SPEAKER_01: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_00: Please take your Bible and open it to the Gospel of Matthew.
SPEAKER_00: Gospel of Matthew in chapter 16.
SPEAKER_00: My sermon has already been preached.
SPEAKER_00: You've sung it.
SPEAKER_00: You've sung my sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Every week, our text for Sunday morning is studied twice.
SPEAKER_00: It's studied by the person preaching it, and it's studied by Webb Gehring.
SPEAKER_00: Webb Gering takes the text that we are preaching on, and he studies it himself to determine what the intent is.
SPEAKER_00: He talks to the pastor preaching, get a sense of where we're going.
SPEAKER_00: And Webb takes the text and tries to find the songs that we sing that best fit what's being communicated in the text.
SPEAKER_00: And he weaves them together to bring a coherent service together, where throughout we are focusing on what Scripture is saying to us.
SPEAKER_00: And Webb does a great job with that.
SPEAKER_00: Every song that we've sung this morning preaches this text.
SPEAKER_00: And that's just one of the reasons that last Sunday night we announced that we are promoting Webb to the position of associate pastor.
SPEAKER_00: Webb has been our ministry associate for five years.
SPEAKER_00: He's going through his Master of Divinity program, is almost completed with that.
SPEAKER_00: And he has demonstrated again and again and again, no matter what we throw at him, that the Lord has called him to ministry.
SPEAKER_00: And we get to see a display of that every single Sunday and how he studies Scripture and brings us together to the point in song to be ready to hear the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: We want to give thanks to Webb and to the Lord for working in him.
SPEAKER_00: At the same time, I have a long sermon this morning, and so if I go over, I'm blaming Jeremy on it for his long announcements, just so you know.
SPEAKER_00: Have any of you ever had to verify your identity?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking about having to prove your age, but to prove who you are.
SPEAKER_00: Have any of you had to do that?
SPEAKER_00: Most of your hands should go up because you have to do this when you go get a driver's license.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the second most common is having to get a passport.
SPEAKER_00: Or we're mostly past this now, I think.
SPEAKER_00: A few years ago, we we had to all prove our identity in getting the real IDs.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps married women who assume their husband's last name have the most challenging time with that, especially if you get married and then you have to change your name and then you have to go get a brand new driver's license and you have to go through all of the paperwork to prove that.
SPEAKER_00: My wife once had to go to the trouble of ordering an official copy of her birth certificate from her birth state.
SPEAKER_00: Because the one she had that had functioned quite fine for most of her, for all of her life, had imprints of her feet at birth on the birth certificate.
SPEAKER_00: She took it to the DMV to get a driver's license, and the lady looked at her and said, We don't do feet.
SPEAKER_00: Those can be frustrating experiences, right?
SPEAKER_00: To have to prove who you are.
SPEAKER_00: When it ought to be very, very simple.
SPEAKER_00: I am who I am, don't you know who I am?
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in North Dakota, in a very small town in North Dakota, and everybody knows everybody and everybody's animals.
SPEAKER_00: But the larger the community is, the more difficult it is to prove who you are.
SPEAKER_00: But what if what if your life depended on someone else's identity?
SPEAKER_00: Now think about that for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: What if what if your own life depended on someone else's identity?
SPEAKER_00: What if what if your life and your death depended on someone else's identity?
SPEAKER_00: What if your life and death were dependent on the identity of someone you had never met?
SPEAKER_00: What kind of identification would you require to say, okay, I believe that you're safe with my life and death?
SPEAKER_00: What if that person that you were dependent on for your life and your death all of a sudden started doing miraculous things that no one had ever encountered before?
SPEAKER_00: Would you believe what they were doing?
SPEAKER_00: Would you believe that they were worthy of your trust?
SPEAKER_00: To have your life and your death in their hands?
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that you could believe in the real identity of someone that you had never met who held your life and your death in their hands?
SPEAKER_00: I hope you can believe in that kind of a person because that's why we're here this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Look with me at Matthew chapter 16.
SPEAKER_00: We're in verse 13 as we working our way through the Gospel of Matthew.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 16, beginning in verse 13, Matthew records that Jesus and the disciples came into the district of Caesarea Philippi.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus asked his disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is?
SPEAKER_00: And they said, Well, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus said to them, But who do you say that I am?
SPEAKER_00: Simon Peter replied, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon Barjonh, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: I will give you the keys to 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.
SPEAKER_00: Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: In ancient times worshippers gathered to offer sacrifices and to sing praises and to pray to the god Pan, P A N, at the village of Panaeus, in the foothills of Mount Hermon, approximately twenty miles north of the Sea of Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: The god Hermes is thought to be the namesake of the mountain called Mount Hermon.
SPEAKER_00: And so the foothills of Mount Hermon were the perfect place to worship Pan, who was said to be the son of the god Hermes.
SPEAKER_00: Panaeus, the village of Panaeus, was named after the god Pan, who was worshipped near the village of Panaeus.
SPEAKER_00: There was a deep spring in a dark cave beneath a large cliff in the foothills of Mount Hermon that bubbles up and flows out of the mouth of the cave and all the way down to the Sea of Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: And it was long believed that that cave was the entrance to Hades, the realm of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Don't confuse Hades with hell.
SPEAKER_00: Those are two different terms referring to two different things.
SPEAKER_00: Hades is simply a term that means that's where people go when they die.
SPEAKER_00: That's the realm of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: And that cave was believed to be the entrance to Hades.
SPEAKER_00: And Hermes hid inside of the cave, ready to guide the souls of the dead to the place of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: But Pan, his son, stood at the mouth of the cave.
SPEAKER_00: At the very gate of Hades, the realm of the dead, to cause panic and pandemonium.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, our words panic and pandemonium come from the name Pan, the god Pan.
SPEAKER_00: He tried to cause panic the souls of the dead on their way to Hades.
SPEAKER_00: And if you were lucky enough to not be panicked by Pan, you would be led into the underworld by Hermes.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you remember your Old Testament history, this is very near the Israelite city of Dan.
SPEAKER_00: In Judges chapter 17 and 18, the tribe Dan refused to take the land that God had given them.
SPEAKER_00: They were picky and selfish, and they said, No, what God has given us is not good enough.
SPEAKER_00: It's not enough.
SPEAKER_00: And so they searched out another location.
SPEAKER_00: And they kidnapped a Levite as their tribal priest.
SPEAKER_00: They invaded an unsuspecting town in the northern regions of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: They destroyed its inhabitants and they took over the city.
SPEAKER_00: And they established their own religious cult.
SPEAKER_00: They began worshipping a golden calf in the city of Dan.
SPEAKER_00: Dan was the epitome of idolatry in Israel until God destroyed it, wiped it out by the Assyrian army.
SPEAKER_00: Just before New Testament times, Caesar Augustus granted that territory to Herod the Great.
SPEAKER_00: Herod the Great was very thankful, and so he promptly built a marble temple for Augustus right near Panaeus, close to the spring of water coming out of the cave.
SPEAKER_00: When Herod died, it became the possession of his son Philip, who renamed the location Caesarea Philippi, to honor Caesar and himself.
SPEAKER_00: It's the edge of Jewish territory.
SPEAKER_00: Some say the evil there was so pervasive that rabbis forbade Jews from setting foot there.
SPEAKER_00: It was the center of idolatry, not just in the pagan culture, but in the Jewish culture.
SPEAKER_00: It's the realm of death, it's the very gate to Hades, and yet, strangely, Mount Hermon has a long Jewish tradition.
SPEAKER_00: Mount Hermon itself, the top of the mountain, was believed to be the gateway to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: According to Jewish tradition, it was the place where Enoch, remember Enoch, Book of Genesis, says, walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.
SPEAKER_00: Jewish tradition believes that God took Enoch to heaven from the top of Mount Hermon.
SPEAKER_00: It's also believed to be the place where Jesus was transfigured before the disciples, but more on that later in Matthew.
SPEAKER_00: So in both Jewish tradition and common mythology, Mount Hermon and the cave of Panaeus were the place where heaven and Hades came together.
SPEAKER_00: Where heaven rose above the gate to death.
SPEAKER_00: And it was somewhere, somewhere in that region where Jesus came with his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Now this text here before us this morning is crucial because it speaks of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's important because it's the first of only three times in the book of Matthew where the word church is found.
SPEAKER_00: But it's important on a practical level as well, because many of you have come to Christ out of Roman Catholicism.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you have family members who are still bound to Roman Catholicism, a faith that relies on this passage quite heavily for its established tradition.
SPEAKER_00: This is a significant passage of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: But I think it's important that we also understand the need for humility as we come to this passage of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the church has debated these verses for 2,000 years, and there is still no unquestioned result on which we can rest.
SPEAKER_00: For example, I read more than a dozen commentaries on this text.
SPEAKER_00: And in those dozen commentaries, there were at least four different interpretations described, and at least a couple more on top of that referred to.
SPEAKER_00: Even the so-called experts can't agree on what's going on and what's intended in this text.
SPEAKER_00: So we have to remember that there are believers in Christ who may hold different views of this passage and have solid reasons for doing that.
SPEAKER_00: So there's room for grace.
SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't mean that we don't work hard to figure out what is going on and see if we can reach a conclusion by the work of the Holy Spirit in us.
SPEAKER_00: So we could go the doctrinal route here as we consider this passage and ask what it teaches us about Jesus, what it teaches us about the church, what it teaches us about Peter.
SPEAKER_00: We could go the historical route, tracing how this passage has been understood throughout church history, or we could go the practical route, providing some helpful spiritual life tips along the way.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the reality is that's about three different sermons.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not gonna give three different sermons on this text.
SPEAKER_00: I'm only gonna give two.
SPEAKER_00: Don't worry.
SPEAKER_00: I'm serious about that.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think we're gonna have time this morning for all of this.
SPEAKER_00: I want to attempt to give a little bit of all three of those perspectives this morning, as I believe all three portions will bear fruit in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: So let's let's begin with the big picture.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew consistently drives home the truth of who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to understand the real identity of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So again and again, Matthew shows us how Jesus fulfills all of God's promises.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew, more than any other gospel writer, says it was fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: This was in fulfillment of.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to know that God has promised all kinds of things, then that Jesus has come to fulfill them.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus' own people, the Jewish people, continually struggled with his identity.
SPEAKER_00: Is he a miracle worker?
SPEAKER_00: That's obvious.
SPEAKER_00: All you have to do is just follow along and go to one of the gatherings where people are, and you can see that he's a miracle worker.
SPEAKER_00: Is he a prophet?
SPEAKER_00: Seems so.
SPEAKER_00: Is he a good teacher?
SPEAKER_00: Clearly, people gather by the thousands.
SPEAKER_00: Is the Messiah?
SPEAKER_00: Is he the Messiah?
SPEAKER_00: Well, now, you know, we know Joseph and we know Mary and we know his brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: That might be a bit of a stretch.
SPEAKER_00: We know his family, we know where he comes from, and I don't know that we can believe that his identity is the Messiah because of where he comes from.
SPEAKER_00: Nazareth?
SPEAKER_00: Really?
SPEAKER_00: Some wondered if Jesus was the Messiah, while others considered the thought blasphemous.
SPEAKER_00: And along the way, there's this developing controversy between the religious leaders and Jesus' disciples.
SPEAKER_00: The leaders are vehemently rejecting Jesus as the Messiah, but the disciples, they're believing.
SPEAKER_00: And even though their faith is small, Jesus says, their understanding of who Jesus is continues to grow.
SPEAKER_00: And here, for the first time, Jesus presses the point of his true identity.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where we have to really begin with what we take away from this text.
SPEAKER_00: We have to realize there is one essential truth to this passage.
SPEAKER_00: It's about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He asks, who do the people say that I am?
SPEAKER_00: Who do you say that I am?
SPEAKER_00: He tells the disciples that he will build his church, that he will give the keys to Peter, etc.
SPEAKER_00: This is not about Peter.
SPEAKER_00: This is not about Peter's authority.
SPEAKER_00: This is not about papal succession or bishop, bishop succession.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, this isn't even about the church.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean we can't gain some clarity and some information about those subjects.
SPEAKER_00: What it means is this is about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And if you walk away from this passage of scripture overwhelmed by something other than Jesus, you've missed the point.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't give us instructions to be followed.
SPEAKER_00: He merely says what will be.
SPEAKER_00: He gives descriptions.
SPEAKER_00: So Matthew then leads us into this section with the smallest of points.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi.
SPEAKER_00: First it was Tyre and Sidon, almost directly west of Caesarea Philippi on the sea coast.
SPEAKER_00: Then it was the Gentile region across the Sea of Galilee, and now Caesarea Philippi?
SPEAKER_00: Tyre and Sidon, that's that's bad enough.
SPEAKER_00: Caesarea Philippi?
SPEAKER_00: Really?
SPEAKER_00: Matthew's Jewish readers would be aghast.
SPEAKER_00: But it prompts Jesus to ask an innocent question of the disciples.
SPEAKER_00: The innocent question is, what does the world say about me?
SPEAKER_00: Now we know that the Jewish officials were antagonistic.
SPEAKER_00: We know what they thought about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But what about everyone else?
SPEAKER_00: Caesarea Philippi is sometimes spoken of as the edge of the Jewish world.
SPEAKER_00: So we're not too far from the Canadian border.
SPEAKER_00: You can kind of consider that as similar in the Jewish mindset to Caesarea Philippi.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the edge of our country.
SPEAKER_00: It's the edge of our known sphere of influence and functioning.
SPEAKER_00: So there, at the edge of our world, what does the world say?
SPEAKER_00: And the answers are interesting.
SPEAKER_00: Some say John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's a bit of a problem because John has recently lost his head.
SPEAKER_00: Not mentally, literally.
SPEAKER_00: Herod had beheaded him.
SPEAKER_00: He's dead, so if he's John the Baptist, then he's John the Baptist raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Some say Elijah.
SPEAKER_00: Elijah was like Enoch in that he didn't die, he was taken up to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe this is Elijah returned to earth.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's Jeremiah, the prophet who often denounced contemporary leadership and society and worship.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus did a lot of that.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he's Jeremiah, come back from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he's one of the other prophets that's returned from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't quite sure of Jesus' identity, but they were convinced, yeah, he's most likely one of God's prophets.
SPEAKER_00: Sent to declare the word of God and to correct things that are going on in our world.
SPEAKER_00: But these answers that the world gives do not include Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: They do not include Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: They do not include Son of Man.
SPEAKER_00: They do not include God in the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: There's no thought to his deity.
SPEAKER_00: Only that his relationship to God was one of a special spokesman sent by God.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing new under the Son, is there?
SPEAKER_00: That's what our world today says about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Most people are aware of Jesus and they they they consider him to be a great man.
SPEAKER_00: Some might revere him as a great prophet or a distinguished teacher.
SPEAKER_00: Some view him as the greatest of God's creations.
SPEAKER_00: But few see in Jesus anything more than what people of his own time saw.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing new under the sun.
SPEAKER_00: But the issue here in Matthew's gospel is that Jesus is the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: What did the angel tell Joseph?
SPEAKER_00: Name him Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he will save his people from their sins.
SPEAKER_00: He's the king of Israel, who is God in the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: That could be seen, Matthew says.
SPEAKER_00: But so many refused to see it.
SPEAKER_00: And so those popular answers that are out there in the world move Jesus to ask the disciples a challenging question, not an innocent question, a challenging question.
SPEAKER_00: He says, What do you say?
SPEAKER_00: And his challenging question is what moves Peter to confess that he is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: Now we ought to know by now, right, that what is often presented to us in the world as the popular perception is rarely correct.
SPEAKER_00: It's rarely correct.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that we get in our world is filtered.
SPEAKER_00: It's modified in some way.
SPEAKER_00: And rarely do we get the pure truth.
SPEAKER_00: So when we apply that to what the world says about Jesus, yeah, they're probably not going to give us the pure truth.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus asked his disciples, You're not the world.
SPEAKER_00: Here we are on the edge of the world, as it were, and the world says all of these things, but what do you say?
SPEAKER_00: What do you say?
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully the disciples have learned a thing or two that will cause them to be different, to think differently.
SPEAKER_00: So he asks his disciples, what do you believe?
SPEAKER_00: And the you here is plural.
SPEAKER_00: And it's emphatic.
SPEAKER_00: He's speaking to the group of disciples collectively, all of them together, with an emphatic contrast.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, the world thinks this way, but what do you think?
SPEAKER_00: I know the world has that perception.
SPEAKER_00: What is your perception?
SPEAKER_00: And this is the heart of the issue.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples have been with Jesus for some time now.
SPEAKER_00: They've heard the disputes with the Jewish leaders, they've witnessed the healings, they participated in the miraculous feedings, they've listened to Jesus' teachings.
SPEAKER_00: Who do they think he is?
SPEAKER_00: And without being too blunt, the same question should be posed to you.
SPEAKER_00: Who do you say he is?
SPEAKER_00: You've been to church.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've grown up in Sunday school.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've been to Iwana through the whole program.
SPEAKER_00: You know all the Bible stories, you know all, you know, you know all that Bible stuff.
SPEAKER_00: You've heard of his miracles and his teachings.
SPEAKER_00: Who do you think he is?
SPEAKER_00: Is your view of the Lord Jesus any different than what you might find in the rest of the world?
SPEAKER_00: Be careful how you answer that question.
SPEAKER_00: Because how you answer that question is a matter of life and death.
SPEAKER_00: Can you believe in the real identity of someone who holds your life and your death in his hands?
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes refused.
SPEAKER_00: They just outright refused to accept that Jesus is the promised King, the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: They couldn't see that.
SPEAKER_00: They couldn't see everything that Matthew presents to us about how Jesus fulfilled this passage and this passage and this promise and this expectation.
SPEAKER_00: They couldn't see it, they were blind to it.
SPEAKER_00: They chose the broad road leading through the wide gate to eternal destruction.
SPEAKER_00: And anyone who chooses to believe that your way is right, that Jesus can't be the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone who views their perception and the world's perception to be the right road is on a self-condemning path to hell.
SPEAKER_00: But Peter says, Lord, we we believe that you are the king.
SPEAKER_00: You're the son of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter's confession is powerful.
SPEAKER_00: Never before in the gospel record does Jesus ask his disciples about their thoughts regarding his identity.
SPEAKER_00: This is the first time.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter answers with an astounding declaration on behalf of the disciples.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Jesus is the promised king, he's the son of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus responds to that.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Peter, there's no way that you would have come up with that on your own.
SPEAKER_00: Peter, you open your mouth and you say some strange things sometimes, but you would have never come up with that one on your own.
SPEAKER_00: There's no way that Peter could reach that kind of conclusion in his own humanity.
SPEAKER_00: That was divine revelation, Jesus said.
SPEAKER_00: And it's no different today.
SPEAKER_00: The gift of faith is a gift of God.
SPEAKER_00: Now the innocent question led to Peter's confession.
SPEAKER_00: And that revelation that Peter spouts out is the church's profession.
SPEAKER_00: It's what we profess.
SPEAKER_00: The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ declares, it professes that he is the King, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Jesus purposely works to draw statements of faith out of people.
SPEAKER_00: We see that over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: He does that throughout the Gospels.
SPEAKER_00: The most recent was the Canaanite woman in the region of Tyre and Sidon.
SPEAKER_00: She acknowledged, without ever having seen him or even heard him teach, that he is the Jewish Messiah, the promised king of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: But Peter's confession goes a step further.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, Jesus is the king.
SPEAKER_00: But his kingship is a divine kingship because he is the son of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: That's quite a leap.
SPEAKER_00: It's quite a leap for anyone to go from following a rabbi around the country to believing that he is God's promised Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: It's yet another leap to go from believing that he's a good rabbi to believing that he's the Messiah to believing that he's the Son of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: That he's God in the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: We know it's a leap because the most trained religious people of the day would not believe it.
SPEAKER_00: But Peter's expressing what the disciples believed.
SPEAKER_00: And their consensus of faith is that Jesus is the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: And that is our profession.
SPEAKER_00: The Christian faith begins there.
SPEAKER_00: And if a person or a group or a religion is not willing to confess that Jesus is God, then it is not Christian.
SPEAKER_00: So what does Jesus do with Peter's confession?
SPEAKER_00: He confirms it.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 17, Jesus answered, Simon, you're more blessed than you know.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus confirms the confession of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Now remember that Peter often speaks on behalf of the disciples.
SPEAKER_00: That's part of what made him the primary leader of the disciples, is that he just opened his mouth more than the rest of them.
SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of what he does here.
SPEAKER_00: As a group, they have reached the belief that Jesus is the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus confirms their faith.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood have not revealed this to you.
SPEAKER_00: You guys, even as a collective group, as bright as you are, or as crazy as you are, you would have never come up with that on your own.
SPEAKER_00: That is the divine revelation of God from my Father who is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And here Jesus switches to a singular pronoun.
SPEAKER_00: He initially addressed the whole group.
SPEAKER_00: What do you collectively think about this?
SPEAKER_00: Now it's singular, it's addressing Peter and it's emphasized: blessed are you, Peter, the son of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Now notice what Jesus does here.
SPEAKER_00: He confirms Peter's profession of faith by using parallels.
SPEAKER_00: Peter is the son of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: And just like Peter is the son of Jonah, Jesus is the son of God.
SPEAKER_00: Peter, you have a relationship to your father.
SPEAKER_00: You are identified as Bar Jonah, son of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jonah is your father.
SPEAKER_00: I am identified with the Father in heaven because I am his son.
SPEAKER_00: And as Peter is the image of his father, so too is Jesus the image of God the Father.
SPEAKER_00: But that is not something that can be discerned by human perception.
SPEAKER_00: Left to his own devices, left to his own skill, his own discernment, Peter would never arrive at the conviction that Jesus is the incarnation of God.
SPEAKER_00: But he is Emmanuel, left to their own study and left to their own intellectual capacities.
SPEAKER_00: The religious leaders, the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees would never conclude that Jesus is Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Isaiah told us why.
SPEAKER_00: In Isaiah chapter 53.
SPEAKER_00: You're familiar with it.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah wrote, He had no form or majesty that we should look at him.
SPEAKER_00: He had no beauty that we should desire him.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he was despised.
SPEAKER_00: And he was rejected by men.
SPEAKER_00: Who would want to be around a man of sorrows anyway?
SPEAKER_00: He was a man who was acquainted with grief on a regular basis.
SPEAKER_00: He was one from whom men hide their faces because he's despised, and we did not esteem him.
SPEAKER_00: That's why they could not see the real identity of Jesus because all they looked at was the human reality standing in front of them.
SPEAKER_00: And Isaiah prophesied about the human reaction to Jesus, and it was an adverse reaction because Jesus' true identity as the Son of God is a spiritual truth that cannot be discerned in human ways.
SPEAKER_00: That discernment has to come from somewhere else.
SPEAKER_00: That faith must come from outside of Peter, from outside of the disciples, from outside of us.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the Apostle Paul told the church at Corinth.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: He says, the natural person, the person who's living a human life, does not see or accept the things of the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because they're foolish to him.
SPEAKER_00: He's not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
SPEAKER_00: The religious leaders and most of the Jews were blinded by their sin and their traditions and could only see foolishness when they looked at Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Why in the world would twelve men give up their lives to follow him?
SPEAKER_00: But Peter and the disciples have something more.
SPEAKER_00: The Father in heaven has revealed the truth of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There may not be a more prominent place in Scripture that shows us that faith in Christ is a gift from God.
SPEAKER_00: I like the way one commentator puts it.
SPEAKER_00: He says, God the Father not only sends his son, he sends faith in his son.
SPEAKER_00: He sends both Christ and faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: They are both God's gift.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Ephesians chapter 2 tells us, right?
SPEAKER_00: For by grace you have been saved through faith.
SPEAKER_00: And this is not your own doing.
SPEAKER_00: It is the gift of God.
SPEAKER_00: Peter and the disciples didn't come to faith in Jesus because they followed him and saw the signs.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't believe in him because they were sincere or genuine, or they believed Jesus to be sincere or genuine.
SPEAKER_00: They believed because God the Father revealed the true identity of the Son to them, granting them the gift of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus confirms the declaration that Peter made about his identity.
SPEAKER_00: And friends, that real identity of Jesus is the church's proclamation.
SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians, we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Colossae, therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.
SPEAKER_00: Peter himself wrote, Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, in those contexts, is the New Testament identification of Jesus with Yahweh in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: He is the God that Israel worshipped and followed.
SPEAKER_00: He is the Lord of lords.
SPEAKER_00: He is the King of kings.
SPEAKER_00: As Jeremy read for us earlier, he was the rock that gave Israel water.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus drew out of Peter the same profession that we declare as the Lord's people and the Lord's church.
SPEAKER_00: It's what we preach.
SPEAKER_00: For if Jesus is not the Son of the living God, then our faith is in vain.
SPEAKER_00: It's a preview of resurrection Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_00: If a gathering of people, if an assembly of people does not proclaim the real ID of Jesus, then it is not his church.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to have to stop here and continue this next week because Jesus continues to make a claim that's hard to understand.
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to need a lot more time to handle that well.
SPEAKER_00: So let's think generally about these verses.
SPEAKER_00: A little bit in conclusion.
SPEAKER_00: That seemingly insignificant detail about Jesus' location in verse 13 is far, far from trivial.
SPEAKER_00: Think of the most idolatrous place in our country, or maybe in our world, that you can imagine.
SPEAKER_00: Try to imagine the most idolatrous place that you know of.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you imagine the the Buddhas of India and other parts of Asia.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you imagine Mecca with its idolatry of Muhammad.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you imagine them the less developed parts of our world where animism still drives people to be in fear of spirits.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you imagine Wall Street and the idolatry of money.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you imagine middle and upper class America with our with our idolatry of possessions.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you imagine a world that places self as an idol.
SPEAKER_00: The self that can be any creature or any sex or any identity you choose as long as you are happy.
SPEAKER_00: Now imagine yourself there.
SPEAKER_00: In that place of idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: Surrounded.
SPEAKER_00: Surrounded by the evil of worshiping something other than God.
SPEAKER_00: And there, perhaps even with your own heart drawn to those idols.
SPEAKER_00: There, as your your heart is thinking, maybe there's something to that.
SPEAKER_00: There, Jesus asks you, who do you say that I am?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Does Jesus, the King, the Son of the living God, rise above all of the idols in your world, in your life, and in your heart?
SPEAKER_00: Many, you'll probably get in trouble for saying this.
SPEAKER_00: Many churches across the world are idolatrous.
SPEAKER_00: They idolize money, power, influence, connections.
SPEAKER_00: They refuse to acknowledge the rightful place of Jesus, the great king, the son of the living God, and bowing to him in submission.
SPEAKER_00: They're not churches.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the true identity of Jesus is what makes an assembly of people his church.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the true King.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the true Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the gods of Greek and Roman mythology were considered immortal.
SPEAKER_00: That is, they didn't die.
SPEAKER_00: A mythological god with a little g was lived forever, was immortal.
SPEAKER_00: But world history, world history has retained for us an interesting little tidbit.
SPEAKER_00: Emperor Tiberius, the Roman Emperor Tiberius reigned from 14 A.D.
SPEAKER_00: to 37 A.D.
SPEAKER_00: So he was he was the reigning emperor during this time period, during the ministry of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: During the reign of Emperor Tiberius, news came to the Roman world that Pan, the son of the god Hermes, died.
SPEAKER_00: It's recorded that when he heard the news, Emperor Tiberius declared that he could not believe that Hermes' son was dead.
SPEAKER_00: But the report declared that Pan, the son of the god, was dead.
SPEAKER_00: And he's the only mythological god to have died in Roman mythology.
SPEAKER_00: Now we cannot pinpoint exactly when that news reached the Roman Emperor Empire and the Roman Emperor.
SPEAKER_00: But we're probably safe to conclude that it was in the few years prior to this point, or maybe the few years after this moment when Jesus was at Caesarea Philippi with his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: So how apropos is it that here, near the very place where Pan was worshipped, that Pan, that son of the gods, was overcome and died, ushered by his supposed father into Hades, the realm of death.
SPEAKER_00: But there is another son, the Christ, the King, the Son of the living God, who in the next few verses will set his face directly toward Jerusalem, where he will endure the cross.
SPEAKER_00: That son of the God is the one who bore the weight of sin and who died and was buried, but whom the gates of Hades and destruction could not hold, though they tried desperately to overcome him.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist tells us it was fulfillment.
SPEAKER_00: It was not possible for his soul to be abandoned to Hades because the Son of the living God carries the image of his father, which means he lives.
SPEAKER_00: Death cannot hold him.
SPEAKER_00: Would you pray with me?
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: How awesome it is that you have conquered death and the realm of death and the grave.
SPEAKER_00: And you live, and because you live, we can live.
SPEAKER_00: Oh Lord Jesus, thank you for that grace and that mercy that you give us.
SPEAKER_00: May we always look to you and see you.
SPEAKER_00: Not with human eyes, not with physical eyes, but with eyes of faith.
SPEAKER_00: May you, by your grace and the work of your spirit, grant us the faith to see you as you truly are.
SPEAKER_00: The true Son of the Living God.
SPEAKER_00: And one day our faith will become sight.
SPEAKER_00: And we will see you, not just with eyes of faith, but with our real eyes, our true eyes that are in our bodies.
SPEAKER_00: We look forward to that day.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that you've promised to do the work of building your church and that you've gathered us together to be a part of that.
SPEAKER_00: May you surround us with your protection so that we might always and forever continue to declare and to profess that you are the King, the Son of the Living God.
SPEAKER_00: So the praise of your glorious grace.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_01: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.