"From Simon to Peter" Matthew 16:13-17 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Matthew chapter 16.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

I'm going to read verses 13 through 18 this morning.

I didn't quite get through all of it first hour, but, and I'm even further behind now, but we'll see.

When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi in verse 13 there, he asked his disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is?

They said, Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, others Jeremiah, or even one of the prophets.

Jesus said to them, But who do you say I am?

Simon Peter replied, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon 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, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

This is the word of God.

There are some times in life where you're confronted with a question where your answer is very important.

There's no room for hemming and hawing.

For example, do you know why I pulled you over?

You better think very carefully about the next words to leave your mouth.

If you answer incorrectly, you may find yourself answering a different question.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

How about this?

Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, in sickness and in health, and wealth and in poverty, good times and bad?

Your answer is very important.

There's no room for, huh?

I'm sorry, did you say good times and bad?

Obviously, this morning is the most important question that can ever be asked.

Who do you say that Jesus is?

There's a sense in Matthew's gospel where this is the crux of the gospel.

I've said before this is the halfway point.

It's not the halfway point in terms of words, but it is the midpoint of what is happening in the gospel.

Jesus has been claiming messianic or divine authority since the beginning of the gospel, of course.

It starts with his genealogy.

You know who he is.

He is the one that comes through Abraham, through David.

He is the Savior of the world.

He is above Moses, he says in the Sermon on the Mount, he often says in the Sermon on the Mount, you've heard it said, but I say to you, he's claiming more authority than even the law.

He has the authority to heal, the authority to raise the dead.

He claims in Matthew 12 to be the Lord of the Sabbath.

So that's not ambiguous here.

The fourth commandment requires the Jews to rest in so many ways their life revolved around the Sabbath.

And here comes Jesus, who says that he is, in fact, the object of that worship, the object of that rest, the Lord of the Sabbath.

And so the divine identity of Jesus has not been obscured in this gospel.

Nevertheless, there is a dramatic moment here in Matthew 16 where Jesus removes his disciples from Israel.

Now we've seen him do that before.

He went through the Lebanon and Tyre and Sidon, Phoenicia, modern-day Persia, through those areas, Syria, Jordan.

Now he's reentered.

We saw last week he was back at the Sea of Galilee, but now he's taking his disciples and he goes up to Caesarea Philippi.

The location of this is critical.

In fact, that's where the narrative begins in verse 13.

Jesus came to the district of Caesarea Philippi.

It's kind of an odd turn of phrase.

He came there.

That's not on the way to anything.

Capernaum, where Jesus had done most of his ministry, the Sea of Galilee, that's really the easternmost border here of Israel.

On the other side of the Sea of Galilee is Jordan.

There's not a lot of Jews up there.

That's the decapitus, that's the Gentile world.

When you move further east up to Caesarea Philippi, it's it's it's nowhere.

It's up in the mountains.

I think American geography might help you a little bit here.

Jesus has been doing a lot of his ministry around Burke Lake, you know, not in Washington, D.C., but around Burke and Burke Lake.

But here he comes to the region of West Virginia, let's say.

Like, why take everybody out there?

Caesarea Philippi is part of Herod the Great's territory, but when he died, his territory was divided.

I'm not going to bring you through all the Herods again.

I've done that before, and you've endured.

And I don't want to push my luck.

But Herod divided his territory, and to one of his heirs, he gave this region.

It's a more of a remote region, largely Gentile populated.

Philip, then, who took control of the region, tried to build a Roman city there to honor Caesar, and he called it Caesarea.

The problem is it's up in the mountains and it's remote, and you know, there's not a lot going on there.

In contrast, Herod the Great had built Caesarea Maritime, this massive Roman city that had become the Roman capital of Israel.

They're both called Caesarea in honor of Caesar.

Caesarea Maritime was an actual thriving city that was a really nice offering to the Roman culture and society.

Caesarea Philippi, as it became known, is up in the hills of West Virginia.

In fact, even the name Caesarea Philippi was a little bit condescending, like Philip's attempt at Caesarea.

What is up there, though, is a big cave.

Banias, the Romans called it, and in their mind it was the portal to the afterlife.

The dead went through that cave to get into the realm of the dead, Hades.

That's up there.

Not a very good tourist destination.

The Romans tended to stay away from hell.

That's where Jesus takes the twelve.

If you've been to Israel, you've gone up there.

I mean, just about every Tudor group that goes there.

I don't think it's open anymore because of the conflict, but if you went before a couple years ago, you've been here.

You remember it's like an hour bus ride from Capernaum.

It's not close.

It's right on the Lebanese border.

In fact, in in Jesus' time, the Lebanese border wasn't as defined as it is now.

It's practically out of Israel.

Why does Jesus go there?

Why is it important enough for Matthew to let you know this is where he took them?

Mark's gospel makes it clear.

This is Jesus' final re-entry point.

From here, there's a Mount of Transfiguration which will happen up there.

Then he's going to move back through Capernaum, back through Jericho, into Jerusalem, where he's going to be crucified.

He's a satellite that's now on re-entry.

This is the final approach.

The gravitational pull of his ministry is wrapping him back around.

And he is building something that is bigger than Israel.

He's building something that is bigger than anything he has described to the disciples before.

And so he takes them kind of on the frontier, so to speak.

The church, this is Jesus' first teaching about the church.

In verse 18, this is the first use of the word church in the whole Bible.

And Jesus drops it on them, takes them outside of Israel.

This is not going to be a uniquely Israelite or Jewish organization.

This is going to be something bigger than even Israel.

And so he takes them to the Wild West, the frontier, and he says, Hey, I'm going away.

I'm going to be crucified.

I'm going to rise from the dead, but I am going to build my church.

One more thing you need to know.

He's been talking about his death for years, but it's almost as if he's taking him away on a retreat.

I'm going to build a church.

Something new.

Now this church is going to be built around this question.

Who do people say that I am?

There are essentially two ways to live.

And Matthew has made this clear throughout his gospel.

You can live trusting yourself, or you can live trusting Christ.

There's a thousand different flavors of trusting yourself.

The Pharisees who trust their own righteousness.

The Sadducees who trust their own intellect.

The scribes who trusted their own research and arcane development of the law.

You have the Romans who, by and large, trusted their own culture, their own national identity.

You have the Jews who trusted their own hereditary, who trusted their own pedigree.

And then you have the disciples of Jesus who trusted Christ, who set their nets down and followed him.

You have the Syrah Phoenician woman, this Gentile woman who throws herself at the feet of Jesus and says, Listen, even the tiny dogs need scraps.

You have the centurion who leaves his world behind and comes to Jesus and says, Can you help me?

There's a thousand ways to trust yourself, but all of those people have the only way to trust Jesus in common, which is to a wholesale surrender.

That gets crystallized here, where Jesus asks them, Who do people say that I am?

And then who do you say that I am?

It is the most important question that can be asked.

Now, this narrative you've noticed probably is built around Peter's name.

It goes from Simon to Peter.

So we'll take that as our outline this morning.

Moving from Simon to Peter.

As I mentioned, it's an unusual question.

Who do you say that I am?

God's going to use the answer to this question to build the church.

The nuts and bolts of what the church will be like, that comes later.

Jesus doesn't describe the church in detail.

All he describes about the church in his own life, by the way, is that it will have elders, it'll have church discipline, and it'll have baptism.

That's all going to be taught.

Matthew 18, Matthew 28.

The rest of it, deacons and, you know, all the intricacies of the church, that's going to come from Paul's epistles.

Communion, all of that will be in Paul's writing.

But Jesus lets them know, hey, it hasn't started yet.

It's not going to start until Acts 2, but I want you to know I will build it.

And he's going to use Peter to build it, and that's the transition from Simon to Peter.

First is building of the church.

Moving from Simon to Peter starts with the common confession.

Jesus asks his disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is?

This is a very good test-taking skill.

You teach like maybe a fifth or sixth grader the skill.

Sometimes if you get a question on a test and you don't know the answer, leave it blank and keep going on the test, and you'll find a later question that answers the earlier one.

I was helping one of my kids with a math test, and it was, what's the square root of 16?

And this is a hard question at that moment.

And you go a few questions later, and it says, Because the square root of 16 is four, dot dot dot.

You're like, aha.

This is one of those kind of questions.

Jesus says, Who do people say that I am?

But if you look carefully, who do people say that the son of man is?

He gives you the answer.

The son of man is the div the title for the Messiah.

That's what Daniel called the Messiah.

It's a messianic title.

It's the fulfillment of the promises to Adam that a son of Eve would crush the head of the serpent.

It's a title reserved for the Messiah.

Jesus has claimed to be the Messiah throughout his years of ministry now.

And now he packages that in a question.

Also notice the nature of the question.

Who do people say that I am?

This is a helpful evangelism advice for you.

This part is free.

I'm pausing the sermon.

This is evangelism advice.

When you're evangelizing, you can ask somebody, who do you think Jesus is?

That's a very direct question and might produce a defensive answer.

My own experience is a question like, what do you think Christians believe about Jesus?

Or what are some different views of Jesus in the world?

That's going to get you a more open answer.

It's going to get you maybe it's not a defensive answer because they're not answering what they think.

They're answering what do people think in general?

And I bet if you listen carefully to that kind of answer, you'll start to uncover what they really believe.

And that's what Jesus does here with Peter.

He starts with who do people generically say that I, the Son of Man, am?

So he's curtailing the answers here.

He's not going to get the, oh, you have a demon.

Obviously, people think Jesus has a demon.

The Pharisees have already told him that.

Some people have called him a Samaritan, even.

That was like their biggest insult.

You have a demon in Europe.

Samaritan.

Those answers aren't included.

By identifying himself as the Messiah, he's curtailing the answers here to what are people who are actually open to Jesus thinking about him right now?

It's been a couple years.

Probably two and a half years of ministry, at least.

At this point, Peter, and all the disciples, all 12, he's asking, what are people saying about me?

And the answers they get are all over the map, of course.

Well, some say you're John the Baptist.

That's a that's a dumb answer.

John the Baptist, many of the disciples that are with Jesus, the 12 that are here with him right now, were with John.

These guys have probably all seen both John and Jesus at the same time in the same place.

Remember Herod the Great?

I mean, sorry, uh Herod Antipas said, Oh, he's John.

And then he had this kind of breakdown.

He said, He can't be John because I saw John's head on a platter.

That's in Luke's gospel.

He can't be John because I saw John dead.

But then later, as the time went on, Herod felt haunted by the ghost of the one he murdered and said, Maybe it is John the Baptist, back from the dead to get me.

Apparently, other people thought that as well.

Not the best answer, though.

What about Elijah?

That's a good answer.

Elijah is the prophet in the Old Testament who's going to prepare the way for the Messiah to come.

Just like Elijah in 1 Kings prepared the way for Elisha in 2 Kings.

The first was Elijah, the second was Elisha, and Elisha did twice as many miracles.

And so there was a teaching in the Old Testament, crystallized in Malachi, that before the Savior comes, Elijah will come first.

And the Jews don't believe in reincarnation.

It wasn't like the soul of Elijah would inhabit another human being, and you know, not that at all.

But this idea that the spirit of Elijah, like his power and his mantle, like the coat, would be on someone who would prepare the way for the Messiah.

That's what a lot of people thought.

And so that's a better answer.

That's looking at Jesus and saying, something unusual in world history is right in front of us.

Could it be that he's preparing the way for the Savior?

In a few weeks, I'll spend a whole sermon on that answer because we're going to see it again.

So for now, let me just say that's a that's a good answer, but it's not the right answer.

Some people say Jeremiah.

Jeremiah is the prophet that kind of stands in for all of the latter prophets.

Just like Moses stands in for all of the law or David for all of the Psalms.

The Jews would say, as David says in Psalm 90, even though Moses wrote Psalm 90, it's just like David is the heading for the Psalms, did it with Jeremiah, as the prophet Jeremiah says, and they can quote from Ezekiel or Isaiah or whatever.

They don't mean actually, they know who wrote the books of the Bible.

They're just using Jeremiah as a stand-in for all the prophets.

He's a great prophet.

So maybe this is like that.

There might be an American illustration of that where, you know, Lincoln was an amazing president, and so many other political candidates will be referred to as like, could this be the next Lincoln kind of thing?

They don't mean it's the reincarnation of Lincoln.

It means it's somebody with that kind of political savvy and courage and all that.

That could be what we're dealing with here.

And that's what they're doing with Jeremiah.

They don't mean it's actually Jeremiah back.

They mean it's somebody with such authority, authority that rivals Jeremiah, the greatest prophet ever.

Or the fourth answer they give is maybe one of those other prophets.

Like maybe some Joe prophet, Joseph prophet.

Notice that all these answers recognize the power and the authority of Jesus Christ.

And notice that all of them are the wrong answer.

But Jesus focuses in verse 15.

Who do you say that I am?

He's speaking to all of them.

And as much as I have made fun of Peter before for having the foot-shaped mouth, the strength with Peter is that there's a question to all twelve of them, and they've entertained wrong answers repeatedly, but Peter is the one that opens up his mouth and speaks the truth at the right moment.

He speaks for the twelve, and he's Peter's not ashamed here.

Who do you say that I am?

And Peter replies, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

That word Christ, Christos is the Greek word, is the word that means the anointed one, Messiah is what it is.

It means the fulfillment, the anointed one.

The Jews had this concept of the anointed one being the fulfillment of all of the messianic prophecies, beginning with the prophecy to Eve, that one of her offspring would crush the devil.

Localized in the prophecy to Abraham that one of his descendants, seed singular, would be the savior of the world and bring God's forgiveness to the nations.

That he would be the king prophesied to David, that one of David's descendants would reign on the throne of Judah forever and ever.

That's the Messiah, the anointed one, empowered by the Holy Spirit of God, to be the true prophet like Jeremiah, to be the true priest laying down his life for the sins of the world, and to be the true king coming in the line of David.

All three of those offices consolidate in one person, the Messiah.

And so when Peter says, you are the Christ, the Messiah, there's no higher answer he could give.

He's saying, You are the true prophet, you are the true priest, you are the true king, you fulfill all the promises from Eve to Abraham to David to Jeremiah to Malachi, you're all of them.

And then he goes further.

You've already said the Son of Man, but I'm adding to this the Son of the living God.

He's not saying you're a second God, he says there's one God.

And you, Jesus, are his son.

Now, don't mistake what he means there.

He doesn't mean he's a lesser God.

He means that he is God of very God, light of light.

The Son of God has the essence, the entirety of the divine nature, and dwells the Son.

So Peter, again, cannot have a more lofty answer here than you're the fulfillment of all the promises, the true prophet, the true priest, the true king.

You are God, the very God, the uncreated one in human flesh.

That's his answer.

You don't get a higher answer than that.

The true God of the world.

There's enough information that everybody should have got that.

But people are blinded by their sin.

Nevertheless, everybody who makes this confession expresses saving faith.

When Jesus says he's going to build a church, this is what he means.

This is the most basic part of being a Christian.

That you recognize that Jesus is the Savior, the prophet, priest, and king, the Son of the living God.

That he is righteous and that we are sinners, that he is the one who makes peace with God, we're the ones who need peace with God, that Jesus lays down his own life on the cross for our sins, that we receive the forgiveness that comes through that.

And that when any person gives this confession, the angels in heaven rejoice.

You understand?

This is what the world is revolving around.

It doesn't revolve around the sun, it revolves around the cross.

And as people confess Jesus as the Lord, they get put in the right gravitational orbit.

And this confession happens one person at a time.

This is how the church is going to advance in the world.

One confession, one person at a time.

The church grows through the world, not through Politics or influence, not by laws or crusades.

The church grows through the world by individuals confessing Christ as the Messiah.

The mission statement of my life taking over the world one person at a time.

That's how the gospel advances.

It's hand-to-hand combat, not nuclear war, and it revolves around who Jesus is.

Second.

You move from Simon to Peter with a common confession and a celestial Christianing.

Jesus tells Peter, flesh and blood did not tell you that.

Now, like I said, there is enough information in the world that anybody with eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to believe would understand who Jesus is.

I mean, he does things like raise the dead, for example.

He said, I'm going to be crucified, buried, and rise again on the third day, and all of that happens.

So you would think that any neutral, by any standard of evidence at all, by any neutral jury, you would recognize that Jesus is telling the truth about who he is.

The problem is that natural reason is not interested in truth.

Natural reason, man's reason, is interested above everything else in self-protection.

And so, yes, there's enough information and evidence in the world to drive everybody to saving faith in Jesus.

If they had eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to believe, the problem is that they don't have eyes to see or ears to hear or a heart to believe because their heart is dead, their eyes are blinded by sin, their ears are stopped by their own sinful fingers.

They don't want the evidence about who God is.

Flesh only produces flesh.

That's how Jesus says it to Nicodemus in John 3.

Flesh only produces flesh.

If you try to reason your way to who Jesus is, you're not going to get there.

It's not that Jesus isn't reasonable or that there's not enough evidence.

It goes back to the basic thing I said earlier about two ways to live: trusting yourself versus trusting Christ.

The person who's trusting themselves refuses to trust Christ because that is the death of self.

I mean, Jesus says, deny your self, pick up your cross and follow me.

There's no rational reason a person who pursues self-interest would ever do that.

Because it requires dying to your self-interest.

And so flesh produces flesh.

Death produces death.

You cannot recognize who Jesus is by godly reason, by human reasoning at all.

Paul says it this way to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 2, verse 13.

1 Corinthians 2:13

We impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God.

They're foolishness to him.

But no, you can't get there without supernatural intervention.

The Holy Spirit saves people.

There is no way to be saved except by the Spirit of God causing you to be born again.

All who confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in their heart that God raised him from the dead will be saved.

However, nobody will confess that with their mouth and believe in their heart unless the Spirit of God draws them to it.

That's what we mean when we say salvation is supernatural.

Salvation is not the result of rhetoric.

It's not the result of being argued into Christianity because then somebody else would argue you right back out.

Salvation is the result of the Holy Spirit opening your eyes, unstopping your ears, and causing your dead heart to come alive.

That's regeneration.

And so Jesus tells Peter, this didn't come to you through people.

This came to you through my Father who is in heaven.

1 Corinthians 12, verse 3 is even shorter than chapter 2, verse 13.

1 Corinthians 12:3

1 Corinthians 12, 3 could have been just the one verse.

No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit, period.

Now, obviously, somebody can read a billboard that says Jesus is Lord.

Like I used to get bothered by the anybody could read Jesus is Lord off of a page.

That's not what it means.

It means no one can savingly say Jesus is Lord unless the Holy Spirit has given them spiritual life.

It's a spiritual confession.

No one can pour water out of their Nalgene unless there's water in the Nalgene.

No one can say Jesus is Lord unless the Spirit of God puts that truth in your heart.

Human reasoning leads to people perishing in their sins, but the church is not built on human reasoning.

The church is built upon God's supernatural power.

Third.

People with a corporate connection.

So you move from Simon to Peter with a common confession, a celestial Christian, God causes you to be born again, and then a corporate connection.

Verse 18 on this rock I will build my church.

Now Jesus is making a pun with Peter's name.

Peter's name is Petros in Greek.

The word for rock in Greek is Petros, and so Jesus is making a pun.

It is very normal for people, the Jews, to have two names.

They're writing in Aramaic.

You write Aramaic with different letters in Greek.

You write Aramaic from right to left, Greek from left to right, different letters, different sounds, different everything.

Simon is his Hebrew name.

Peter is his Greek name.

He doesn't get the name Peter right here, of course.

This has been his Greek name through much of his life.

And there are some names that even in English that work in both English and Spanish.

You know, Alex Alejandro works in both.

That's just fine.

Jesse does not work in Spanish.

Jesse in Spanish becomes Jesse.

Jesus doesn't work in English, right?

Jesus comes in English as Jesus, and that's confusing.

He's the worship leader.

Jesus is our worship leader, though, amen.

But I mean that's that's you recognize how some names work in both, but not every name does.

And in Greek and Aramaic, most names don't work in the other language.

So it's very normal for people to have two names.

And so Jesus is using this as a transition.

Simon?

You're right in what you say.

And because you're right in what I say, you're no longer just Simon.

You're also Peter, Petros.

And upon this Petros, I'll build my church.

So what's the Petros?

What is the rock that Jesus is referring to?

Well, Peter is the rock.

And Jesus says so here.

And the book of Acts plays that out.

It's Peter's first sermon that the church is built on in the book of Acts.

Peter becomes the leader of the early church until he's handed over to Paul in the midpoint of the book of Acts.

Peter is the one who writes 1st and 2nd Peter, who is the source of Mark's information in the Gospel of Mark.

The church is launched through his ministry.

Just like it starts here with his confession, it is launched in the book of Acts through his preaching.

But why Peter?

Is it simply because Jesus couldn't pass up a good pun?

No.

It's because Peter confessed who Jesus was.

When the group was asked, it was Peter who spoke.

Peter had the convictions about Christ.

And he spoke for the twelve.

He answered, You're the Messiah.

And that confession is what the Lord uses to build his church.

Yes, he uses Peter, but not just Peter in the abstract, but Peter in the concrete, so to speak, that he is the one who confesses Jesus as the Lord.

And that confession is what launches the church.

And Peter understood this.

In 1 Peter chapter 2, he describes the foundation of the church as the apostles, the cornerstone of the church as Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

And that every person who makes a confession that Jesus is the Christ is a living stone put into the church.

Every time a new person comes to faith in Christ, they become a brick or stone built into the temple of God.

And the temple of God is the church on earth.

That's what begins in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

And Jesus is the cornerstone.

There's no other cornerstone.

The confession of Christ as a Savior is the foundation.

The death and resurrection of Christ is the cornerstone.

And every person who puts their faith in Christ is a rock that is built into the church.

Peter got the metaphor.

He got the joke.

And he took it as more than a pun.

He took it as a whole building to describe the church.

And this is why every Christian should be part of a church.

You know, a brick on the side of the road is trash.

It's in the way.

The county's going to pick it up and send it to the dump.

But a brick built into a building is well, a building.

You don't even call it a brick.

It's the building.

That's the nature of saving faith.

You put your faith in Christ and you are built into the body of Christ, the church.

And the church grows one person at a time.

It's always growing.

One person at a time.

Fourth, there's a concrete conclusion.

So you move from Simon to Peter with a common confession, a celestial Christianing, a corporate connection, and then a concrete conclusion.

Jesus says, I'm building my church to this confession.

I'm building my church on Peter's preaching and on his confession.

And the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

Here, location, location, location is important.

Remember, they're outside the cave.

That is the gates of hell in the Greek minds.

And Jesus is warning them the devil's gonna come after you.

Peter, the devil's gonna try to sift you.

He's gonna attack you and tear you down.

He's gonna do everything he can to end this.

And you can picture Peter going, yeah, but you told him no, right, Lord?

And Jesus says, Oh man, resist him.

Good luck out there.

Here Jesus says, the church is gonna win.

The church is invincible.

The church is invincible.

The entire satanic army of opposition can rally to stop the building of the church and they will fail.

The devil is a liar and a thief, and he will use his lies and his thieving to distort and destroy the church, and it won't work.

The devil will commandeer every angel he can get.

He will use every demon he can find.

He will borrow every page from Wormwood's counsel.

He will use it all and he will fail.

And that's because the church is invincible.

Every now and then someone will send me an article by somebody that says, hey, unless the church does this, that, or the other thing, the church will die out.

The church won't be here for the next generation unless we do this, that, or the other thing.

And it's not lost in me that every one of those articles always has the same this, that, or the other thing.

It's basically look more like the world.

Unless the church builds more skate parks, unless the church gets younger music, unless the pastors stop wearing suits or whatever it is.

And please don't stop sending me those articles.

I love them.

They cheer up my day so much.

Because the church wins.

I know the Lord uses means to build a church, obviously he does, but the church wins, that's the point.

The church wins.

Nothing will defeat it.

And listen, if death can't kill you, nothing can kill you.

If crucifying Jesus doesn't kill the church but launches it, crucifying Peter upside down doesn't tear the church down but propels it, then nothing can stop it.

That's the shift from Simon to Peter.

Much more to say about that that I will say for next week.

That's the shift from Simon to Peter, though.

How does the world view Jesus?

A prophet, a good teacher, like Jeremiah, like David, like John the Baptist?

Man, he was he was a great prophet.

Nobody did the things that he did.

Those are fine, but they're wrong.

They're not complete.

How do you view Jesus?

Have you gone from trusting yourself to trusting Christ?

Have you gone from viewing Jesus like a good teacher to viewing him like the Messiah?

Have you gone from viewing him as somebody who can do all kinds of miracles and has made the world a better place to viewing him as the Son of God, God in human flesh?

And I know so many people that come to church every week that have not changed from Simon to Peter.

I know people in the church who come because their parents make them, or I know grandparents who come because their kids come and it's their way to see their grandkids.

And they've never made that connection themselves.

Yeah, they like Jesus because their kids like Jesus and their grandkids.

It's good that our grandkids are being raised in the church.

It's great.

Makes them better people kind of thing.

Without changing their own heart to come to faith and recognize who Jesus is.

But until you make this confession, you can be a painting on the wall of the church, but you're not built into the church.

Lord, we're thankful that you have given an invitation to us to follow Peter's confession.

To confess that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Lord, I pray for anyone here this morning that has never made that confession for themselves.

Perhaps they've lived off of other people's confession.

Perhaps they've lived off of their children or family being around you.

But I pray this morning you would open their hearts and draw their hearts to faith in you.

We're thankful for the promise of the gospel.

It's in Christ's name we pray after.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.

If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, DC, please go to TMS.edu.

Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.