come to him and told him because nobody else had this information.

He means that there's no natural means, none. To come to this supernatural reality, right? The natural cannot comprehend the supernatural. We can't fathom it on our own. We need a work of God within us to understand this.

And so did Peter. And the text tells us that my father, who is in heaven, my father, who is in heaven, revealed it to you. That's what he's saying. We have no reason here in the text or otherwise to think that the father spoke a word to Peter.

Otherwise, you know, an audible word. Otherwise, other disciples could have heard it. They all could have said that blurred out the same thing at the same time. This is a spiritual truth transmitted from the father to Peter's spirits.

Now, think about this. Who talks like this? Who in the Bible ever says these words? And he says them repeatedly. My father, my father, my father, my father. There is no one like Jesus. There's no one with the relationship with the father that Jesus has.

Nobody else. No one grasps the truth about Jesus also, unless it is granted him or her by God. Romans 10, 17 says, so faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. We never see somebody by reason or brute intelligence, intellect alone come to faith.

It's only by the word of God. We know that if we look through the scripture, we see that the father draws, we see that the spirit draws, we see that Jesus draws, they convict of sin. But we would never see this.

We would never see somebody without scripture, without a word from God, without anything, just coming to faith on their own. So that's a response. The result. Result number one. I think I have three results.

Christ Builds His Church on Peter’s Confession

Result number one, verse 18. And I tell you, here's a result, a response, you know, a response to the response, a result of the response of Jesus. And I tell you, you are Peter. And on this rock, I will build my church.

Now, there's a ton of controversy over this part of this verse. Why? Because the Roman church, the Roman church, that church in Rome is headed by a pope, has packed so much into this verse. And if I could just I'm going to cut through all of it because I'm not going to go through all their claims and everything else.

I'm just going to give you spoiler alerts. Peter is not the first pope, in case you were wondering. Peter is not the first pope, and there's not an unbroken chain of popes that goes all the way back to Peter.

That's all nonsense. But Peter is integral. That is to say, he is important. He is at the center of this statement, center of this promise that Jesus makes. And there are explanations that you've heard about the big rock, the little rock, you know, Petros, Petra, all that.

But I think it goes beyond that. If Jesus just wanted to say that he was going to build the church, let's just take the Roman church. I just don't like to say let's just take the Roman church example.

And let's say that what he's saying here is that he's going to build his church on Peter. Then why not just say this? Peter, well said. And because you said that, I'm going to build my church on you. Simple.

Cut through it all. There's no there's no obscurity there at all. But with that said, I think some people overreact to it and say, well, we're so wanting to keep the idea of Peter being the pope away from us that we're going to chase out, you know, the idea that this has anything to do with Peter.

And if we think about it, isn't Peter integral to the early church? Doesn't he preach a couple sermons in the early parts of Acts, first few chapters of Acts, where more than 5000 people come to faith in Christ?

That's pretty amazing. In fact, if we read the first 12 chapters of Acts, other than, you know, the stoning of Stephen and the incident out in the wilderness with the Ethiopian eunuch and a couple little parts there, Peter dominates the first 12 chapters of Acts.

He is the leader of the apostles and he is the apostle to the Jewish people. When commentators says this, he says, Jesus meant that the church began with Peter in the sense that Peter is the foundation of the church.

And I'd modify that a little bit because I think the church really starts with the truth of Peter's confession. He's integral. Yes, I think it's it's not either or I think it's both and Peter's integral, but the truth he confesses is the bedrock, right?

Without the truth that Jesus is the Christ, that he's the Messiah, and with all that means that he's the only son of the living God. There is no church, right? When we go around to people and we witness to them, when we evangelize to them, what do we say?

We say you need to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, why? Because Jesus is the only son of the living God. He's the only son of the only God. Peter makes the great confession. In fact, when I was reading this, I thought, you know what?

Peter is the first Baptist with a confession of faith, right? It's right there. Thank you. Hendrickson said this. He said, by nature, this man was, in a sense, a weakling, right? We know Peter, very unstable.

He says, that's by nature. But listen, by grace, by grace, he became a most courageous, enthusiastic, and effective revealer of the truth, which the father had given to him. By grace. In and of himself, nobody, useless.

In the master's hand, emboldened by grace, enabled by grace, equipped by grace. Peter was an awesome weapon. Our second result here. Jesus will build the church. Jesus will build the church. It is him who will build the church, not Peter and not the apostles.

And it's true. It was true then that Jesus would build the church. It's true now that he is building the church. You know, one thing I learned in seminary, I remember this very well. I had a professor one day in something we called a discipleship lab, and I used to make notes.

I had this little tiny Bible that I carried with me, and I made notes in the front of it because my mind was blown by this guy. And he said, there are four P's of Christianity, and Peter isn't one of them, by the way.

He said, programs, property, principles, people. He says, watch what churches do. Watch what they do. And that tells you a lot about them and about how much they trust this promise of Christ, right? What do most churches focus on?

Programs, property. What does Jesus teach about people, principles? Do churches trust Christ or do they not? They know better than he does. That's the problem with a lot of churches. They don't need all this Bible stuff.

They know what works. I mean, when I had the occasion earlier this year to have lunch with a man who is the site pastor for a church, and I was like, what does that mean? And site pastor, you know, it's a multi-campus church.

And so they bring in the video feed, you know, and you can watch that. And then if people have any questions or concerns, they can come to him. I go, what do you do during the week? And he was about to go to Home Depot and buy a bunch of stuff to fix up the place.

And I'm like, it's just not a pastoral thing to do. But the innovators of today concern themselves with programs and property. Flash and dash bring cash. Thank you. At Bethlehem Bible Church, we believe that Jesus will fulfill his promise and that he will build his church.

If somebody tries to tell you that the true gospel, I mean, what's another application of this? If somebody tries to tell you that the true gospel has vanished from the earth, and who does that? I mean, it's, I'll just cut to the chase.

It's cultists who tell you that. The true gospel is gone and we're restoring the gospel. And I don't care what they call themselves, if it's Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, whatever it is. You can look them square in the eye and say this, was Jesus Christ lying when he said he would build his church?

And the answer is no. It was a promise he made as a result of the confession of Peter. The word church in Greek is ecclesia, and it means gathering. And it's applied to various groups, even a riot at one point.

But Jesus has in mind a very specific thing, and it's a gathering of believers. It's what we're doing here today. Jesus doesn't promise to build parachurch ministries or other things that may be wonderful.

He doesn't promise to build denominations. Here's what he says, I will build my church. He will build his church. And, you know, the question for the cultists who comes to you is, did Jesus fail? Was he wrong?

The answer is no. And notice also that the church belongs to Jesus. Look what he says. It's my church. I will build my church. Who owns the church? Let me give you a little inside information, another spoiler alert.

The government doesn't own the church. Now, the Lord is referring here to the church universal, that is to say, all believers everywhere. But every church, every local assembly that preaches the word, that preaches the gospel, that gathers together on Sunday morning to worship the Lord, is part of that universal church.

Jesus Christ owns the church. The church is his bride. Will he not defend her? Will Jesus Christ not be vindicated? I mean, just listen to Ephesians 5, the second part of verse 25 through 27. Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

Do you think he doesn't care about his church? He gave himself up for her and he is sanctifying her even today, shaping her. Look at result number three here in verse 18. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

In the Greek, as you know, I'll often have this conversation with somebody who's a Greek scholar that I work with. He'll say it's the gates of Hades, which is right. It's right. Okay, this is the ESV just kind of doing its thing.

But what is a gate? What's the point here? You know, when you think of gate, it's just kind of where you go in and out, right? But the idea of an ancient gate is not an easygoing, you know, way to keep the dog in the backyard kind of thing.

The point of a gate was a symbol of the power of a city. So when Jesus says the gates of Hades, some translations might say the gates of R says hell. Some might say death. Here's the point. It's a powerful enemy.

What? Against the church, right? Those gates of hell, Hades death are marching against the church. Well, who would be marching against the church? Who's a powerful enemy of the church? Well, this is death per se, right?

I'm not afraid of dying. Are you afraid of dying? I'm not. Jesus has defended or has conquered death. The symbol of the gates of hell, what it's really telling us, the gates of Hades, it's really telling us that Satan is at war with the church.

That is the power. That is the evil power that is looking to undo the church. So how do churches fall prey to Satan? Well, they stop doing what the Bible tells them to do, right? They stop exercising church discipline.

I mean, that's why one of the first things I tell people is go to their website, you know, watch the sermons, do all these things. But then you kind of have to go and talk to the pastors, the elders, find out if they do church discipline.

Go there and see if they put on plays instead of preaching. Go there and see if they'll put up movie clips instead of reading from the word of God. Go there and see what they think of women preaching.

What they say about homosexuality, what they say about fornication, what they say about obvious sins. Sometimes it's subtle, right? But here's the truth about the church, just like a steel beam. If it buckles on one part, guess what's going to happen?

The rest of it's going to go too. And that's the same thing that happens with churches. Notice also, he says here to Peter, he says, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Now, what does that mean to have the keys of the kingdom of heaven?

And, you know, then now right away we go to another gate kind of picture in our minds. Well, Peter's standing at the pearly gates, just letting people in and out. No. Consider this, you know, as we're trying to sort out what that means.

Think about this in Matthew 23, 13. But woe to you, Jesus against the Pharisees. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces, right? For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would go in.

So the idea that Jesus is giving us here is like the Pharisees, scribes are like, you may not enter, right? None shall pass. They're like this, right? He says to Peter, you'll have the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

You are going to let people in. But what does that mean? It means Peter's going to usher them into the kingdom of heaven by preaching the gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit. You, Peter, are going to be used to do that.

So are the other disciples. Look at verse 19 again. And whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. And whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Now, I think he uses this kind of phraseology again in Matthew 18.

And I think it's very similar to John chapter 20. Let me read Matthew 18, 18, right after the section on church discipline, right? If somebody won't repent, you put them out of the church and you treat them like a tax gatherer.

Then notice what Jesus says right after that. 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. I think it's fair to conclude a few things.

First of all, I think that this binding and loosing authority is not just given to Peter alone because it's here in Matthew 16, but it's repeated in Matthew 18. And again, I think there's something very similar in John chapter 20.

And I think the idea is that the church is granted this authority not to decide who gets into heaven or not. I often say, you know what, I listen to professions of faith. And I'm not God. All I can do is listen and go, well, this seems credible to me.

Or, you know, I'll ask a few questions. This seems credible to me. And, you know, it's up to the Lord. And that's the idea. The idea is that the church, the elders, the leaders of a local assembly are going to listen to professions of faith.

And they're going to say, yes, they're going to say no sometimes. And it also has to do with this, like in the context of Matthew 18. What does it mean to repent of your sin? Well, sometimes those sins are so overt and so gross or whatever that there may be a process of coming back.

And here's the idea. The idea would be that the leaders of a church have that God-given right to evaluate these. Obviously, they have to be gracious. They have to be biblical. They have to be prayerful.

But the church must be guarded against false converts and unrepentant sinners, right? You can't have unrepentant sinners in a church that can't be members. So we've seen two questions, two answers, three results.

The Warning to Keep Jesus’ Messianic Identity Quiet

And finally, the warning, the warning in verse 20. Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. Now, this is wild to me, because you would think after this great statement given to Peter by the father, you would think Peter would say, OK, now go tell everybody you guys are in fuego.

You're on fire. Let's go take care of it. Right now is the time. Why not, though? Because even though the disciples had some idea of who Jesus was, there are a few problems. One is that there are likely some, including Judas Iscariot, who's still here, right?

Who thought that being the Messiah was great. If that meant that they were going to get to ride along kind of on the gravy train and get some money to go along with it, because the Messiah in the Jewish way of thinking was somebody who was going to deliver them from Roman oppression, who was going to overthrow Rome, who was going to reestablish the throne of David in Jerusalem and set things right according to what they wanted.

They didn't have in mind a sin-bearing substitute who would save them instead of from Rome, from hell. And if failing to grasp his spiritual mission, they would, if they went out now, they would spread the mission or the idea that he was out to do what?

To deliver them from Rome. He would wind up being arrested and tried before it was time. So he says, don't tell anybody. I mean, he could have said, you guys don't know enough yet. But he didn't say that.