Who do you say I am

Hear the word of the Lord from Matthew chapter 16 beginning in verse 13. Now when Jesus came into the district of Cesaria Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the son of man is?" And they said, "Some say John the Baptist and others say Elijah and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." And he said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter replied and said,"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjonah, for you're for flesh and blood has not revealed those to you, but my father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

My name is Derek. For those who I haven't had a chance to meet, I'm one of the elders here. Stephen and Sherry uh dropped their oldest off at college this weekend. And so, uh we're giving Steven a break. Much needed. And uh I'm grateful for the opportunity to have a minute with you this morning. Uh on this coming Tuesday, my sister is going to uh board a plane in Seattle with my 89year-old mother and fly with her to Augusta, Georgia. My sister's uh started a new job in Augusta, and relocating my mom closer is essential. And while uh you know maybe taking an elderly mother on a plane sounds a little daunting, it seems at least on the surface fairly doable until you begin to drill down and understand that my mother is wheelchair bound, which certainly adds a measure of complexity to the whole process. In addition, she's lost most of her short-term memory. So when you're with her, you have the same conversation. over and over and over again. And my sister gets to sit next to her for about 5 and a half hours.

It's complicated even further by my mother's need to use the bathroom nearly every hour. The whole thing begins to feel pretty overwhelming.

So, if you uh happen to remember my sister and my mother on Tuesday and can uh give her a quick prayer, I'd be grateful. But this is a little how I felt looking at the text this week. On the surface, it's familiar. Peter's confession of Jesus is the Christ. And Jesus affirms Peter. Kind of nice. really relatively simple, easy for us to apply as we understand that at some in some sense we all need to come to that same conclusion about Jesus. CS Lewis wrote about the great trillemma, a need to respond to the claims of Jesus in one of three ways. either Jesus was a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord.

You may conclude that he is simply a liar, a charlatan, just trying to dupe people to following him. You may also conclude that he's a lunatic. That while what he is saying isn't true, he believed it

or that he is in fact who he claimed to be, the Lord. I think it's maybe not hard to imagine that as the disciples have been following Jesus around, they've wondered all those things along the way at one time or another. whether this is Jesus who's dragged them all over the countryside and said just absolutely crazy things at least to their ears at the time. Is he who he says he is? Have Have I dropped everything for no reason at all? Is he some sort of crazy man? Have I signed up with something that's just off the wall? Or is he in fact who he says he is?

But this passage really settles that issue at least for Peter. And in that we assume that Peter is somehow a spokesman for the larger group of disciples. But as you look a little bit deeper, there are some elements of this text that make it a bit more complicated. Jesus and the disciples are in Cesaria Philippi, a decidedly gentile and pagan area. And as near as I can tell, this is the only recorded event in scripture where they are in Cesaria Philippi. Is that significant?

Then there's this statement that Jesus makes about upon this rock I will build my church. A statement whose differing understandings were literally part of the Protestant Reformation and the split of the church

hundreds of years later. And then there's Jesus statement about the keys of the kingdom and the binding and loosing of things on earth and in heaven. And all of the sudden it doesn't feel quite so simple anymore. Feels a little more complicated.

And I don't um stand up here and presume to have all the answers this morning. I've studied this for several weeks and I'm wrestling with many of the same ideas I started with. Many smarter people than me have studied this and written about this and consensus is elusive. But there are thing I think there are some things here that we can begin to knit together into something that is kind of beautiful and encouraging particularly for those of us who have been grafted in adopted into the covenant who were not Jewish by birth and so we're not necessarily part of that initial promise for those chosen people of God to Abraham the descendants of Abraham.

So before I pray and we jump in, a little public service announcement. There will be some places along the way where we're going to dig into some technical elements like some Greek grammar. For some of you, the word grammar strikes fear and loathing even if I was talking about English grammar.

And I get it. Maybe not always the most fun or interesting thing. I think some of you are going to geek out on it and be all up in it. And that's great, but I think it's critical to understanding the text a to understand a little bit of the context and the background and the words that Jesus uses this morning. So I provide that just as a warning. Um, you're not free to go. I mean, you are, but So pray with me and we'll jump in. Father in heaven, we come to you this morning with uh your word to us. I think that's important for us to remember this is your word to us. And what we seek here this morning is to hear then from you, not from me.

So, it is my prayer that you would speak, that your Holy Spirit would take the words that I say and apply them to the hearts of your people here this morning, that we might hear what it is that you would have for us.

And while we're going to wrestle with some maybe more difficult things than sometimes we do, it is my prayer that you would bring clarity. So we trust you to do the things that only you can do.

Speak this morning, Father, in Jesus name.

So let's look again at verses 13- 15. I'm calling this the question now. When Jesus came to the district of Cesaria Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do you say that the son of man is?" And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." And he said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"

The scene with Jesus and the disciples coming into Cesaria Philippi, which is about 25 or 30° north of the Sea of Galilee. So the last time I was here, we talked, we were in Nazareth, right? Which is down here. Here's the Sea of Galilee. Here's Capernaum where Jesus and the dip disc disciples did most of their stuff. We had gone to to where Nazareth for the whole, you know, prophets have no honor in their hometown. But here we're in Cesar Philippi. It's way up here. This is Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, and Dead Sea. And Jerusalem's way down here. So we're we're way way up here. It's about 25 or 30 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. It it is also fully gentile. I mean not partially I mean we are talking fully fully gentile and it is the center of pagan worship. It isn't a place you would just pass through. It isn't a place you would just stumble on. Sorry, I don't know. place of Baal worship in the Old Testament during the period of the kings and for the previous couple hundred years it was the center of worship of the halfgoat halfh human fertility god Pan and there was a cave there called Paneon and it was considered the gateway to the underworld and unspeakable things happened in a temple at the mouth of this cave that I can't even bring myself to talk about.

And the fact that they're here in this area near this city will become important in a bit. I have to believe Jesus disciples, largely good Jewish men and women, couldn't imagine that they would ever be in a place like this. It is a place that would have been so off limits, so out of bounds for a good Jewish person.

By leaving Galilee, the crowds left behind. Jesus left behind the crowds that had been so ever present with him. And maybe that's part of the reason they got out of town was so that Jesus could have this more intimate conversation with his disciples.

if you remember. Um, but on the surface Jesus actually gives us no reason why they ended up in Cesaria Philippi. Just doesn't say. It just says here they are Cesar Philippi. If you remember last week when Jesus was asked by the Canaanite women woman to heal her daughter, Jesus initially declines saying that he was there to minister to the lost children of Israel, to Jewish people, if you will. This is the true sense of what his arrival was uh promised uh to Israel in the Old Testament. Yet his mission was ultimately bigger than that, united by their faith in him. Um he was to gather to himself a people that numbered more than the stars.

Stephen made the point last week that while Jesus initially declines, he ultimately responds because the faith of the woman was so great. And he ultimately makes the point that his faith is not that our faith is not um united by ethnicity

but is united by the object of our faith, the person of Jesus. So near this center of pagan worship where just unspeakable things occurs, Jesus says to them, "Who do the people say the son of man is?" And just so we're all on the same page, the son of man was Jesus favorite expression or way of referring to himself. It is at the same time a common expression that literally means son of a man.

but is also a reference to a vision in Daniel chapter 7 where the ancient of days descends from heaven as one like the son of man and was given dominion and glory and the kingdom of God. So one one phrase Jesus declares both his humanity and his divinity and he also positions himself as the one who has dominion and authority. And yet I also think it gives himself some cover with Jewish leadership because he could it sort of gives him some plausible deniability. Look, I'm just the son of a man. And it gives them a little bit of cover.

The disciples answer John the Baptist, Elijah or Jeremiah or the prophets. And what they all have in common is they're just men. They're just people. Maybe implied in the scene is a question that Jesus asks where he um would would point to the city that's there behind him

and the pagan table t pagan temple and say well well who who would they say I am?

Many of them likely had not heard of him at all. these pagan uh um people in in in Cesaria Philippi and it isn't always easy to comprehend. We we recited the Nyine creed together and the whole intersection of that was an attempt to try and put words to who we believe Jesus is.

Fully God and fully man.

One God, three persons. It isn't easy to understand, but these are critical to understanding our view of God and how the whole gospel message knits together.

Oh, there we are. Sorry, I got lost here for a second.

Verse 16, Jesus goes on and says, um, Simon Peter replies, Jesus doesn't say this. Matthew writes the Simon Peter replies, "You are Christ, the son of the living God." You know, when I taught chemistry, I taught high school chemistry for a number of years. When I taught chemistry, I'd ask a question. I'd ask a question like, "What's the first law of ther thermodynamics? And I would look in this room full of teenagers whose eyes immediately went down and there would be side eyes to one another and they would nobody would want to try and answer the question, right? There's a lot of and in my mind I I sort of have this picture of Jesus turning to his disciples and saying, "Well, who do you say I am?" sort of kicking the dirt and they're all kind of looking around. Maybe they're eyeing Peter and going

and Peter answers the trillemma with the only true answer. Matthew includes this in his gospel and is I think by including it asking the same of us. Who do we say that Jesus is?

It is really the central question of the gospel. Is it not?

Either Jesus is who he says he is and we follow him or it isn't or he isn't. Verse

17.

And Jesus answered him, him here is Peter, and says, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjonah, for flesh has not revealed this you to you, but my father who is in heaven, and I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." So Jeter Jesus affirms Peter and says, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjonah." Simon was Peter's given name by his parents. And if you remember all the way back to when Jesus initially called him, that's when Jesus said, "I'm going to call you Peter."

So there's something in this that hearkens back, I think, to Peter's sort of origin story, which we presume to be relatively humble, likely the son of a laborer, maybe even a fisherman like he was.

Anybody that was an adult, a Jewish adult, and was a laborer meant that he'd been passed over for Hebrew school, sort of gotten the basics of education, and at some point he washed out, didn't move on, and he was then left to an honorable yet simple profession as a laborer.

And yet here he is blessed with insight and understanding. I called this section revelation partly because it ends in shun and fits my pattern

but also because Jesus makes the statement that Peter is blessed not because he is somehow smarter than anyone but because this insight has been revealed to him by his father. It is a reminder of some of what Jesus says that the work of changing hearts and minds is ultimately the work of God. Steven reminded us last week as well when he reminded us that we're all born sinful. That our minds and our hearts are clouded by sin, unable to see spiritual things accurately without the intervention of the spirit of God. Part of this is a reality of a mind clouded by sin. But much of it is, I believe, it keeps us humble and dependent. This is this is not our inherent smarts that make the difference. Parents, we want to guarantee the spiritual condition of our children and we follow the scriptural instructions to teach diligently, but ultimately we entrust their spiritual condition and their spiritual fate to the Lord. We have no other option. We cannot guarantee their spiritual fate. We rely on the one who can. Blessed are you, Simon Barjonah, for this has been revealed to you by my father, and that revelation, Simon, is a true blessing. His next statement is loaded. It says, "And I tell you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church." It starts okay with a statement that Jesus has already made that Cphus

is his name will be his new name or Peter in Greek in Greek it's actually literally Petros which means rock and I think does affirm Peter in his role as the spokesman of the disciples one who would lead the church in Jerusalem and a true apostle. But it sets up a play on words that is not obvious in England. In England, you know those English people. I'm sorry. It's not obvious in English. The language. Sorry. England has nothing to do with it in English because Jesus goes on to say upon this rock Petra.

So, blessed are you, Simon Barjonah. I'm calling you Peter Petros. Upon this rock, Petra, I will build my church. Discussion continues today on exactly what Jesus means here by this rock. There are at least three interpretations. First is that Jesus is saying he is going to build his church upon Peter. The word play is strong. It is not the same root. It is the same root, but the rock there's different variations and they are a different they are different words with slightly different emphasis. Some make the point that this discussion was likely happening in Aramaic. It would have been their everyday language what they spoke with one another. In Aramaic, there is no difference in the words. So that would somehow like there is no difference in English.

Peter is an important part of the initial building of the church and we'll talk more about that again in verse 19. But in the Catholic tradition, it is this verse that they believe established Peter as the future bishop of Rome or what they now call the pope and entrusted him with specific powers and authority that would then be passed down from pope to pope until today.

The arguments against this view are many, but they include a number of things like if Jesus intent was to establish Peter as the rock of the and and and upon the church that he was going to build, it would have been more straightforward to say, "Blessed are you, Peter, upon you I will build my church." He doesn't say that. says upon this rock I will build my church. Secondly, the words themselves in Greek as Matthew are have written to us are different. Peter or Petros means sort of small rock

while the rock in upon this rock Petra means big rock or maybe even like mountain. So sort of a rock a small rock from the bigger rock kind of idea. So again, it it doesn't all come across in English and the whole Aramaic thing, but but Matthew is maybe providing us some interpretive background as he wrote it. This is one of the objections. And thirdly, while Peter is important in the history of the church, as we follow his story story through scripture, it's a bit checkered. in just a few verses. In verse 23, Jesus is going to turn to him and say, "Get behind me, Satan."

Peter denies Jesus at the resurre at his crucifixion. The first council um of the church in Acts, it's actually provided over by James, not Peter. And Paul ultimately confronts Peter for his failures with regards to gentile converts to the faith. So, so Peter's hardly the model of the church.

The second interpretation is that when Jesus says, "Upon this rock, I will build my church," he's actually talking about himself. The idea seems to foretell the idea uh that Peter would later write in his first apo in his first epistle when he says this in chapter 2:7 the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone talking about Jesus or Paul in Ephesians chapter 2 so you are no longer strangers and aliens but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you are also being built together into dwelling place for the uh for God by the spirit. There's some poetic completeness here, I think that's intriguing, yet it seems to require some additional assumptions as we read it

and then makes uh tying it to Peter's statement less clear.

Again, if if Jesus were if this was the point Jesus were going to make, it might have been clearer to say, "And upon me, I will build my church."

The third interpretation that is maybe the most popular Protestant idea is that the rock upon which Jesus will build the church is the truth and authority of Peter's confession.

It isn't Peter himself that is the rock, but his faith, a representative faith of the apostles and all who would come after him who share his faith in Jesus as the Christ. This third one seems to land in the most comfortable place and matches our understanding that it is ultimately our faith in the one true God and his son, our Messiah and Savior that unites us to the church worldwide. It isn't our common adherence to a representative man. It isn't a common language or heritage. It isn't even a common way of worship or practice. It is a common face.

My challenge is that if it is specifically what Jesus meant and all he meant, why didn't he just say that upon your faith I will build my church? Why throw in this whole word play about rock?

I built uh most of my seminary career and the papers that I wrote around a particular technique where I would take a passage similar to this and say, "Here's this interpretation. Here's this interpretation. Here's this interpretation." And I think it's all of them. And so I'm going to kind of land in the same place today that there's a reason all of these have survived for 2,000 years is maybe because each of them carries a certain element of truth.

Peter is the one who stepped forward. No one else.

In chapter 17, he ends up on the Mount of Transfiguration with James and John to see Jesus transfigured with Moses and Elijah. He does become the leader of the church in Jerusalem. He authors two letters that are included in the book as scripture

and Jesus does specifically declare his blessing in our text today. All of that seems important as context.

But we do also have the benefit of being able to look back on a fuller revelation of Christ. And I even think about Jesus words in John when Jesus says, "I will destroy this temple and in 3 days I will raise it up." And the Jews said, "It will has taken 46 years to build this. How you will raise it up in three days." is again this idea that Jesus is the stone upon which the church is built is just packed through the New Testament.

So that has some merit to me that the church is built on Christ

and yet at every turn Jesus has affirmed that it is ultimately the faith that has connected people to himself. As Steven pointed out last week, it is so often the faith of the Gentiles that is particularly affirmed. Cornelius had the faith that Jesus hadn't seen in all of Israel. And then this Canaanite woman who wanted her daughter healed.

Again, I don't have any ability to discern the full meaning of the text that has eluded so many for so long, but it seems to me that all of these ideas have some merit and that maybe Jesus left it a little bit unclear so we would do exactly what we're doing today, which is wrestle with the text and try to seek him and understand what it is that he would have for us. wrestling with these same ideas and finding ourselves at his feet declaring that Jesus is Christ, the son of the living God. The one thing I know for sure that he does not want us to stay in the difficulties of Greek grammar and syntax and lose sight of the beauty of the gospel that is summed up in Jesus question. Who do you say that I am?

and Peter's confession that we should all share. You are the Christ, the son of the living God.

Two more quick things before I move on. First, this is one of two only two times in the entire uh gospels where the word church or eklesia in Greek is on Jesus lips. He's talked a ton about the kingdom of God, but here's the first time he mentions this idea of church.

The kingdom of God refers to God's reign and rule fully realized in Genesis 1 before the fall and again in Revelation 21 20 21 and 22 where God is fully in control ruling over his creation and evil has been cast out and no longer present.

And while we long for this promised return where we all will be made right and his holy and righteous order will replace the disorder of sin. We are those united by faith. The church, the calledout ones of God. That's what it literally means. Called out ones of God. his covenant people who manifest his power and authority in our lives and the spirit empowered victory over sin that we should be increasingly demonstrating. This church or ecclesia is ultimately undefeable by the very gates and evil of hell or literally Hades which is the Greek translation of the old old testament word shol which was understood to be the holding place of the spirits of the evil ones awaiting final judgment.

Second, it is represented by the cave they were standing near, the very gates of hell. Somehow, it seems to me that this statement is the reason Jesus brought them to Cesaria Philippi, so he could tell them, "The gates of hell will not stand against my church."

Jesus' power and authority is not limited to Jewish people, but all but all who share this faith, this common confession. You are the Christ, the son of the living God. It is not limited to things of earth, but it is an authority that reigns over the very gates of hell. And the enemy has nothing that he can bring to bear against that. It is a powerful promise about the lasting power and authority of Jesus. And we gather here halfway around the world from where those words were uttered 2,000 years later

demonstrating the very power of that promise that the gates of hell cannot stand against the church. We take not only comfort in this, but confidence as we live our missional lives in a world that too often believes we are the ones following a liar or a lunatic.

The promise Jesus made that day to Peter and the disciples remains in place for us. and the great cosmic struggle between good and evil. Despite the temporary nature of our own earthly struggles, not just with external influences, but with those internal temptations as well, we know that Christ and his church will prevail. Verse 19.

I will give you, you Peter, the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. This is another passage that has given the church some trouble through the years. The U in this passage in this in these in this verse is singular, not plural. So he's not saying you, he's saying you presumably to Peter.

This is clear in Greek. We lose it in English. Darn second person in English. It's just the the number is unclear. But in Greek, it's clear singular.

But it's also a future tense, which means it's not true now. It will be someday. I will give you the keys to the kingdom. And it likely points to a time after Jesus resurrection. The keys likely point to the admitting of people into and out of the covenant. And if we look forward to Acts, it is Peter Peter Peter who officially opens the gospel to the Gentiles. Chapter 10 of Acts verse 28. And he Peter said to them, "You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me

that I should not call any person common or unclean."

after he preaches this in in this text in Acts, the Holy Spirit indwells the gentile believers just as it originally did into the Jewish believers at Pentecost. I think this is what Jesus is what Jesus means when he gives Peter the kingdoms the keys to the kingdom. It isn't to exclude as the Pharisees had done were prone to do but ultimately to include keys to open this up this gospel up to the larger population to include those of us who were not of Jewish descent.

Remember the whole backdrop for today's story is this pagan city of Cesaria Philippi. And one of the first questions we asked was why Jesus would take them there. And I think this is at the crux of it. Jesus is expanding their understanding of what the kingdom and the people of God means. And the final thing here is this idea of binding and loosing. Again, without being too technical, the form of these two whatevers, whatever you bind or whatever you loose, the form of these two whatevers indicates things that are not people but things. And so most associate this with practices or or or things that uh or are to be um the conduct of the people of the church. In addition, the tense of these two verbs bound and loose is maybe more accurately translated whatever you bind on earth shall have already bound been bound shall have already been bound in heaven. Whatever you loose shall have already been loosed.

The emphasis then is that it is a matter of revelation of heavenly guidance not of mere authority. Peter is executing what is already true. Do you see the difference?

Many connect this to New Testament changes to the Jewish ceremonial laws that are coming. The removing of kosher food restrictions in Acts in the same passage we already discussed in Acts chapter 10. The restrictions on the Sabbath that Jesus has already challenged a number of times with the Jewish leaders. And these are what Peter is to bind and loose. And it's what we see in Acts.

Well, we made it. It's a lot. I get it. Was a lot for me to try and rustle through these last couple of weeks. some technical stuff in here and I truthfully did not want to get too bogged down in it, but I thought it was important for our understanding of the text to see the background and what it was that maybe Jesus was really saying.

The message I believe is directly then to those of us who are part of Jesus eklesia, the calledout ones, his church and his set aart ones, specifically those of us who are part of the eklesia that do not share a Jewish heritage.

Jesus message is one that does not replace the Old Testament covenant but expands and clarifies the Old Testament covenant. The original promise to Abraham stated all the way back in Genesis 12 promised that this promise, this covenant would bless all the nations of the world. And here we are. Here we are, all the nations of the world gathered as an expression of his eklesia, his called out ones, having been admitted to the kingdom of heaven through the keys of the kingdom that were entrusted to Peter that day.

When I am up here, I often ask the question as we're trying to interpret the text, into whose shoes are we to put our feet when we understand this text? And today, in a way that we almost usually are not able to, I think the feet, the shoes were supposed to put on are our own. Jesus is speaking directly to us.

Who do you say that I am?

Who do you say that I am? And if we share the faith of Peter, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Then we know because Jesus has promised it that we are part of the eklesia and the gates of hell cannot stand against that.

Jesus closes today's text with an admonishment to the disciples to tell no one that he is the Christ. It's a pretty tactical instruction. I think Jesus uh for Jesus to be make public an overt confession of himself as the Messiah would have made all the things he had left to do really hard to do.

But the same gospel, this gospel of Matthew culminates in chapter 20 with a very different instruction that says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you

to the end of the age, people of God, those part of the eklesia, the calledout ones who share and are united by faith that Jesus is in fact the Messiah, the Christ, the son of the living God. Know that you are here because it has been revealed to you, not because you're so smart. You are here because he has sealed you as part of it. He's protected you and the gates of hell will not stand against it. And he has given you a command to go and tell.

Pray with me.