Jesus is the Anointed King

So, back in February, we started something called Following Jesus.

This is a year-long series where we're going through the entire book of Matthew.

And we've been trying our best to learn.

I want this to be a year.

I want this to be a year where every single Sunday you learn.

We want to learn about the context of Jesus' world.

We want to learn about the people who he was talking to.

We want to learn about the society that he was in and all the things that were going on so that it helps us fill in some of the gaps.

But most of all, we just want to learn about Jesus.

We want to learn more and more about Jesus.

We want to see him more clearly.

So we have been following Jesus every step of the way.

We started in February.

This will take us through the end of the year, most likely.

And right now we find ourselves a little over halfway through the book of Matthew, and we're about two years into the three-year ministry of Jesus.

From the time that he was baptized and went public until the time that he's crucified and raises again.

It's a three-year period of time.

And we're about two-thirds of the way in in terms of the timeline.

Now, last week we wrapped up a series called Jesus Is, and that series was really focused on looking at the humanity of Jesus, all these different stories that reveal all these incredible aspects of Jesus' personality.

He's a person.

He wasn't pretending to be a person, he wasn't acting like a person, it wasn't a disguise.

He is God incarnate, which means that he is God become one of us.

And if we want to really know Jesus, we want to know his personality.

We want to know the human Jesus.

He came to this earth so that we can know him.

But today we start a new series, and it's called Who Jesus Really Is.

Because He is human, He became a person, but He's more than human.

He's more than a man.

And in the stories that we're going to look at today and over the course of the next few weeks, we get to see the curtain pulled back in a big way on who Jesus actually is.

And so I'm just going to start by reading the entirety of the scripture that we're going to go through today.

It's Matthew chapter 16, verses 13 through 23, and then we'll unpack this together.

Matthew 16:13–23

It says, When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, Who do people say the Son of Man is?

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

But what about you?

He asked.

Who do you say I am?

Simon Peter answered, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God, and Jesus replied, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jodah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.

And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

And then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

From that time on, Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests, and the teachers of the law, that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

Never, Lord, he said, this shall never happen to you.

And Jesus turned to Peter and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan.

You are a stumbling block to me.

You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.

So Peter has a pretty uh interesting arc in this story.

It's like he gets the answer right, ding, ding, ding, you are amazing.

You get the keys to the kingdom, and then just a few minutes later, you are Satan.

Get away, right?

This is one of these stories where we learn a lot about Jesus, but we also learn a lot about ourselves.

And I'm really excited to unpack this today.

Um, also, I'm just gonna ask that you bear with me today.

I'm like, I'm definitely sick, but I think I'm far enough away from the first row that you guys should be good.

But if you do want to move back a row, I understand.

Um I don't know if anyone else feels that, but sorry, this is gonna happen a lot today, so we'll we'll we'll get through it together.

So the story begins in a really interesting way.

It begins in a really interesting place.

It says that in verse 13, Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi.

And it's when he's in Caesarea Philippi that he asks his disciples, who do people say the Son of Man is?

Now, when we last looked at our map, we've been using a map all year long to kind of keep track of where Jesus is.

Jesus was in a city called Magdala.

It's right on the western side of the Sea of Galilee.

Magdala happened to be the place where they would salt fish.

Fish was the main export of the area, it was their main economy, and that's where all the fish went to be salted.

Random historical fact.

There you go.

And then last week, Fred shared this story.

I'll share a little snippet from it.

Matthew chapter 16, 5 and 6.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

When they went across the lake, that is the Sea of Galilee, the disciples forgot to take bread.

And Jesus said, Be careful, be on guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

And last week Fred unpacked the fact that Jesus is discerning and what all that means.

Listen to that if you weren't here.

It was great.

And so Jesus goes across the lake, and we we learn from Matthew 16, verse 13, that he goes to a place called Caesarea Philippi.

Matthew 16:13

So we're going to bring up the map and show you guys this little journey.

We've been following Jesus along all year long.

So Jesus goes from Magdala, goes across the Sea of Galilee, and goes all the way up north to this city called Caesarea Philippi.

Very, very interesting place.

And it's extremely interesting in terms of the conversation that Jesus is having right now.

I think it's very intentional that Jesus takes his disciples here.

This is not a place that they would have wanted to go.

This was not a place that was extremely religious in their context, like they're deeply devoted Jewish men.

This is not that place.

Caesarea Philippi was named that.

It's a combination of Caesar and Philip.

Philip was one of Herod the Great Sons who ruled that area.

He was probably the best of Herod the Great Sons, but that's a low bar, so it doesn't really say much.

But it was a place that was known for a few specific things.

Number one, it was a place known for worship, just not worship of God.

It was known as a place where Caesar himself was worshipped.

Jesus lived in a very interesting time, an incredibly packed period of history.

So when Jesus was born, you had an emperor named Caesar Augustus, just a short time before Jesus was Julius Caesar.

And Caesar Augustus was the first true emperor of Rome and the first emperor that was worshipped.

The worship of Caesar was a pretty new thing.

But it caught on quickly because if you didn't do it, you were killed.

So people kind of went with it pretty fast.

And in Caesarea Philippi, Herod the Great had built a temple to Caesar Augustus.

We only have ruins of that temple now.

There was a huge earthquake in the 300s that destroyed most of the city.

But we actually have renderings based on ruins and historical documents that kind of gives us an idea of what this place would have looked like.

And so I'll bring that up on the screen.

You'll kind of see what it looked like.

And so on the far left there, that big white building would have been the place where Caesar himself was worshipped, the large temple in the middle with the large steps, that was a temple dedicated to Zeus, and all kinds of false gods were worshipped there.

Now, historically, it had been a different name.

Caesar, Caesarea Philippi was a new name because Caesar was pretty new and Philip was pretty new.

Before that, it had gone by several other names.

One of those names was actually Panaeus, because it was a place that was very much associated with the worship of the Greek god Pan.

And if you're familiar with Greek mythology, you know, Pan is like kind of like a goat person.

And Pan worship was like the thing.

Very, very pagan.

All kinds of rituals, all kinds of celebrations that were just crazy.

And there happened to be this specific place that's known as the grotto of Pan.

It's a huge cave.

I'm going to bring a picture up of that because that cave still exists to this day.

And that cave was viewed by the people as, they called it the gate of Hades.

They saw it as like the gate to the underworld.

It was a very significant cave.

It had an incredibly deep water source that's actually part of the source of the Jordan River.

And so this was a place where people came to worship the Greek gods.

It was a place where people came to worship Caesar.

It was associated with the gates of Hades, the underworld.

Just a really dark place.

And Jesus, for whatever reason, decides, you know what, I want to have a conversation with my disciples about who I really am.

And where should we go to have this conversation?

Not the temple in Jerusalem that was associated with the worship of the true God.

Not the synagogue in Capernaum, which he had been part of many times before.

Not some place in the wilderness where he could be alone with his disciples and away from any distractions.

He goes to a place that is completely dedicated to false worship.

And he asks his disciples this interesting question: Who do people say the Son of Man is?

And in verse 14, it says they replied, Well, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

Now notice that these are all good things.

The disciples don't say, some people say you're nuts, right?

Some people think you're you're absolutely insane and crazy and a fraud.

They think you're like a snake oil salesman or some type of, you know, they don't say anything like that.

They say, hey, people are saying really good things about you, Jesus.

They say you're Jeremiah.

You're Elijah, one of the prophets of old.

There had not been a prophet in Israel for 400 years.

No one had spoken on behalf of God.

And people are saying that Jesus is that.

That's a big deal.

John the Baptist was a prophet that came just before Jesus and he was killed.

He was Jesus' cousin.

And because Jesus didn't really fully jump onto the scene until right about the time that John was imprisoned, some people are like, oh, John the Baptist is back, he's back from the dead.

It's Jesus.

They probably kind of looked alike.

They were cousins.

These are all really good things.

But none of it moves the heart of Jesus.

There's not a moment where Jesus goes, Wow, oh, okay.

Well, that's good.

We're making traction.

It doesn't affect him at all.

And he just replies, What about you?

Who do you say I am?

And Simon Peter answered, You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.

Now, quick question, and I love your participation on this.

Um, are any of you surprised that only one of the disciples knew the right answer to that question?

Like anyone just be like, I'm kind of shocked that he's the only one.

Because you know, if you've been following the story, even if you haven't been here, if you're somewhat familiar with the story, we're two years into the ministry of Jesus.

How many miracles has he performed?

How many things has he done or things has he said that are so unprecedented, so amazing?

You would think this is obvious.

Why are all of the disciples not in unison shouting, You're the Messiah, duh?

Only Peter.

Messiah is a Hebrew term that means anointed, anointed one.

The Greek word is Christ.

So, like Jesus Christ.

It's not his last name, it's a title.

It's the same as saying Jesus Messiah.

The anointed one was this king that was promised by the prophets of old.

The people of Israel were waiting desperately for the Messiah to come because there were all these promises that the Messiah would come and change everything.

It was God's anointed king.

And Peter says, I think that's you.

That's who you are.

But he's the only one.

And it seems kind of obvious.

I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you're the only one who knows the right answer and you feel crazy.

Because you're like, how does everyone else not not see this?

I remember when I was in the sixth grade, I'll never forget this.

I was chosen by uh one of my teachers to participate in our school's spelling bee.

And I don't know why.

I I was fairly smart, I dig well in school, but I wasn't like spelling bee smart.

Like, you know, spelling be smart is a different kind of smart.

But I'll never forget this because what happened was myself, excuse me, again, myself and about 25 other kids in the school all had to get up on stage in front of the entire school.

So basically, we were labeled as nerds.

That's what happened.

We were on stage.

Hey, everyone, you are forced to watch this spelling bee, and you have all of them to blame for it.

That's how it felt.

And the what the way the rules were is that you lined up and it went from, you know, it went from right to left, and you were given a word, and if you got it right, you were in.

And if you got it wrong, that same word went to the next person.

If they got it right, they got whoever got it wrong out.

And so if two or three people got it wrong and then another person got it right, all those people were gone.

Well, I got my first word, I was like fourth in line.

And I don't remember what it was, but I got it right.

The person next to me gets the word aisle.

Isle, like you're at the grocery store, something's on aisle eight.

Someone spell that word for me really quickly, aisle.

So you know this.

The person next to me did not.

They said aisle, I s L E.

Like a small island.

And it was like, no.

And I remember thinking to myself, oh, it's A-I-S-L-E.

I've been to the grocery store with my mom since I was a little kid.

Every single sign says Isle 1, aisle two.

But the next person got it wrong, and the next person got it wrong, and the next person got it wrong.

And I sat there and for a little bit I was like, wait, am I wrong?

Because I feel like this is a pretty easy word.

I don't know, and it on and on.

It goes all the way to the end of the line, all the way to the person on this side of me.

They get it wrong, and I at this point am just like, guys, A-I-S-L-E, aisle.

And they go, correct, everybody's out in one word.

Everybody.

Which, and I didn't know this, meant that I got to be our school's official representative at the citywide spelling bee, which is an extra level of nerd.

And uh and I got out on the first word.

Because I wasn't that good of a speller, I just no one knew Ile.

The words at the city spelling bee were so much harder than I.

But I remember sitting there, I can remember just being like, how does no one know this?

It's so obvious.

And I I've often thought about this moment with Peter like that, where he must have been sitting there going, guys, hello, he's the Messiah.

But but I don't actually think that's the way it went.

That's how I've always thought about it.

Like it was this obvious answer, and everyone should have known it, but Peter's the only one that either is brave enough to say it or smart enough to realize it.

That's not actually what happens.

Because listen to how Jesus responds to Peter.

Verse 17.

Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah.

For this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.

It's interesting.

He says, You're blessed, Simon, and then he changes his name to Peter, as we'll see.

Peter means rock.

He's like, you didn't figure this out on your own.

This was not something that you could figure out just by your own abilities to observe and deduce.

This wasn't, this wasn't obvious.

This is something that God in heaven, God the Father in heaven, had to reveal to you.

Now we we read this and we know the story, and we're like, how was it not obvious?

Well, the truth is, if you know the prophecies about the Messiah, they they tend to be pretty mysterious.

For example, Daniel chapter 7, this was a prophecy about this anointed king that was to come.

Daniel 7 · chapter mention

Daniel wrote, as my vision continued that night, I saw someone like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven.

He approached the ancient one and was led into his presence.

He was given authority, honor, and sovereignty over all the nations of the world so that people of every race and nation and language would obey him.

His rule is eternal, it will never end, his kingdom will never be destroyed.

It doesn't exactly sound like a carpenter who's traveling around like homeless with some random disciples healing people and teaching people.

It seems a little more epic than that.

That's how a lot of the prophecies of the Messiah went.

We can look at Isaiah chapter 42, verses 6 through 13.

Isaiah 42:6–13

I, the Lord, talking about this Messiah, have called you to demonstrate my righteousness.

I will take you by the hand and guard you.

I will give you to my people Israel as a symbol of my covenant with them.

And you will be a light to guide the nations.

You will open the eyes of the blind.

And we're like, hey, there, boom.

Jesus did that a lot.

True.

You will free the captives from prison.

John the Baptist sent his disciples to say, hey, are you the Messiah or not?

Because I'm in prison.

And the Messiah is supposed to free captives from prison, so get after it.

Like that's basically how that went.

Releasing those who sit in dark dungeons.

I am the Lord, that is my name.

I will not give my glory to anyone else, nor share my praise with carved idols.

Everything I prophesied has come true.

And now I will prophesy again.

I will tell you the future before it happens.

Sing a new song to the Lord, sing his praises from the ends of the earth.

Sing all you who sail the seas, all you who live in distant coastlands, join the chorus, you desert towns, let the villages of Keter rejoice.

Let the people of Salah sing for joy.

Shout praises from the mountaintops, let the whole world glorify the Lord, let it sing his praise.

The Lord will march forth like a mighty hero.

He will come out like a warrior full of fury.

He will shout his battle cry and crush all his enemies.

These were some of the most popular prophecies about the Messiah.

And is that Jesus?

Well, it is.

Yes, it is.

But what these prophecies reveal, and prophecies have a way of doing this, is how easy it is for us to read our expectations into prophecy.

Did Jesus free people from dark dungeons?

Yeah, it's just what were those dungeons, right?

If that was a literal dungeon, and every jail cell would have been opened.

But what about the darkest dungeons?

What about the dungeons of sin and addiction and guilt and shame?

No one had ever even attempted to free people from that.

I can't do that, but Jesus did.

He brings all of us out of darkness.

Our life without Jesus, we are literally slaves to sin and its consequences.

And we we can try our best, but the best we can do is sin a little less than someone else and hope that that somehow earns us some points.

That's not how it works.

But by Jesus' forgiveness and his mercy and his grace, he lifts us out of that dungeon.

It says that Jesus will crush his enemies.

Did he do that?

Just depends on who his enemies were, right?

If you were someone like all of the disciples who would have been trained to believe that the enemies of Jesus would have been the enemies of Israel physically, politically.

If your thought is that the Messiah will crush your political opponents, you will be disappointed.

Whether you're an Israelite 2,000 years ago or someone in America today.

That's not how the Messiah does things.

That's how people thought he would.

What about crushing the enemies of sin and death?

Those are bigger enemies.

See, the reason that it wasn't an obvious answer, the reason that not all the disciples got it, the reason that even Peter didn't get it, just because he was like, guys, duh.

It's because it wasn't so obvious.

It was mysterious.

And God the Father had to reveal to Peter, hey, my Messiah is here, but he's not quite who you've been expecting.

He's a little different.

And if you can see things through his perspective, if you let him teach you and show you what it's really like, you'll find that what he's here to do is far greater and grander than whatever you thought he was here to do.

God is often mysterious.

It's his nature.

All the false gods of the Old Testament, they were obvious.

They had giant statues, you know, they're animals, they're these huge things.

And our God, he's invisible.

And he picks this random tribe of people, these nomads, these shepherds, and he's like, I'm gonna use them to show myself to the whole world.

And you're like, really?

That doesn't seem very obvious.

But God is mysterious.

Now, Jesus, because Peter has this revealed to him, gives Peter a tremendous amount of praise.

I want to read this next section and unpack this, and then when we're done unpacking, we'll kind of explain how this relates to all of us, because it does in major ways.

I'm so excited about this.

He says, I tell you that you are Peter.

He renames him from Simon to Peter.

Like I said, Peter means rock, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

I'll give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loosened in heaven.

Now, this stuff has been interpreted in like hundreds of different ways, and we could spend hours and hours talking about this and probably still get most of it wrong.

But there's some interesting things to know.

He says, On this rock, I will build my church.

Well, what is that rock?

Some say it's Peter.

And there's legitimacy to that.

In the ancient world, they would build anything with stones, and Peter, because he's the first one to ever make this declaration, Peter's like the first stone.

He's the first church member in history.

Officially, he's the first member of the church.

He was like that first stone that was placed, that everything's been built on.

Some would say that Peter is like the foundation of the church, although others would say, and I think this is really interesting, that maybe the rock that's the foundation that Jesus is going to build his church on, it's not Peter, it's the declaration that Peter makes.

It's the recognition that Jesus is the anointed king, he is the Messiah.

And Jesus says it's on that, that rock, that declaration, that realization.

I'm going to build my church on that truth.

But either way, for Peter, this is high praise.

It's either what you said or who you are, but you're a rock now.

That's pretty awesome.

I always love that Jesus gave his disciples nicknames like wrestlers.

He called James.

And John, the sons of thunder, and you know, Jesus is the rock.

Like Dwayne Johnson was way behind on that name.

Jesus came up with that like a long time ago.

And everyone gets credit for it.

I wish Dwayne Johnson was like, I just got it from Jesus.

He, you know, but whatever.

It's all good.

Very masculine names.

He says to Peter, I'll give you the keys of the kingdom.

The keys of the kingdom.

What does that mean?

Well, in their culture, keys were very important.

And you would give your keys to the steward of your household.

If you were a wealthy uh landowner, if you were someone that had a large estate, you would entrust your keys, you would entrust everything you had to a steward, to someone that you decided was a worthy manager.

And that person would have the responsibility of taking care of everything.

And he says essentially to Peter, I'm gonna give you the keys.

I'm gonna entrust you to be a wiser steward as I as I build my church.

He says the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

Now, like I said, that cave that we looked at, it was called the gates of Hades.

And it's very possible that Jesus was standing right in front of it when he said it.

Like, hey, all that this represents all the evil in the world, death itself, false gods, Satan, none of it's gonna prevail against my church.

And here we are over 2,000 years later, along with billions of people throughout history who have worshiped Jesus.

Even though this movement has been attempted to be squashed and snuffed out in many places many different times.

That's proven true.

And he says to Peter, whatever you you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loose in heaven.

Some people take that and look at it and say, This is this idea that if as a Jesus follower you just declare something in faith, then it happens, and you know, maybe.

Um but binding and loosing is a really interesting term, and in their culture, that was a religious term.

The Pharisees, the religious leaders, rabbis would have been entrusted to bind and loose, meaning what is allowed and what is not allowed.

You've got to figure out as a religious leader what's what's okay and what's not okay.

And if you know the story of Peter, he becomes this person that is on sort of the the front end of figuring out what's what's okay in the church.

He has a vision from God early in the history of the church where there's all these things that people weren't supposed to eat in Jewish culture.

They had all these dietary laws, and God tells Peter, eat it, and he's like, nope, we're not doing that.

That stuff's unclean.

And God says, You don't get to call unclean what I declare clean.

And then right after that, these non-Jewish people begin to be saved, and they have to figure out, are these people Christians now?

Because up to that point it's only been Jewish people.

And Peter's at the forefront of going, Yeah, this is this is allowed.

This is loose.

Now it's just open to everybody.

I there's a biblical commentator who put it in a really interesting paraphrase.

I think it's helpful.

He wrote, It's as if Jesus said to Peter, Peter, your name means a rock, and your destiny is to be a rock.

You're the first person to recognize me for what I am, and therefore you're the first stone in the edifice of the fellowship of those who are mine.

And against that fellowship, the embattled powers of evil will no more prevail than they will be able to hold me captive in death.

And in the days to come, you must be the steward who will unlock the doors of the kingdom, that the Jew and Gentile may come in, and you must be the wise administrator and guide who will solve the problems and direct the work of the infant and growing fellowship.

Peter has a big task given to him, a destiny that's unlocked for him here that wasn't before.

It's really special.

But uh that doesn't last very long.

Peter's high point doesn't go, it doesn't extend very long, it doesn't have a long shelf life.

Because it says then in Matthew 16, 20, then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Why?

Because they didn't understand what the Messiah was.

And Jesus knew that if they were to go out and start telling everyone, all right, we it's here, he's the Messiah, everyone's gonna go, oh, we're gonna lead a revolt against Rome, let's get some swords, let's do this, and that would have ended terribly.

And Jesus knows that he cannot have them go around telling people that he's the Messiah.

If they don't fully understand what the Messiah even is, they still need to be taught.

They have a lot to learn.

It says from that time on, Jesus begins to explain to them, He's telling them what the Messiah is really all about.

He says that the Messiah must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests, the teachers of law, that he must be killed.

And on the third day be raised to life.

And Peter took him aside and rebuked him.

This is amazing.

Peter's like, you're the Messiah and you're wrong.

Like that happens.

But have you ever felt like God is wrong?

Like, can we be honest?

Anyone ever feel like God got something wrong?

Either on a grand scale or maybe in your own life, you have this moment where you're like, this can't be, this cannot be your will, this cannot be your plan, this can't be how it's gonna happen.

And you find yourself sort of giving God advice and saying, hey God, I think you may have missed something.

And you know the truth is it's it's funny when you think about it, we laugh at it, but in in certain moments of life it's real.

Like, God, this is no, this cannot be the way it goes down.

This can't be.

That's where Peter's at.

Never, Lord, he said, this shall never happen to you.

And Jesus goes, get behind me, Satan, which is a way less good nickname than rock.

We can just all admit that.

You're a stumbling block to me because you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.

It's totally flipped.

Earlier, Jesus is like, hey, Peter, you're not thinking from a human point of view.

You've got this revealed to you by God the Father.

Now he's like, Peter, you're not even listening to God the Father, you are only thinking from a human point of view.

So there we go.

That's that's our story.

Jesus is the anointed king, and and I want to take just a few moments and discuss what we take away from this.

In fact, uh, worship team, you guys can make your way back up as we as we get ready to take Lord's Supper in a few minutes and wrap up.

It's an interesting story.

Jesus is the anointed king.

He's not just a man, he's not just a prophet, he's not just a miracle worker, he is the Messiah.

He is the one that the prophets of old had had predicted, had talked about, he's the one that God was going to bring in to change the world, and he has.

But not necessarily in the ways that everyone thought.

That he would or that he should.

In so many ways, we we have a lot to learn from Peter in this story.

This is like all of us, at least on like a micro level.

Because all of us have to answer that question.

Who do you say he is?

Who is Jesus?

Who is he to you?

Not who is he to the rest of the world.

That didn't really matter to Jesus.

He asked his disciples, who do you say I am?

And can you make the bold declaration and not not pull back in the slightest?

Not say something wishy-washy like I think Jesus is uh is from God.

Okay, lots of things are from God.

Angels are from God, blessings are from God, you know, when it rains and and crops grow, that's from God.

So that's that's nice.

They say Jesus is from God, but lots of things are from God.

That's not enough.

Many would say Jesus is a great teacher, and that's great.

That's there's lots of great teachers.

That's true, that's that's nice.

You could even say Jesus is a prophet.

In fact, in most faiths in the world, Jesus is a prophet.

In Islam, Jesus is a prophet.

The virgin birth is in Islam.

Jesus is a prophet in that faith, and that's great, but when the people were saying that Jesus is a prophet, it didn't matter that much to Jesus.

He wasn't like, hey, that's good enough.

No, he stopped and he said, Who do you say I am?

And it wasn't until Peter went all the way and said, You are the Messiah.

You are the anointed king that Jesus said, That's it.

So who do you say Jesus is?

That declaration of who Jesus really is, that conviction, that will become just as much of a rock for you to build your life on as it became a rock for Jesus to build his church on.

Our lives have to be built on something solid.

Our lives have to be built on something that can take the weight of life and its struggles and its hardships.

And there is nothing stronger than Jesus Christ.

And if we can't come to the place as people where we can say, Jesus Christ is the Messiah, he is the King of kings, He is the Lord of Lords, if we can't build our lives on something as strong as that, then we're gonna find ourselves in a lot of trouble.

So who do you say he is?

That declaration for you can be just as powerful as it was for Peter.

And maybe you've made that declaration before and you are a follower of Jesus.

Maybe you haven't, maybe you're still figuring that out.

But I want to challenge you if that's where you're at today, this is who he is.

I'll say it for myself.

Jesus Christ is the anointed King of kings, he is the Messiah.

There is no one greater than him, there is no one who's come before or will come after that is even close to him.

He is the king, chosen by God the Father to rule over this world.

And I've got to build my life on that.

Not on my political views, not on my hopes and dreams, not on my career, not on my family, my kids, my wife.

All that stuff's great.

But that's not the rock that my life is built on.

My life is built on the rock of Jesus Christ.

He's the king.

So have you made that declaration?

And I know most of us have.

But if you haven't, pray through that.

So we can't settle for half of Jesus.

You can't go there.

You gotta give it all.

He didn't allow his disciples to stop at profit.

And then Jesus looks at Peter and he says, Hey, because you've made this declaration, here's all these things that are gonna happen.

You have a whole new destiny.

That happens with us too.

When you declare that Jesus Christ is the King, that He's the anointed one of God, your life changes.

Like you have the ability to unlock things you couldn't unlock before.

You have the ability to discern things you couldn't discern before.

And it may not be as on a grand of scale as Peter had.

And if your life is built on the firm foundation, the rock of the truth of who Jesus Christ is, you have the ability.

You have the ability to figure things out and to lead people in totally different ways.

You get a whole new destiny when you give your life to Jesus.

That's what happens.

Same thing happened to Peter, it happens to us.

And very much like Peter, even though you say, Jesus, you're the king, and I believe in you, and even though Jesus looks at you and he says, Yes, correct answer, you get it.

I'm gonna open up a whole new world of possibilities for you.

Even though that's all true, you're also gonna get it completely wrong.

And you're gonna mess up and you're gonna fall short.

Like I there's a big difference between recognizing who Jesus is and understanding who Jesus is.

I think I recognized who Jesus was when I was 10 years old.

And I've spent the rest of my life, and I'll spend the rest of my life from this point on trying to figure out what that really means.

And that's okay.

I mean, Peter nails it.

Jesus says, Yes, you, you get it.

And then just a few minutes later, he's like, Peter, you don't get it at all.

And what an encouragement! Like, I'm so glad that we have Peter to look to.

Because man, we're all like that.

And that's okay.

You're gonna get things wrong, you're gonna mess up.

And there's gonna be times where God has to correct you, where Jesus has to be like, hey, hopefully he doesn't call you Satan.

But, you know, he did to Peter.

And he wasn't saying Peter was Satan, he was saying, hey, Peter, you might as well be acting on behalf of Satan right now.

What you're telling me is what Satan would tell me.

Stop.

But Peter was correctable, he could receive that.

That's what made Peter so special.

There's gonna be times where you mess up and you miss it, and that's okay.

Because we need to have, we need to have God teach us day by day over the course of our entire lives what it really means to walk out this faith.

And we're gonna mess up, we're gonna get it wrong, but Jesus will get us back.

And sometimes when he steers us back, it's like a it's like a knock on the head, like boom.

Like here he says to Peter, Satan, get behind me.

It's like that.

But then there's other times where Peter messes up and Jesus sits down and has a meal with them and reiterates his love for him.

And it's more gentle.

It's just what he decides.

And what we have to do, if we believe that he is the king, is really simple.

Uh, what do you do with a king?

Well, you uh you don't vote for one, you don't get to choose the way a king does things.

This is not very American, by the way.

Like we're not king people.

What you do with a king is you submit, you follow, you obey, you fight for that king, you die for that king.

It's just that for the most of human history, those kings have sucked.

They've been terrible.

You're like, I gotta fight for him, I gotta die for that guy, I've gotta obey him, I've got to do what he says, I've got to submit to him.

They're terrible.

Jesus is not that.

He's a good king.

He's the anointed king of all of the universe.

He's the one that was prophesied about, he's the Messiah.

By the way, if you really want to deep dive on what the Messiah means, we have a class on that.

It's part of HHU.

There's a whole class on Jesus as Messiah.

Sign up for that one.

But what you do with a king is you submit, you follow.

So I'll finish with one more question.

Have you fully submitted your life to the king?

If I'm honest with myself, the answer is yeah, sort of.

Yes, yes, I have submitted my whole life to the king.

And then every once in a while, I kind of try to take parts of it back.

So I find myself sometimes in places where I'm like, well, Lord, what's wrong with me?

What's wrong with the way that I'm thinking?

What's wrong with the way that I'm seeing things?

What's wrong with the way that I'm acting?

And what I realize is, oh, I'm just, I've drifted a little bit in my submissiveness to the king.

And I'm living a little bit like my own king.

That's not who I am.

And I just need to stop and resubmit.

And I need to get on my knees.

And I just need to pray and say, You are my king.

And so here's what I'm gonna ask.

For just a like two minutes.

I'd like to ask for us to have a moment of prayer.

And this is a chance for you.

I'm just gonna be quiet.

I'm gonna pray myself.

And this is just a chance for you to pray and do some work.

What a great time to do that.

Here it is, the beginning of August, the start of a new season.

What a great chance to A, reiterate, if you've fully submitted your life to Jesus, you are my king, you are the rock that I'm building on, and I'm not gonna be fooled into trying to build my life on anything else.

Nothing else is worthy of building my life upon.

So my career, my family, my dreams, my hopes, my decisions, all that's fine, but I'm not building my life on that stuff.

That stuff can come and go, and my life's on you.

But if there's any aspect of your life, if there's any part of your world that you can look at and say, man, I'm not I'm not submitting in this area of life.

I'm not giving this to God, I'm not trusting God with this, I'm trying to do this on my own way.

What a great opportunity right now to say, you know what?

You're my king.

It's yours.

I'm done trying to run it, I'm done trying to do it myself, I'm done doing it my way, I'm giving it to you, and I will submit to the anointed one.

And so let's do this.

Let's uh let's just pray for a moment.

Um, in fact, can you guys just kind of bring the lights a little lower, especially on stage?

Because I just want us all to close our eyes.

If, and you don't have to do this, obviously, but if you can, let's close our eyes and let's just have a moment of prayer.

Us and God right now, talk to us.

We're gonna finish with Lord's Supper.

We do this every Sunday.

If you missed it, by the way, there's tables at the back with cups of bread and juice.

Feel free to grab that.

If you're new, uh don't worry about messing anything up.

We're not, we take God seriously, we don't take ourselves very seriously here, so you can get up and grab that.

Um amazing is it that we have a king who doesn't just demand that we die for him.

That's what all kings have done in history, but we have a king who died for us first.

This meal represents the death of Jesus and ultimately his resurrection as well, and what it means for us.

This bread is his body, the juice is his blood, his sacrifice on the cross, what our king did for us, our king sacrificed himself.

And it's funny, he's the anointed one.

An anointing was something that God would do, usually through a prophet, but when you were anointed, you were set apart.

And many things could anoint you often it was oil.

Many times in the Old Testament, blood was an anointing thing.

And our anointed one, the King of Kings, has anointed us with his blood, saved us, set us apart, made us new creations, forgiven us for all of our sins, and through the Holy Spirit put his presence within us that we can live totally new lives.

And let's thank him for that.

Father, we thank you for your Son Jesus.

And Jesus, we thank you for this bread and what it represents.

This is your body given as a sacrifice to us.

And as we take this bread, Lord, we we like Peter declare, you are the king, you are the Messiah, you're the anointed one of God.

And it's hard for us to even grasp what it means for you to be that and for us to receive you like we receive this piece of bread.

But we do it, Lord.

We we submit to you and surrender to your mystery.

Let's take the bread.

Jesus, we thank you for this juice.

This is your blood.

Covers us, it cleanses us, and it anoints us, it sets us apart.

We are now your children.

Father God, Jesus, we are your co heirs, we are your brothers and sisters because of what you've done for us.

And we are so grateful.

Thank you, Lord.

Let's take the juice.