SS04-18-04.
MATTHEW 16: 13-16, 17-19, EPHESIANS 2: 17-18, 19-20, 21-22.
PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO MATTHEW 16.
In last Sunday’s lesson the crucified, risen Savior returned to heaven and continued the building of His body, the church. This passage in Matt. 16:13-20 is one of the most remarkable passages in the whole of this Gospel of the King.
The central matters of this paragraph are evidently those of the confession of Peter, and the answer of Christ to that confession. The theme of today’s lesson is “Jesus establishment of the church is evidence of God’s love.”
Writers of the N.T. used numerous metaphors to portray the nature and importance of the church. Paul called the church a “building” in 1Cor. and a “bride” in Ephesians. The term “field” is used to speak of the church as the place where God is at work. But perhaps one of the best-known terms for the church is “body”---the body of Christ.
This word evokes images of the church serving as the hands, feet, and heart of the Lord Jesus. As a body, the church has many parts but she is still only one body. A body matures, and so should the church.
Some professing Christians say they do not need to belong to a church or need to go to church. However, when we read Matt. 16 and hear Jesus say He “will build” His church, it should make a profound impact upon the professing Christian. It is the only institution that Jesus founded and claims to build.
Other institutions are important to human society but the church is the one institution of which Jesus is author and builder. The N.T. refers to it as the “bride” of Christ. All of us as Christians need the fellowship and strength of prayers of other believers. We need to worship regularly together in a local church.
The church has an image problem in today’s society. The sins and failures of any church are highly publicized. The unbelieving world applies any fault of any group to all churches. The institutional church is under attack by some and ignored as irrelevant by others. Many people claim to be able to live a good Christian life without regular participation in a church. Others of us know how desperately we need the church. Jesus loved the church and gave Himself for it, and so should all believers.
As Jesus came near the close of His earthly ministry, He led His disciples from the familar area of Galilee into the region of Caesarea Philippi.
PLEASE READ MATTHEW 16: 13-16.
The central matters of this paragraph are evidently the confession of Peter, and the answer of Christ to that confession. There is certainly some significance in the place where Peter’s confession was made and where our Lord uttered His first words concerning the Church.
Caesarea Philippi was situated at the northern extremity of Jewish territory. It was a district which had been peculiarly and terribly associated with idol worship. To this day there are remains of temples and altars which were raised in connection with idolatry.
There was also a political and religious significance in the place. It was in this vicinity that Herod the Great had raised a temple of white marble to Caesar Augustus, a temple recognising the element of worship in the attitude of the Roman Empire to the Emperor.
The place in the ministry of our Lord is of supreme interest. The King Jesus was practically already ejected, in spirit if not outwardly and openly. He was about to proceed to that new work, by which His Kingship would be established, and His Kingdom ensured.
Having gathered His disciples into this remarkable locality, He said to them, “Who do men say that the Son of man is? He term “the Son of man,” is personal, and not generic here. It was perhaps sometimes used in a generic sense, but not by our Lord: and in this instance the disciples did not so understand it, or they would never have answered, “Elijah,” “John the Baptist,” “Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” They understood it as a personal question. In effect Jesus said to these men, “What is the result of my work so far? What do men say about Me? He did not need information. He was perfectly familiar with the general attitude towards Himself: but in order to prepare the way for the new movement, to led these men forward, He gathered them quietly about Him at Caesarea Philippi, and said to them, if we may reverently change the phrasing; “Now let us see what all My work so far amounts to. What is the result of My preaching and teaching and working of miracles, and your p1reaching and teaching?” “Who do men say that the Son of man is?”
Their reply was one that shows the measure in which He had succeeded; that there had come to His age a remarkable conviction concerning Him. But it also shows that the men of the age had not appreciated Him, and that the measure of their understanding was distinctly limited. These disciples at Caesarea Philippi told Him only the best things they had heard about Him.
Although they had heard men say, He is beside Himself, He hath a devil; they said, “some say John the Baptist;” some, Elijah; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.”
Taking that answer very broadly, and accepting their testimony, as a correct estimate of the best which he age had discovered about Jesus; it is evident that there was widespread conviction that thee was something supernatural about Him. Men had come so far as to decide that they could not account for Him in any ordinary way: they could not place Him in any school of the prophets of their own day.
They listened to other men, and detected the accent of Hillel, or the accent of Gamaliel, or of some other teacher. They could not do so with Jesus. They said, it is John the Baptist come again; or the prophecy that Elijah should come again is being fulfilled; or Jeremiah has returned with his thunder and his tears: or one of the prophets of the past has returned. They ranked Hm amongst the prophets, the men of vision, the men who declared God’s word to their age. They could not account for Him in any other way.
If we remember the differences between John, and Elijah, and Jeremiah, and the other prophets, it is evident that these differing opinions constitute an evaluation of the variety of the message and mission of Jesus Christ. They said, we cannot quite place Him. We can hear something of the lamentations of Jeremiah; we have seen a good deal of the fire of Mount Carmel flashing from His eyes; we have also heard the tones of the sweet lullaby of Zephaniah’s final love-song. We do not know where to place Him; He has notes, which remind us of them all. His own age had come so far as that, but it had not discovered the deepest truth concerning Him.
Then He narrowed the inquiry. Instead of the wider sweep, He turned to the smaller circle, to those who had been with Him, and still were with Him. He said, You have been with Me, you have walked this highway between Jerusalem and Jericho with Me, you have seen the healing and heard the teaching, and watched he opposition, and seen how I have dealt with it. The age has come so far and no farther: the age has lived in the twilight; have you found the light? “Who say ye that I am?” That leads us to the heart of our passage, to Peter’s confession.
Over twenty centuries have passed, and the phrasing of this wonderful passage has been the familiar language of the church of god for all that time: and we have often robbed it of its glory by attempting to add to its’ meaning. We have twisted it and contorted it, to establish some philosophy of our own, to bolster up some preconceived notion, until we are in danger of missing its music.
The simplest way in which to hear this confession is to attempt to lift ourselves out of our present position, and to put ourselves back into the midst of that first little group of disciples and to listen as they listened to Peter’s confession and our Lord’s answer thereto. Peter looked at Him and said, “Thou are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
It is no surprise that Peter was the spokesman for the group, knowing that he was the most impetuous and impulsive among them. But this time he really had something to say, something prompted in him by God Himself.
Peter’s statement is the great Christian confession of the N.T. and of the apostolic age. It not only sees in Jesus the promised Messiah but also recognizes in the Messiah the divine nature. Messiah is translated “Christ” in many versions of the Bible, both words meaning “Anointed One.” (Messiah is Hebrew: “Christ is Greek). Jesus is the Messiah whom God sent into the world to provide salvation.
Peter added that Jesus is the Son of the living God. All the disciples uttered this confession in Matt. 14:33 when Jesus calmed he sea. But Peter here included the adjective living, a common Jewish affirmation that distinguished the true God from the lifeless idols of the pagans. At this point, however, Peter’s confession went far beyond contemporary Judaism. Peter confessed Jesus as both the promised Messiah and as God’s Son.
Let’s take the first part of Peter’s confession in all its simplicity: and hear only what Peter undoubtedly desired to express, the Hebrew thought, ‘Thou art the Messiah.” If we say today, Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, we have a larger conception of the meaning of the title Christ than Peter had. The very word Christ has taken on a more spacious, radiant, and mystic meaning. Peter was a Hebrew, a child of the Hebrew race. He was born in its midst, and had been nurtured upon its thinking. Every fibre of his personality was affected by its conceptions, and it was as a Hebrew that he said to that Man Who styled Himself “The Son of man,” “Thou art the Christ,” the Messiah.
Thou art the Fulfiller of all the expectations of the Hebrew people, the One to Whom our hopes are to be realized, the One in Whom the economy culminates, the One from Whom there is to break the dawn of a new day and a new ere. The Hebrew seers, psalmists, and prophets, had all looked for the coming of One. They waited for Him and watched for Him. He was to break oppression, to establish righteousness, to baptize the nations with the river of God, and wherever the river came there would be life.
At last a son of the nation, a fisherman only, standing in the neighborhood of the ruins of the ancient temples of idolatry, looking into the face of this Man he had heard teaching and preaching for nearly three years, said to Him, ‘Thou are the Messiah,” the One for Whom we have all been waiting, for Whom we have all been looking; and he added to that “The Son of the living God.”
What we believe about Jesus matters greatly. The amount of our faith is not as important as the object of our faith. If Jesus is who He says He is, then He can do what He says He can do, which includes saving forever those who come to God through Him, Some other verses from the N.T. that prove Jesus is God who came in human flesh are John 10:30, Heb. 1:8, and Titus 2:13.
PLEASE READ MATTHEW 16: 17-19.
In the King’s answer to this great confession let us notice first, His Beatitude and secondly, His great announcement, and finally, the warning note, seemingly strange and peculiar at first, yet necessary when carefully considered.
The fact that Peter recognized the divinity of Jesus was in itself the result of divine illumination. Probably he spoke for the rest as well as for himself, but one man at least had made contact with the purposes and power of God.
Jesus Father had given this spiritual insight to Peter about Jesus. John later in 1st John 4: 1-3 said that no one can make this confession without being moved by the Spirit. But those who embrace this confession about Christ are blessed for another reason. In Matt. 10: 32 Jesus vowed that, “everyone who will acknowledge Me before men, I will also acknowledge him before My Father in heaven.” John 14:6 says that Jesus is the only way to heaven, and Jesus will confess those who know Him before the Father in heaven.
How did the Father reveal this truth to Peter? Men have tried to account for it in various ways. What Jesus said in effect was this---This is My victory as a Revealer. I have come to reveal the Father, and I have been successful, for here is one man who finds in Me the expression of the Father, and knows My relation to the Father, not by the wit or wisdom of man, but My own revelation of the Father. One soul at least had seen God in Him, and heard God through Him. That was the beginning of the new era; the first movement of which, as Christians, we are the continuation.
We read in John 1:41 that Andrew, having come to Jesus, found his brother Simon and said “We have found the Messiah, which, being interpreted the Christ.” Jesus said in vs. 42, “Thou art Simon, the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, a stone.” Now at Caesarea Philippi He said, “Thou art Peter.” Now thou art Petros, a rock.
In vs. 18 we find the first occurrence of the word church in the N.T. and he first of only three in the Gospels (see Matt: 18: 17 for the other two) The Greek word is ekklesia, which means “a called out assembly. It is used 114 times in the N.T., and about 90 of them refer to a local assembly of believers.
When Jesus said “upon this rock” He was talking Hebrew. If we trace the figurative use of he word rock through the Hebrew Scriptures, we find that it is never used symbolically of man, but always of God. It is not upon Peter that the Church is built. Jesus did not trifle with figures of speech. He took up their old Hebrew illustration—rock, always the symbol of Deity—and said, “I will build my Church on Jehovah God.” Peter had found this foundation, had touched Jehovah, and by touching Him had become Petros.
As to the structure to be erected on this foundation our Lord said, “I will build My Church.” There is no unveiling here of the method. We must wait for the teaching of the Holy Spirit in the epistles to comprehend the meaning of the Master. When Peter himself, later on, wrote about the building of the Church, he spoke of living stones, built on a living Stone. One would turn to the fourth Ch. of Ephesians, with its unveiling of the Church in the process of its erection: “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye are called in one hope of your calling.” That is the whole fact of the Church. One Body, Christ the Head and all believers the members; One Spirit, the common life of Christ shared by the members. That is the Church.
Because Jesus said, “I will build,” we are sure of the impregnability of the Church, that nothing can destroy it, that all the forces of darkness can never finally prevent the completion of His Church. Its strength lies in the fact that he builds it stone for stone, fitting each into its proper place, taking only such as by living faith participate in His own nature, and therefore are ready to be built into His great Church.
If the Church has not been victorious in the conflict with sin and sorrow and death, it is due to the unfaithfulness of the church. Let us not blame the Master and Leader.
But further, the King said in vs. 19, “I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of heaven.” Today these keys belong to every one who proclaims that Kingdom. It is our responsibility to bear witness to Christ’s forgiveness that the keys may be operative in the life that is lost in sin.
Consequently it is the will of God that the Church is to be, not merely an aggressive force, conquering His enemies, and opening a way out of all prisons: but it is also to interpret to the world the moral standards of life, and to teach men the will of God.
PLEASE TURN IN YOUR BIBLE TO EPHESIANS 2.
PLEASE READ EPHESIANS 2: 17-18.
In these verses Paul showed how Jesus, through the ministry of the Spirit, took both Jews and Gentiles and made them one new people called the church. In vs. 16 both Jews and Gentiles are reconciled to God through Christ, and both have an equal standing in His body. Those who were far away refers to the Gentiles, those who did not have the O.T. Those who were near are the Jews. This language is in keeping with the way Paul described their privileged position in Rom. 9:4-5. The good news of peace is another way of saying reconciliation. Jesus came to provide access to God for Jews and Gentiles.
Sin results in a twofold alienation from God and others. Salvation results in a twofold reconciliation with God and fellow believers. The tearing of the temple veil signified the open door to God. Paul wrote of the breaking down of the middle wall of partition that excluded Gentiles from the temple worship areas. Christ made possible peace with God and with one another. The church is the expression of peace with God and one another.
Vs. 18 uses three different prepositions to describe the roles of each person in the Trinity. Through him (Christ) we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. God the Father has opened access to Himself through Christ’s death. Believers come to the Father by the Spirit. These prepositions apply to salvation, to prayer, and to the church.
Like human families, each congregation has its’ own character. Some families are warm and friendly. So are some churches. Some families are dysfunctional. So are some churches. Some churches have lost their first love. A family cannot presume on the relations of the past.
PLEASE READ EPHESIANS 2: 19-20.
In vs. 19-22 Paul used here three figures to speak of the unity within Christ’s body, the church. First, the Ephesian believers were fellow citizens, along with all other saints, of God’s theocracy. Foreigners and strangers is a comprehensive phrase that described those who, for whatever reason, did not enjoy the privileges of citizenship in any country. In Christ, Paul said that all nations have been included in God’s heavenly Kingdom. In Phil. 3:20 we are told that in God’s Kingdom there are no strangers, foreigners, or second class citizens.
The second figure Paul used was that of a household. Gentiles and Jews are fellow members of God’s family. God’s household suggests an intimate relationship that all believers have with God and with one another. The Jews in Paul’s day would not enter into the house of a Gentile, much less consider a Gentile to be a member of their own household. The unity of Jews and Gentiles that Paul described here is radical indeed. Redeemed sinners not only become heavenly citizens but also members of God’s own family. The Father bestows on believers the same infinite love He gives His own Son. Because God loves each of His children, each child feels the motivation to love others whom God has adopted as His Children.