The Church | Into the Church - Matthew 16:13-20(Sept 10) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Father, we bow our hearts in your presence and God give you all the praise.

God, our lives have been so short relative to history, Lord, and eternity.

And God, never have you failed your people once.

Never have you changed.

And so, God, we give you this praise.

Lord, that you are a great God.

Lord, that you are good and that you do good.

Lord, that you are merciful to the broken this morning.

Lord, that your grace pours out on those who don't deserve it this morning, Lord.

Everything you have for us is good.

And so, God, here we are in your presence, having praised your name, Lord, continuing to desire to give glory to you.

And God, I pray by the power of your Holy Spirit, Lord, work in our hearts in this very moment to soften us to all that you would give to us this morning through your word.

God, we want to open ourselves wide to all that you have to pour out into us, no matter how challenging it is, no matter how convicting it is, Lord, whatever encouragement you have for us, whatever blessing you have for us in your word this morning, God, I pray that we would be ready to receive it by the power of your Holy Spirit this morning.

Lord, thank you for your help.

Help us right now, we pray.

In the name of your Son, we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

You can grab your seat.

As you grab your seat, you can take your copy of God's Word and open up to Matthew chapter 16.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

If you don't have your copy of God's word, or maybe you don't own one, the ushers are at the front and they're gonna make their way to the back of the worship center.

You can slip your hand in the air and they'll make sure you get a copy of God's word into your hand.

If you don't own a Bible, you can take this.

This is our gift to you.

We'd love to for you to have this and to read it, and we trust that it's gonna change your life.

This morning we started a new series called The Church.

And I need to be honest with you, uh, I've spent a lot of time preaching in my life, a significant amount of time preaching.

I feel very called to this calling of preaching.

And uh I need to be honest with you, I don't know if I've ever prayed as much for a series and for sermons as I have for this series this morning.

And I uh believe, maybe more than I have in my entire life, that then that what is needed in our day and age is a revival and the understanding of the beauty and the purpose of the church.

In fact, maybe the best way I could illustrate what I've been praying for God to do and what I trust that God is going to do as we dive into this series called The Church is by telling you how I married my wife.

Now, some of you have been coming to this church for as long as I have, and you have like this burning question.

I think it's the burning question in everyone's mind when they meet me and my wife.

It's it's this how did a one, you know, me, one out of ten, get married to a ten out of ten, Amber?

Like what happened here that, you know, these two mismatches could be paired up together.

And I'll tell you this morning exactly what happened.

As I came to know Amber, I came to understand that Amber was a girl who was single.

It's really important in the equation.

And I came to see that she has like this radiant physical beauty, but it's not like you know that surface level beauty, it's where like some someone can be beautiful, but you get to know them and you're like, ugh, like that, they're actually not that beautiful because like the inner beauty doesn't match the outer beauty.

It was like this radiant inner beauty that went to the outside, and then you get to know her more and you realize like she's this hilarious woman who loves to laugh and can make people laugh, and you start to see just her compassionate heart.

Like she's one of the most compassionate people that I know.

I think at times to a fault.

She'll be on Instagram, she sees like a dog in Japan that broke its leg.

And we're gonna be all up all night praying for that dog.

Too much compassion at times.

She's kind, she's focused, she can essentially accomplish whatever she wants.

She's creative, and most importantly, she loves Jesus.

And so I realized something as I got to know Amber, like, I gotta lock this in fast.

I gotta get into like you know, a marriage relationship with this girl fast, but hopefully before she figures out, you know, what I am.

So I had to work fast.

So fast that the first time I told her that I liked her, and this will be a story for another sermon that I'll expand, she didn't talk for 30 minutes.

You're like, no, you're embellishing.

I'm telling you the truth.

I told her I liked her 30 minutes, she was dead silent.

That's how fast I was moving.

When I went to her parents, I told them, hey, I want to marry your daughter.

Her dad did the same thing.

Didn't talk for 30 minutes.

I had to move fast because I realized what was in front of me.

I realized what the the this beautiful opportunity, and I needed to walk into it, and and we've been married for 11 years now, and I can say that day after day I've only increasingly understood the wisdom of that decision.

And part of I think what is happening as we start this series on the church is is exactly that, but with the church.

Through this series, I want you to know that that you are being called into the church.

Some of you are like, well, I don't I don't want to be called into the church, and I just want you to know that's the aim of this series.

I I think the church is one of the, in fact, it is the most beautiful institution in the world.

In fact, so beautiful that Christ, when he called refers to his church, you know what he calls his church?

His bride.

His bride.

This this is how much Christ loves the church.

I'm talking about Redemption Church.

So much that he calls the church his bride.

And so, what we're doing in this series is really looking at the beauty and the purpose of the church in order that you might be compelled to come deeper into the church.

Maybe for some of you, that's like the first time.

You've never been a part of the church, like you're not even a Christian.

And I want you to see that according to its biblical design, when the church functions as it's biblically supposed to, this is the most beautiful calling that you can accept, a calling into the church.

Some of you guys, maybe, maybe like you you've been in that eternal COVID summer, and and you, you know, you were once a a part of the church and you were growing in the church, but you've just kind of taken a step back, and you know, through the grace of God, you're being called back.

Others of you, you're in it, and I just want to show you the beauty and purpose of the church that you might go deeper, deeper in.

And yet, as we think about the church, you just need to know that as your pastor, I have a significant concern.

I have this concern that you and I, as 21st century men and women, we are being shaped.

Whether you're a believer or an unbeliever, we are being shaped by a culture that makes it almost impossible impossible to see what the biblical model of the church is and say, Yeah, yeah, I need that.

We're being formed and shaped by a culture that in many ways is forming us to be individuals, 21st century individuals, who, when Jesus says, This is what my church is supposed to be, many of us will say, Well, well, I just I don't need that.

That is not for me.

The biblical design of church is becoming increasingly more and more irrelevant to the modern man.

And I'm not just talking about unbelievers here, I'm talking about believers, I'm talking about church leaders who who are increasingly trying to create a quote-unquote church experience that is almost nothing like what we read of in Scripture.

You say, how?

How's that you know how are we being formed?

Well, let me just give you a few examples.

Take, for instance, the fact, you know, you know, we'll we'll address some of these in greater detail, but the fact that the church of God is called to be a communal church, it's called to be a community, a fellowship, a gathering of believers, so that throughout the New Testament, what you see is this design of the church practicing the one another's.

Paul says in Ephesians 4 that it's by speaking the truth to one another in community that we grow up into Christ, that our mission of being disciples of Christ is accomplished, and yet our individu our identity is increasingly individual.

You know how I know that?

You and I are increasingly individual.

Let me ask you this question, okay?

What happens when someone rings your doorbell today?

You ever thought about that?

Remember like 30 years ago when you're growing up, maybe longer for some of you, shorter for some of you, but when you're growing up as a kid and someone rang your doorbell, what would happen?

Well, there'd be like all this excitement.

Your parents, they always had like a cake ready to go for guests who might just drop by.

Now, what happens if someone rings your doorbell?

Well, you're like crouching behind the couch, you're opening the shades, you're like, who is this?

You got 9-1 dialed on the phone.

We're increasingly individual, even the way our homes are built.

You know, you go in your garage, you don't go outside, you don't talk to your neighbors, so that many of us live in these suburbs where houses are like a foot away from our neighbors, but we have no idea who that person is.

And this individualism, it's carried into the church, isn't it?

So that often as we emphasize our faith, we emphasize the personal aspects of it.

You know, personal worship, personal Bible reading, personal prayer, personal evangelism.

What we emphasize is like this personal understanding of the faith, and then so that what we want from the church is for it to be a personal church, like this programmatic church I can personally plug into whenever I want, and I can disconnect whenever I want.

It's there for me when I want it.

And yet, Jesus is building a community, a gathering.

Well, not only is individualism the problem, but what about our increasing joy and consumption?

You know, Jesus calls his church to be a kingdom of priests who are together building the kingdom.

He says that each of you by faith are living stones who are being built into the household of God, and you know, you, you know, you have the theology to know the church isn't a building, it is a people.

But we live in a world that increasingly is telling us that our purpose is not in contributing to something, our purpose is in consuming.

So that you and I drove here today and we probably saw like hundreds, if not thousands, of ads saying, like each of these ads screaming, hey, hey, consume me and you'll be happy.

We are uh a society of consumption.

In fact, one of the ways that I know this is recently I had to go to the grocery store to buy mayo.

And has anyone bought mayo recently?

Put up your hand if you're bought mayo.

Some of you are like, this is the weirdest sermon I've ever heard.

Why are we talking about mayo?

Because I I was shocked at how many different kinds of mayo there is.

You remember like 15 years ago, when you were going to buy mayo, there was one jar at the grocery store and it said mayo, and it was blue, and that was it.

But now you go and there's mayo and there's light mayo, and there's olive oil mayo, and then there's like this fraud that's like miracle whip, but then there's like light miracle whip, and then now there's like sriracha mayo.

And I saw at the store there's like burger mayo, and I just thought burger mayo was regular mayo that went on a burger, but it's actually burger mayo.

All these different options, because we love to consume.

Our identity is say, give me, give me more, give me more, give me more.

And on one hand, I want you to understand this is a good thing because part of church is consuming.

Like we come here on on a Sunday morning and we want to consume the glory of God.

We want to be fed.

If you're coming to church and you're not being fed, if you're not consuming the glory of God, if you're not worshiping God, then well, that's not the church.

And yet I find it rare in our day for believers, especially to have a mindset of contribution.

Lastly, the the church is an institution given by God, and it's an institute institution we're gonna see this morning that's given authority.

And we live in a day and an age where authority is increasingly a question.

Like, does have you ever like doesn't politics kind of feel in the last 20 years it's like we have this option, but nobody's a good pick?

Like we look at the options, we're like, really?

These these are the best that you could do.

And we've come to you know, really decide that authority just in and of itself is a bad thing and it's to be rejected.

Now, I don't want you to think that I'm like the old man on his lawn saying, you know, we gotta get back to the good old days.

But I'm saying this that the only hope for the world and that one of the greatest needs of your life is to be a part of the church as God designed it to be.

It's the only hope of the world, it's the greatest need of your life.

When the church functions as it truly was functioned, displaying the beauty it was truly designed to display, displaying the purpose it was truly designed to live for, it's the only hope of the world.

See, it's in this way that the church becomes a light shining in the darkness of Newmarket, a ray of hope shining in the despair of Newmarket.

And unless you and I, who are the church, unless we embrace a biblical vision of the church, unless we see the church as the bride of Christ in all its beauty and all its purpose and respond to Jesus, I want in, we will never do anything of eternal consequence for God.

We'll never accomplish our mission, we will never grow unless we push deeper into the church.

And so, what is Jesus doing this morning?

He's calling us into the church.

Calling people into the church.

Well, I want to see this in Matthew 16, and so let's read this together.

Matthew 16, verses 13 to 20.

Matthew 16:13–20

Follow along with me in your copy of God's word.

Look at what Matthew writes.

Now, when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is?

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

And 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.

Jesus answered, And, 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 shall not prevail against it.

I'll 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.

I want you to see this morning, God is calling his people into the church, and the first thing that means is that God is calling his people to reveal Christ.

This is our great kingdom confession.

It's calling people to reveal Christ.

That's our great kingdom confession.

Now, Jesus questions Peter, and ultimately this morning, we're gonna see that Jesus' question is leading Peter to make a confession.

The confession is that you are the Christ.

And Jesus really wants to answer, you know, really four questions surrounding this confession that Peter makes.

Notice first that Jesus wants to answer the what.

Jesus is immensely interested in who you confess Jesus to be.

This is so important that you understand who the biblical Jesus is.

And so he asks his disciples, Who do people say that I am?

Now I want you to understand this about your life.

There is not a more important question for you to answer in your life.

Who do people say, who do you say that Jesus is?

Who is he?

See, your answer to this question, it decides your eternal destiny.

In fact, one of the best things that we can do in our evangelistic efforts, if you're sharing the gospel with someone, just ask them, hey, hey, what do you think about Jesus?

Like, who do you think Jesus was?

Well, you know what you find?

Most people have an opinion.

Most people think, well, you know, yeah, he was just a great moral teacher, or maybe some other people think, well, he was like a hype train and people got behind him, but he wasn't really anything.

But I want you to notice that there's a right way and a wrong way to answer the question.

And so Peter, he lays out all these uh I understandings of who people think Jesus is.

Maybe he's John the Baptist or Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

And yet when Peter answers the question, when he says, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus erupts and prays for him and he says, Blessed are you.

See, this is the proper answer.

The uh modern-day translation of Jesus is saying, Blessed are you, is really saying, nailed it.

Like you got it.

A plus Peter, that is right.

I am the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

This is the confession Peter makes.

This is the confession that Jesus needs to hear from us, the confession that he is the Christ, that he's the son of the living God.

Notice first that Peter says Jesus is the Christ.

For him to be the Christ means he's the Messiah, he's the deliverer.

We saw this in Genesis, didn't we?

That ever since the fall of man, we have been waiting for someone to deliver us from our sin.

Remember what God said to the serpent, I'm gonna crush your head, you're gonna bruise my heel.

And for all time, God's people have been waiting, looking to God, saying, God, when are you going to deliver us?

Listen, all of us this morning, we know the darkness of the world, don't we?

Like we don't have to do an extended TED talk on how dark this world is.

You just know it.

And yet we also know that that darkness is inside of us at times, and at times it like it like pops like a balloon, that darkness.

This corruption, it's not only in the world, it's also in us.

The Bible says, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

And so Peter makes this confession.

He says, You are the Christ, you are the deliverer, you're our only hope.

Now, listen, it is so good for us as a church, redemption church, it is good for us to dwell here for a moment.

That this shows us how we are to be as a church.

This says a lot about us as a church.

We gather together.

What holds us together is that everybody in this worship center this morning believes that Jesus is the deliver, the deliverer.

All of us, if we've confessed Christ, are saying, we can't do this ourselves.

This shapes the way that we do church.

We come together on a Sunday morning to say, I cannot do it.

Only Jesus can.

We come together on a Sunday morning to say, I am a sinner, and Jesus is perfectly righteous.

See, the issue is, you know, you can come to church looking for a different deliverer than Jesus.

Some of you, some of you, it's it's possible that you're coming to church because you think your deliverer is religion, and you think by going to church like you're you're accumulating good works for yourself, and that you'll be delivered because you're a good person that you went to church.

Others of you, you know, like faith comes by believing, righteousness comes by faith.

But you come to church and you think that what you need is like you need a really good pastor, you need a great preacher who you know he's relevant, got a lot of charisma, he can really engage, he can make me laugh, he can make me cry, he can do all these things.

You think that'll deliver you?

Or if it's not the pastor, it's like the worship pastor who, well, if they sing the right songs and they've got the right attitude and they have lights, or they don't have lights, or they do this, or they don't do that, then then I'll really grow.

Maybe it's the community, maybe it's the programs.

The reality is many of us can come to church and understand that we need something, but we don't look to Jesus.

And you know what's happened?

Many churches have realized this, and so they've they've built their church to be something that satisfies a need that is not Jesus.

So you know of many churches that are really just like uh religious temples.

You know, come here and do your religious right, and then you'll be good with God.

Or other churches, you know, senior pastors who instead of turning to Christ, they've like turned to their own charisma.

Worship leaders who have turned to lights and smoke, Christian so-called churches that have been trivialized and made into programmatic leisure centers.

But what Christ is telling us here is that his church will be built on the confession that only he is the deliverer.

So, can I tell you something this morning?

If you're coming to Redemption Church and you're like putting on this mask that everything's okay, you know, I'm a perfect Christian, it's either it's time for you to get real or it's time for you to get out.

There is no space for that here.

We are here to declare that Jesus is our only hope.

That's why in everything we do at this church we preach Christ in everything, in our worship, in our preaching, in our small group ministry, in our youth ministry, and the kids' ministry right now, Christ is being preached, because this is all we have.

And yet, not only is Christ our only hope, I want you to understand also that Peter declares he is the living God.

This is such a significant statement.

What Peter is saying is that among all the pursuits that a human being can pursue, Jesus is the only one that is worthwhile.

He is the living God.

All other gods are dead gods.

And this pursuit stands in stark contrast to the pursuit of the world.

Here we are in Newmarket, and the God of our day is materialism, and all these people, you know, they're they're pursuing joy in their things, in more stuff, the accumulation of things.

And to confess Christ as Lord and as the living God is to say this all those things are worthless.

That's why, as Jesus clarifies what it'll mean to be a follower of him, and at the end of this chapter and 16, you can see it there, he calls his followers to take up their cross.

He says, You gotta die to the world, you gotta give up your whole life in order to follow me.

But notice though, here in Matthew 16, verse 15, that Jesus is not only interested in the what of the profession, he's also interested in who's making it.

Matthew 16:15

Jesus says, Who do you say that I am?

Jesus, very specifically to each of us this morning is saying these words.

Who do you think I am?

This is the reality of our Savior.

He's not just interested in uh, you know, gathering this random group of people.

Jesus is gathering his own.

He's very interested in building a church, a kingdom of Christ confessors.

In fact, in the Gospel of Luke, Luke says, For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.

Jesus is seeking the lost.

He's looking for his people.

And he is immensely interested in how you answer this question, who do you say that I am?

What will your confession of me be?

This is why a few verses down, Jesus, you know, right after this, he's going to explain what at what exactly what's going to happen for salvation.

He says in verse 21, From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and on the third day raised.

Jesus is showing them, I am the suffering servant who came to die for those who will make this confession.

I love how pastor and author Dane Ortland illustrates this.

I'm going to read this quote, and it's it's pretty long, so bear with me, but it's so helpful.

He says, A compassionate doctor has traveled deep into the jungle to provide medical care to a primitive tribe afflicted with a contagious disease.

He's had his medical equipment flown in, he has correctly diagnosed the problem, and the antibiotics are prepared and available.

He is independently wealthy and he has no need of any kind of financial compensation, but as he seeks to provide care, the afflicted refuse.

They want to take care of themselves, they want to heal on their own terms.

Finally, a few brave young men step forward to receive the care, being freely provided.

What does the doctor feel?

Joy.

His joy increases to the degree that the sick come to him for help and healing.

It's the whole reason he came.

How much more if the diseased are not strangers, but his whole family, his own family.

So with us, and so with Christ.

He does not get flustered and frustrated when we come to him for fresh forgiveness, for renewed pardon, with distress and need and emptiness.

That's the whole point.

It's what he came to heal.

He went down into the horror of death and plunged through the other side in order to provide a limitless supply of mercy and grace to his people.

See Christ this morning, he is calling you into his family by asking you this question: Who do you say I am?

Because if you confess him properly, you will be healed for all of eternity.

It's Christ's mission.

And so notice what he says to Peter when he rightly confesses Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God.

He says, Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood is not revealed this to you, but my Father is in who is in heaven.

See, now what Jesus is doing for us is he's showing us how we can make this confession.

He's shown us what the confession is, he's shown us who makes the confession, and now he shows us how you can make this confession.

Notice that he calls Peter by his full name here.

He says Peter bar Jonah.

Now a good translation of that would be like Peter, son of a guy named Jonah.

And if I were named according to the biblical times, I would be Miles, son of a man named Leo.

Now some of you guys are thinking about ninja turtles, and that's okay.

But what Jesus is pointing out is that Peter here, he's of the flesh.

You were born of the flesh.

You're human.

But notice what he says here.

He says, only the Father can reveal this to you.

He says, For flesh and blood is not revealed this to you.

You know, you were born of this man named Jonah, but my father, who is in heaven, has revealed this.

In other words, this confession that you made, Peter, it is not natural to man.

Do you understand this?

That to confess Jesus as who he truly is, it is not natural at all.

This is why Jesus said in the Gospel of John in chapter 3, verse 19, this is going to come up on the screen.

He said, This is the judgment.

Light has come into the world, and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

See, our human nature is to hate darkness, is to hate Jesus.

It's for Jesus to say, Who do you say that I am?

And we say, Well, you're no one to me.

But when we make this confession, it's evidence that something supernatural has happened.

It's what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 4, 6.

You know what Paul says?

He says, For God who said, Let light shine out of darkness.

You remember this in Genesis, we just read it, I guess, just as like a year ago, but we read it.

Let light shine out of darkness.

Has shone, Paul says, in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

The only way that you can see Jesus for who he truly is and then confess him for who he truly is, is if Jesus, if God in the darkness of your heart says, Let there be light.

You know what happens?

Miraculous.

It's miraculous.

Salvation.

You know, I truly believe that the miracle of salvation is a greater miracle than creation.

That's what Paul's saying here.

You know, if I were up here and I could, you know, do what God did and I could speak into existence something out of nothing, you guys would all be amazed.

What a miracle that is.

And yet, even a greater miracle than that is the miracle of salvation that has happened in your heart if you have confessed Christ.

So, so here, hold on a minute, okay?

If you are discouraged right now, can you take a moment and really do this for me, okay?

You have to do something physical for me.

You gotta turn your neck around in this moment.

I'm not asking for a lot, okay?

I'm up here preaching my guts out, all you gotta do is turn your neck for a second.

Just look around at all the people in this room for a second.

Just look around, okay?

It's kind of awkward.

You just made eye contact with someone.

Wave if you make eye contact, okay?

We're looking around.

Uh, this for a room to be filled with Christ, the confessor.

People to whom Jesus has said, Who do you say that I am?

And they have said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

It's hundreds in this room of miracles.

Of miracles of salvation that God has worked.

Listen, are you discouraged about what's happening maybe even in this church?

There's no reason to be.

God is at work, he is doing the miracle of salvation in our midst.

This is not natural at all.

God is supernaturally gathering his children to the church.

And so let me just ask you: do you love the church?

God does.

Because these are his children redeemed from darkness.

And so Peter's made this supernatural confession of Jesus.

And what Jesus says next in the text is really why we're here this morning.

Look what he says to Peter in verse 16.

Sorry, verse 17.

Sorry, verse 18.

He says, I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

It was the first time in the scriptures that the word church is used, and it comes from the Greek word ecclesia, which was a common word used in that day, not just of religious gatherings, but of any gathering.

And it had the root verb that meant to call.

So it kind of spoke of this group that was called out for a specific purpose, that was gathered together, whether it be a town meeting.

And Jesus comes and says that he is calling out his people to gather together into what he calls the church.

And he says of this church something really significant: that he will build it and that it will be unstoppable.

Listen, you see the extraordinary power of the church this morning?

It's unstoppable.

Nothing can stop this force because Jesus is building it.

Now, it's really important to stop here because I truly believe that Jesus' response to Peter's confession greatly contrasts the way that we often respond to people's salvation in our day and age.

See, it's interesting that when Peter says you are the Christ, Jesus doesn't say, Great, that's awesome.

We got another one.

He walked the walk, he walked down the aisle and responded to the altar call.

Now you're a Christian.

See, we often view people's confession as something to celebrate as an individual, but Jesus clearly has an intention here.

Jesus is linking Peter to a movement, to a gathering of people that has movement.

It cannot be stopped.

And what Jesus wants to do is he wants to take this confession and he wants to call more and more people to make the same confession.

That's why Jesus' response to Peter parallels him.

What does Peter say?

Jesus, you are the Christ.

What does Jesus say?

You are Peter.

The rock.

See, as Peter has rightly identified Jesus, Jesus is now going to rightly identify Peter, and he's going to tell Peter what his role in this gathering that is being created is.

He says, You are Peter, and on this rock.

Now there's a wordplay happening here, and many of you have it noted in your English translations.

The word for Peter and the word for rock are incredibly similar.

The word for rock in Greek is petra, and Peter in Greek is petras.

And so you can imagine kind of what Jesus is saying is, you are rock, and on this rock I will build my church.

And so the question for us this morning is what rock, like what's the foundation upon which Jesus is building his church?

This is really important for us, isn't it?

Like, you know, Redemption Church, don't you want to be a part of like an unstoppable church where God is moving in power in your life?

Don't you want that?

Then let's make sure we build on the right foundation.

See, Jesus says to Peter, I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.

And so our question is, what's the rock?

Well, I want you to know, you and I have just entered into one of the greatest debates throughout all of church history.

What on earth did Jesus mean when he called Peter the rock?

What is the rock that Jesus is building his church on?

There's a lot of different answers.

Maybe, maybe the rock's Peter.

Maybe the rock is the confession that Peter just made.

Maybe the rock is like all the apostles, because you know, it was a plural you that Jesus gave.

He said, Who do you say that I am?

And that was to all the apostles that were standing there.

Maybe the rock's the gospel.

Maybe the rock is Jesus himself.

You know, all those seem like good answers.

And in one sense, our our our answer to this question, who is the rock to all those things is yes.

You know, all those things in scripture are rock.

You know, you could look at the apostles in Ephesians 2.20.

You know, Paul says the church is built on the foundation of the apostles.

Likewise, the gospel is a sort of foundation for the church, in that our foundation is Jesus Christ, the cornerstone of the church.

In 1 Corinthians 3.10, Paul says he laid a foundation by preaching the gospel.

See, in some sense, all of these things are foundational to the church, but I believe that the rock that Jesus is talking about here is plainly Peter.

Grammatically, that's all that really makes sense.

It's pretty clear, especially when you think about it, as we can now in the Greek.

You are rock, and on this rock I will build my church.

But I do also want you to understand here that Peter is a rock of the church because he made this confession.

See, you can't separate the confession from the confessor.

What Jesus is saying to Peter is this I am going to build my church on you and the confession that you just made.

It's really interesting that you know what's happened in the Roman Catholic Church.

They've created like a whole uh, like this is where the Pope comes from, that there always needs to be someone in the line of Peter in whom the church is built upon.

And we look at this and we look at this passage, and we and this is the question we say, where is that here?

It's not here at all.

And so I want you to understand, I'm not saying that.

I am saying that the church will be built on the confession that Peter makes.

You cannot separate these two things.

It's interesting then that you know, in a few verses you can look down in chapter 16 that when Jesus says that he's gonna die, what Jesus says in verse 23 of chapter 16 to Peter, you know, Peter rebukes him.

He says, Lord, you're never gonna die.

Peter's got a whole different plan.

What does Jesus say to Peter?

Get behind me, Satan! And you get the sense of like, Peter, if you stop making this confession that I'm the Christ, that I'm the Son of the living God, I'm not building anything on you, you're building the kingdom for Satan.

See, this church that Jesus is building will be built on the confession that Peter makes.

And so in Acts and through the New Testament, we see that Peter is instrumental in the foundation of the church.

Who preaches the first sermon?

You know, in Acts 2, who preaches the first sermon?

Oh, guess, it's Peter.

3,000 people are saved on that day, baptized into the church.

Peter builds a church.

And yet in the rest of the New Testament, we see that Peter is really one of many apostles who become foundational in the preaching of the gospel.

So that by Ephesians 2.20, Paul can say the church is built on the foundation of the apostles.

And even here in chapter 16, we see that while Jesus is speaking plainly to Peter in verses 17 to 19, by verse 20, he's expanded this to all of the disciples.

See, what Jesus is building his church on is Peter-like confessors.

It is when the Apostolic Church preaches the apostolic gospel, calling people to the apostolic faith, that the church is then built up.

That's what we do.

We reveal Christ through our confession of Him.

That's what it means to be called into the church.

That you have been asked this question by Jesus, and you have said of Jesus, you are the Christ.

But secondly, I want you to see this that God is calling his people to represent Christ.

To represent Christ.

This is our great kingdom commission.

I want you to see here what Jesus has created is an institution that he's going to fill with people, the ecclesia, the church, the gathering, and this movement will not be able to be stopped.

Jesus intends that this confession goes somewhere.

There's implications to the confession that Peter just made, in that this confession is now moving to a commission.

Look at what he says in verse 19.

Says to Peter, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

And we see what these keys are for.

Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

What does it mean to be given the keys of the kingdom?

Well, we need to we need to get into that, but I want you to notice first who's being given these keys.

The keys that Jesus is referring to here is ultimately being given to the church.

Like I said, the rock that Jesus is building the church upon is the people who like Peter confess that Jesus is the Christ.

And I say that because it may be possible here that we, you know, talk about the keys of the kingdom and you say, well, that's great.

I mean, I'm not the one with the keys.

You are.

You're the pastor.

You have the authority.

Or you think, oh, it's Peter, and you're like, you know, you know, when you're young and you had siblings and your parents are like giving instruction to your brother and you're just like off in another world because it's not for you.

You don't care.

And some of us have have this faith that's kind of like that.

We just don't think that God wants to work through us because we're not like, you know, the pastor or in ministry.

And I want you to see that if you've confessed Christ, then you have now been commissioned.

You have been given keys.

Listen, you know what's crazy?

I don't have keys to anybody's house in this church.

None of you guys have given me your keys yet.

Isn't that kind of crazy?

Why is that?

Because none of you guys want me showing up in my pajamas on Monday morning watching TV when you come downstairs from sleeping.

Right?

You're like, you don't get keys to my house as much as I love you.

You know, I love you, you're not having my keys.

And yet Jesus has taken the keys of the kingdom of heaven and he has given them to you if you've confessed Christ.

And our reaction is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Jesus, whoa, okay?

Relationship's moving a little fast here.

I don't know if I have this kind of authority.

The keys are given to the church.

Well, another way that we know that, partly it's because of the context of chapter 16, but flip over with me to chapter 18.

I just want you to understand this fully that the keys that are for binding and loosening are given to the church.

And in chapter 18, verses 15, Jesus is talking with the church for the second time in Scripture, and second time he uses the word church, and he's talking about church discipline.

What happens when things go wrong in the church?

He says, first in verse 15, you go tell your brother, and then in verse 16, you go and take two or three and you confront your brother about the wrong that he has done.

But look at what happens in verse 17.

This is going to come up on the screen in case if you're too lazy to do the page flip, then I want to serve you this morning, okay?

Verse 17, if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.

And if he refuses, even to the church, let him be to you as a tax, as a Gentile and a tax collector.

Which in other words means he's not a Christian.

And look at verse 18 here.

Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

See, this authority that Jesus is giving, he is giving to the local church.

For them to bind on earth what is bound in heaven, and to loose on earth what is loosed in heaven.

So these keys are given to you.

Given to the church.

Well, what are the keys?

Well, all throughout scripture, keys mean authority.

You understand that, right?

Like if you give your keys to someone, you are giving them the authority to go into your house whenever you want, and also you're giving them the authority to come and unlock your door and let into your house whoever they want.

That's why there's only a few people who have the keys to our house.

Because with keys comes this great authority of opening the door and letting in who you want.

And so in Isaiah 22, verse 22, we we're told of a different set of keys, these authoritative keys.

Isaiah 22:22

And I just share this as an example of keys meaning authority in Scripture.

These keys are given to the house of David.

And in Isaiah, they refer to authority that's going to be given to a steward who will manage that house.

Because you have the keys, you have authority.

Now, what are these keys for?

Notice that Jesus, in back to chapter 16 here, says that these are the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

This is so significant.

Listen, I know that right now, hit a pause on the sermon, okay?

Just hit a pause button.

I know that right now, like we are in some heavy stuff.

This is like heavy.

Like we're talking about like what the church is, but it is so necessary.

This is what we need to know what the church is and to know what the church does.

So are you with me right now?

Are you listening?

Like, this is like at the point in class.

I know it's heavy.

I know we're explaining, but can we do like a nudge check right now?

Nudge your neighbor, give him like a hard elbow, you know, hit, punch him in the thigh.

Your pastor is allowing it.

It's okay, okay?

I know that this is heavy.

Now, Jesus says these are the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

In other words, these keys open the door.

This is so crazy.

Open the door to heaven.

Now, this is interesting because all through the Gospel of Matthew, there's been kind of like this question of like who's representing heaven?

In Matthew 4, Jesus comes and he says, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

And if you and I heard that, you would be like, Where?

Right?

If I said to you this morning, Mike Tyson is here, immediately you guys would all be like, Where is he?

Like, you'd really want to know because you know, if you know Mike Tyson, you want to be a few feet away from him, right?

Kingdom of heaven's at hand, and so people constantly throughout Matthew are like, Well, where's heaven?

Where do we see heaven?

And in verse 16, it's really the context of Jesus saying this to the disciples.

Look at what, sorry, verse 1 of chapter 16.

It says, And the Pharisees and Sadducees came to test them, and they asked him to show them a sign from heaven.

They say, We want to see heaven.

Like you've been talking about heaven, where is it?

And so Jesus is gonna do something for them, he is gonna show them, but but don't you you understand?

The world is still asking the same question.

I have talked to countless unbelievers, and I have asked them, like, what would it take for you to believe in God?

You know what most of them say?

Well, I think I'd have to see God.

I'd have to see him.

The world's still asking the same question, like, where.

Where is this God that you speak of?

Where is his presence?

And Jesus does something amazing.

They ask for a sign from heaven, and Jesus turns around to like this rag tag group of 12 individuals and says, Here, look at Peter.

This is heaven.

This is the representative of heaven.

He has the keys to heaven.

He can open the door and show you into heaven.

You know what that translates today?

This is really important for our church.

You know, as the watching world looks at Redemption Church in Newmarket, you know what they should see?

An embassy for heaven.

A door way to heaven.

The reality that the path to heaven is open for sinners like them.

See, the church has been given the power and authority to represent heaven to a watching world.

The church has been given this responsibility.

You know, you and I, we've been given this responsibility to declare to the world that the door is open.

If you make the confession that Peter made, you will find eternal life.

But that's the easy part of the declaration of representing Jesus.

You know what else we also have to declare?

This is what so many churches are unwilling to do that if you don't make this confession, the door is then closed.

The fact that this church is here is evidence that through this confession, you can enter into the kingdom of heaven.

But the reality is that not all have done it, is the reality that the door will be closed to those unwilling to confess Christ.

Now, you know, as I'm saying to you that what the church is is a representative of heaven.

Some of you are like looking at the church and you're saying, like, yeah, some representative.

I know that there are many in this room, many who have been hurt by the church.

Many who look at the church and like you're really skeptical of plugging in because it's just like you've been there before and you have been hurt, and the church is a mess.

And kind of like what I'm saying here is trying to sell you into the church, but it would be like if you went to a car dealership and the person who came up to sell you a car is like homeless.

Like, obviously, this person's not doing very much business.

And in many ways, the church can be a poor representative of heaven.

And so we ask the question: how can a church that's filled up with so many messed up people be a witness to something that's so perfect as heaven itself?

Well, the amazing answer is that that's just what the church is supposed to be.

The church is a witness to heaven because it's showing the watching world that God is in the business of pulling people from darkness to light.

The reaction of the world coming into the church should be to look around and say, wow, these people are like really messed up.

And if God can save them, God can certainly save me.

If the door was open to heaven for them, then it could be open for me.

You know, some of us, you ever looked in the mirror and you're like, it's time to go on a diet.

And so you go online, right?

And you search up, you're like, I gotta find something good here.

What are you looking for?

You're looking for the before and after pictures, aren't you?

Like, you don't want like the person who's selling you the diet, it's always gonna be some sort of like shredded mutant who's not even human.

Of course, that person, like, you know, it's good for them.

I want to see the normal people.

Like, what did the transformation look like for them?

And what Jesus is calling you to do in representing heaven is not to be perfect like him.

What Jesus is calling you to do is display that there has been this transformation in your life, that you once walked in the wickedness and evil of darkness, and now you walk in the light.

See, we're representatives of the gospel declaring that it works.

Notice also the function of these keys in chapter 16 is to bind on earth what is bound in heaven and loose on earth what is loosed in heaven.

Remember, Jesus' desire here is not just that Peter makes this confession.

The reason that he goes on to talk about building his church is because his desire is that Peter and the apostles who make that confession after him will all become a part of the church.

And so not only is Jesus in the uh interest of opening the door in order to let those who make the confession into the kingdom of heaven, Jesus is also interested, you know, yet that's in the binding illustration, of keeping them in.

Jesus is very concerned that the people who call themselves a part of the church are representing the church well.

That's why, like, it's really interesting, isn't it?

The second time that Jesus talks about church, he's talking about how to get someone out.

Isn't that kind of like flying the face of how we understand church?

Jesus is saying, like, if someone's not representing me well, then here's what you need to do in order to get them out of the church.

And again, he uses that illustration.

What you bind in heaven will be bound on earth.

And so another way to think about the church is like this the church, the in the local church, here redemption new market.

The church makes visible to the world the invisible realities of heaven.

And what we're stumbling upon here is a distinction in theology between the invisible church and the visible church, or uh you can also call it between the universal church and the local church.

See, what I've I've come to understand is that in our day and age, in our like, you know, 21st century theology, most of us have a really good understanding of the universal church.

We understand, you know, that when you place your faith in Jesus Christ, you are saved and you are brought into unity through Christ into a kingdom of believers.

That you have unity, you know, the moment you meet someone else who also has confessed Christ as Savior, you have unity with them through the universal church.

But what we've lacked to understand, and this is what I'm praying over the next eight weeks we come to understand, is that the local church then is an expression of the universal church.

You understand that?

The local church makes visible the invisible realities of heaven.

If people want to know where is heaven, they should only need to look to the church.

That's why, you know, in Matthew 18, it's really significant.

We take this verse out of context so many times, but but Jesus says, where two or three are gathered, there I am in their midst.

Because he's saying that even if two or three are gathered in my name, that that there is a church that is representing me for the world.

See, the intention of your involvement in the local church is to be a visible stamp of your heavenly approval.

In this way, the church kind of functions like an embassy.

If you guys are, I'm I mean, I've never dealt with an embassy, but I kind of know how they work, right?

You're in another country, and maybe like you lose your passport or something, but you're a Canadian citizen, so what do you do?

You go to the Canadian embassy, and you know when you walk into the embassy, even though you're in foreign territory, you walk into that embassy embassy and you are on Canadian ground.

This is home.

You know, like it's a little dusty and kind of muggy and smells weird, and the lady's pretty rude behind the desk, but you're home.

This is the embassy, this is a representative of Canada.

And that embassy, even though, like, you know, you don't walk in there and the prime minister is in there himself, it's a representative in that embassy.

They have the authority to affirm or deny your Canadian citizenship.

And this is part of what the local church becomes.

It functions like an embassy that looses on earth what is loosed in heaven and binds on earth what is bound in heaven, so as to say that the people who are a part of this church are the people who have been gathered into the universal church.

These are my representatives.

And it's really near to Jesus' heart.

We already read in Matthew 18.

It is really near to his heart that his children represent him well.

You see what's happening here?

Jesus.

Like I I just more than anything want you to walk away with this understanding.

Jesus cares about you.

He cares about you.

He is like the husband who loves his wife.

And no matter how many times his wife keeps trying to run away, keeps leaving the home, Jesus is constantly calling his bride back home.

Come home.

I care about you.

Get into this kingdom, this house that I am building.

Get in here.

There's refuge here.

I want to care for you, I want to grow you.

And so many of us, we've we keep rejecting the church and we don't fully understand it, but by doing that, we're rejecting the care that Jesus has for us.

He's calling us, He's calling us this morning into the church.

And church, listen, until we see the beauty and the purpose of what Jesus has designed, until we see that the best thing that we could ever do in our whole entire life is revealed Christ by confessing him as Lord and Savior.

And then represent Christ so that we can be in the instrumental in the hands of God as He rescues and snatches people from eternal fire.

Until we see that as our greatest design, we will never leave the church.

And the greater we push away from the church, the more we push away from the care that Jesus gives to us through the church.

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank God in many ways we need to repent.

But at times we have not loved your church anymore, Lord.

It's so near to your heart.

God it's your bride.

I don't think there's any other word you could describe to give it more affection than that, Lord.

It is your greatest love.

You love your church.

Thank God, you are doing a work in our midst.

Lord, you are calling Christ's confessors who, like Peter, have declared to this question, Who do you say that I am?

We've declared, Lord, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

That we believe you are the only Savior.

Lord, we are making this confession.

And we are here to say, Lord, I pray, I pray, Lord, that this would be our heart.

We're here to say we want to represent you well.

And so God, as we respond to you now in song, I declare, Lord, that we believe in the name of Jesus.

God, I pray that we would be singing a new tune.

We're declaring, Lord, we want it.

We want into your church, Lord, we want to into your bride.

We want to be part of the house that you are building, this kingdom of heaven that you have established here on earth.

So God, we give you all the praise.

We pray this in the name of your Son.

Amen.