Blessed are you, for God has revealed this to you

Peter’s confession that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God” marks a turning point in Matthew’s Gospel—but Jesus reminds him that this recognition is itself a gift from God. Our hope rests not in our ability to understand or save ourselves, but in Christ, the Rock and cornerstone upon whom his Church is built.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Let us pray. Father in heaven, we come before your word now, and we ask that you would open our eyes, our ears, and our hearts to receive your truth, your gospel this morning. In Christ's name, we ask this. Amen. You may be seated. I feel like this is one of those loaded passages of scripture. And so just to get it clear on the record what I think about this, I will quote Martin Luther. Damn. You are the head of all the worst scoundrels on earth, a vicar of the devil, an enemy of God, an adversary of Christ, a destroyer of Christ, churches, a teacher of lies, blasphemies and idolatries, an arch thief and robber, a murderer of kings, an insider to all kinds of bloodshed. Even that which, and doing all those things which cannot be named, an Antichrist, a person of sin, a child of perdition, a true werewolf. That's uh Martin Luther on the Pope. Yeah, I was gonna ask who you thought that was about. But that's Martin Luther on the Pope. It's his book, Against the Papacy and Institution of the Devil, is a subtle title. And really, you know, Martin Luther is is saying something in exaggerated tones, and I think he probably didn't exaggerate. He really believed all of those things. We tend to use more polite language than those in the 16th century, and yet there is a desire to sort of lay exactly what we think on the table. Article 37 of the 39 Articles puts it a little bit more mildly, I would say, when it says that the Bishop of Rome has no jurisdiction in this realm. And while there are a few other references to the Pope and the Roman Church throughout the Articles, that declaration about the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome is as simple as it is defiant. We do not care what the Pope says is and is not lawful in the Roman Church. We just don't care. I mean, it's great that he has jurisdiction over his people, but his jurisdiction extends only to the limits of his episcopacy. But should we care what the Pope says? Should we care what he thinks? Well, in 601 A.D., so we're hearkening back 1400 and some odd years, a pope wrote to the very first Archbishop of Canterbury. Gregory the Great told Augustine of Canterbury that the authority to govern the church in and around England was in his hands. In other words, a pope in 601 A.D. knew something that the Pope since at least 1517 have failed to grasp: that the primacy of the church belongs to Christ and not to Peter. Throughout the early centuries of the second millennium, the idea of papal supremacy grew to be one of the defining marks of the Roman Church. So when Luther starts stirring the pot about indulgences and justification by faith alone, the response of the church was not necessarily that Luther was wrong biblically. The issue was that he was challenging the Pope's authority. Perhaps as much as anything else, Luther forced the Roman Church to show their cards. And they backed popes rather than supporting their own doctrine. Let's cut to the chase, shall we, if that's not cut enough for you. The entire structure of papal authority that is erected around Matthew 16, 18, and 19 is wrong from the outset. Peter is not the rock upon which the church is built. And Jesus' words were not interpreted by Peter as having that meaning in Matthew 16 when he said them, nor after the resurrection, when Peter is writing his first letter to the Christians who are spread all around the Roman Empire. Peter does not have the authority to forgive sins or to withhold forgiveness. And moreover, there is nothing in Matthew 16, and this is really the sort of nail in the coffin, if you will, there's nothing in Matthew 16 about Peter being able to pass on his authority to his successors. He can't pass on whatever he's received from Christ according to Matthew 16. That's all an invention. Now there's been a lot of writing done supporting any number of interpretations of Peter's significance. But again, let's be clear: the head of the church in heaven and on earth is Jesus Christ. He is the chief cornerstone upon which the church is built. So in Matthew 16, Jesus is taking the disciples out of a primarily Jewish area to Caesarea Philippi. They're walking around in a Roman city with statues of gods and goddesses and temples. And their last trip out to a Gentile area was when they met the Syrophoenician woman. So every time one of these things happened, something big happens. And on that occasion, the disciples listened to Jesus' interaction with a mother whose child was severely demon-oppressed. They had been trying to convince Jesus to send the lady away. And in a marvelous display of the humility of faith, the woman accepts that she does not deserve a seat at the table, but instead desires crumbs from that table. In other words, she knows that she doesn't have the right to demand something from Jesus, anything from Jesus. Instead, she casts herself and her daughter at the merciful feet of our Savior. And we don't have a record of what the disciples thought about that woman in her words. We don't have any record of where they are sitting there wondering, like, wow, this lady's got so amazing, much so much of an amazing faith in Jesus. We don't have that. But we do have Jesus' response. He marveled at her faith. She, Gentile dog that she was, could see who Jesus really was. Last week, Father Josh wondered with us why the disciples could not recognize in Jesus what that Gentile woman saw. And this week it seems that the disciples do finally understand who Jesus really is. However, it doesn't come the way that we would expect. As readers of the Gospel, we're always waiting on the people that are closest to Jesus to stand up and to defend him in those sticky argument situations with the Pharisees and the scribes and the Sadducees. You ever wonder why you don't see a lot of them standing up for Jesus through the Gospels? We're always waiting for them to do that. They instead would keep children away from Jesus, but not the Pharisees. Yet once they get far from the pressures of those crowds and the questions of the Pharisees, Jesus puts the spotlight on their understanding of who he is. And when Peter, on behalf of the whole group, declares that they believe Jesus to be the anointed one, the Christ, and the Son of the living God, he is not speaking out of what they have figured out on their own. They are bearing witness to what the Father has revealed to them. This passage, which has parallels in Mark and Luke, is a pivot point in the life and the ministry of Jesus and is the pivot point of all three of the synoptic gospels. After this event, Jesus focuses on the journey to Jerusalem and to the cross. So we could say Matthew 16, 13 to 20 is the Father revealing Jesus to his disciples as a preparation for Christ's own death. As the gospel turns to recounting the death and resurrection of Jesus, the important thing for the reader to remember is that Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed and sent one, the servant of God from Isaiah, and he is the Son of God. If Jesus were just a regular guy, then his death would have been the same as any other death. But if Jesus is the Christ, then his death literally changes everything. Jesus' words to Peter should be a great encouragement to us. He said, Blessed are you, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And we are blessed forever if we recognize that Jesus is God's Son and our Savior. But I want you to notice that this encouragement doesn't come from us. This is not an encouragement that, oh, I have studied this really hard, and I have understood all the things in the Bible, and my knowledge and my study has led me to this confidence that Jesus is the Son of God. That is not how the disciples came to understand who Jesus was, and that's not how we come to understand who Jesus is. This comes as a gift from God. It comes from God the Father who reveals his Son to the world and to us. And this morning, as we look at the scriptures together, we will see, hopefully, what Matthew, what Jesus is doing in Matthew 16, and with the Lord's help, what the Lord is doing amongst us now. Jesus and the disciples have been covering a lot of ground. And they've, in fact, they've covered a lot of ground since just last Sunday, when they were in Tyre and had that interaction with the Syrophoenician woman that we mentioned earlier. And this was a good bit, the Tyre is kind of northwest of Galilee. And so Jesus and the disciples, after visiting Tyre, return to Galilee, where Jesus heals the lame, the blind, the mute, and the crippled. But he also fed another crowd of people miraculously, this time 4,000 men plus women and children. And afterwards, Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees and the Sadducees, these sort of enemies about so many theological things are together against Jesus, and they come and they argue with Jesus again and they demand one more sign. We just need one more sign to prove who you are, Jesus. After he's done, miracle after miracle, after he just finished feeding 4,000 men, plus women and children, they want one more sign. And Jesus tells them that they're not going to get another sign, except for the sign of Jonah, referring to his death, burial, and resurrection. Jesus and the disciples, after that interaction with the Pharisees, they set off on another journey out of Galilee. And after they've made the short crossing of the Sea of Galilee, they cut off a little corner to save some time. They, the disciples, look at each other and they realize we forgot to bring anything to eat on our journey. We forgot the bread. What are we going to do if we don't have anything to eat while we're on our journey? So maybe we can, I don't know, if you as you've traveled, you know traveling is a stressful thing. Usually you forget something when you travel, so maybe we can forgive the disciples for having such short memories, but they were extremely anxious about that bread. But Jesus turned to them, and you can imagine him sort of tweaking them a little bit with this. He tells them to beware the leaven of the Pharisees. And what do you use leaven for? To make bread rise, right? So there, Jesus turns to them and he says, guys, don't forget about the leaven of the Pharisees. You've got to be on the watch for them. And they they assume Jesus was rebuking them for not bringing any bread. But instead, Jesus was warning them about listening to what the Pharisees were teaching. At the end of this journey, they are headed, or the journey that they're on now, they're heading to Caesarea Philippi. This is a town that had a bustling industry in religion. And they had the worship of many different gods and goddesses. It was a place of rank idolatry. But it was also a place where Jesus took these disciples so that they could see something in stark contrast. He wanted them to answer some questions. And as good religious Jews, the disciples would not have enjoyed their time in Caesarea Philippi. They would have looked at the idols and they would have been disgusted by it all. But it was while they were walking around all those images, Jesus finally asked the disciples his questions. He first asked them what the people were saying about him. What are the crowds asking you about me? Jesus is sort of trying to elicit from them. And it seems that the disciples had a ready answer. People have been asking questions about who Jesus really was. And many people were pretty confident that Jesus was a prophet sent from God. That's where they had arrived. After all, how could Jesus do all the amazing works that he had done without being sent from God? The confusion amongst the people seemed to be what kind of prophet was Jesus? Was he another coming of Elijah? Was he John the Baptist back from the dead, which seems strange because Jesus and John the Baptist were together a few times, so I don't know why everybody's confused about that. That's the strangest part of this passage, maybe. I don't know. And then there's a reference to Jeremiah or another of the prophets. The confusion probably should have been expected. The people who were oral, these the folks living in Jesus' time were oral culture people. Not many of them could read and write, we could assume, which means they had extraordinarily good memories for stories. And they had grown up hearing the stories of God saving his people out of Egypt and through the exiles and all the kings and all of the ups and downs of Israel's history, and of course, all of the prophets' testimonies and promises about God saving Israel. And so the people were well versed in those stories, but we can't expect that they had any idea what was going to happen next, or even what it all meant. And so there's confusion about who Jesus is amongst the crowds. And so Jesus then turns the question to the disciples Who do you say that I am? And like so many other times, Peter speaks for the group. Thankfully, this time Peter says something amazing. He doesn't put his foot in his mouth, and he says, and by extension, the rest of the disciples, sort of this is where this is an interpretive kind of touch point. I'm saying that Peter is speaking for the disciples and not speaking on his own. He's not sort of an individual here. He's representing the group. And he said that they believed Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God. They believed Jesus to be the Son of David, and that's what the Syrophoenician woman testified to about Jesus. Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. That's what their witnessing, her testimony was that she knew he was the son of David. By calling him the Christ, there's this fulfillment of God's anointed one, the anointed king of Israel, that would sit on the throne forever. He was to be the servant of the Lord who would bring God's justice to the world. Moreover, by saying that they believed him to be the Son of the living God, he was recognizing that Jesus was more than another heir to the Davidic throne. Jesus was the forever king that would bring about the fulfillment of all the promises in the Old Testament. Peter's words were loaded with theological and biblical meaning. And so his confession is this amazing confession because it seems like the disciples time and again have no idea who Jesus is. A few verses earlier, they were worried about what to do for food on their trip after being the eyewitnesses and literally the hands that distributed the bread that fed those crowds. Jesus fed huge crowds of people with food, the amount of food that was the equivalent of a lunchbox. They had seen him walk on water, pluck Peter out of the sea. This ragtag group of fishermen, tax collectors, and political zealots couldn't make up their minds about who Jesus was. Yet on this day, far away from the crowds and in the shadow of all the false gods, they could see who Jesus was. And Jesus responded with the words we've already noted: Blessed are you, Simon Barjonh, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. These words from Jesus explain how Peter was able to make such a powerful confession. It didn't come from him. Those weren't his words. But Jesus does not stop by telling the group how they were finally able to recognize him. He went on to say, and I tell you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And this is again where people go wrong. The name Peter means rock. So when they read the words, you are Peter, and upon this Peter, I will build my church, people assume that the rock and both parts of the sentence are the same. The problem is they're not the same word. It's not Peter twice in the sentence. It's two different words for rock. And Jesus, if he wanted to equate Peter and the rock, could have said, Upon you I will build my church, or upon your foundation will I build. He could have used a second person pronoun indicating who he's talking to. This is a play on words, but not the one that some would like for it to be. The better interpretation for the rock upon which the church is built is Peter's confession. Simply put, this idea of that Peter's confession is the rock that the church will be built upon is what the Bible says about God's, about salvation and God's people. And we don't have time because, you know, it's a 25-minute sermon or so to trace the theme of rocks throughout the Bible. But if you like rocks and you like the Bible, the theme of rocks is a really engaging study. If you go back and look in the Old Testament for rocks, your brain will be full of rocks after that. It'll be great. But if you go through the Bible looking for rocks, you'll find rocks of significance everywhere in the Old Testament. Most of the time, either in the context of the passage itself or in a later biblical interpretation, the rock is actually a person. And it'll be somebody of significant importance, of great importance. Some of them, as you if you read through the Old Testament, seemed to be rocks at first, but later on are a person. Some were always people. In Isaiah 51, we heard of a rock from which we were hewn, a quarry that we could look back to. In Isaiah 52, 51, 1 and 2, it talks about this rock from which the people were hewn. The call to look back at that rock that they came from is supposed to strengthen the faithful people in Israel. This rock that they're supposed to look back to goes back to Abraham and the promises that were made to Abraham. And as the passage shifts from the rock to this person who is my righteousness, if you look at the last few verses of Isaiah 51, 1 to 6, those last verses 5 and 6, you have this kind of, excuse me, verses 4 and 5. Give attention to me, my people, and give ear to me my nation, for a law will go out for me, and I will set my justice for a light to the people, my righteousness draws near, my salvation is gone out, my arms will judge the peoples, the coastlands hope for me, and for my arm they wait. All of that, my righteousness, my salvation, my law, my justice language is people language. From Isaiah 50, the servant of the Lord is present with the people, and they are to look to this servant of the Lord who will come and bring my righteousness. The rock in Isaiah 51 is God's righteousness that will come to save his people. And the rock in Isaiah 51 is indeed a person. That person is going to protect the people and bring justice. If we draw on other biblical images and passages, we can see that the Father set up his son as the rock that would bring salvation to his people. If that rock, that rock that is set up for the people to be a salvation, if that rock is struck, it will bring life and righteousness to the people of God. Not many people in Jesus' day recognized who he was. The woman at the well recognized Jesus after a conversation. The Samaritan villagers testified that they could recognize Jesus. That Syrophonician woman recognized Jesus. There was a Roman centurion who said, You don't have to come to my house. I understand authority. I understand how this works. All you've got to do is speak a word, and my servant will be healed. Others also recognized Jesus for who he was by his works and by his teaching. But the disciples, as recent as the first few verses of Matthew 16, couldn't quite see who he was. It is a mystery to us how a person gains the ability to see Jesus. And according to Jesus, the revelation of who Jesus is, the revelation of the identity and the person of Jesus Christ to an individual is a gracious work of God. So people, it's not rare for people to fail to see who Jesus is, because all people, according to Romans 11, all people stand condemned in disobedience under God. We're all blinded either by our circumstances, by our pride, or by our sin nature. And Jesus said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. And so just on that principle of there's a condition of someone's life that might make it difficult for them to enter the kingdom of heaven, we can say that whether over reliance on wealth, on the busyness and cares of life, or any other circumstance, people all around us never see Jesus because they're too focused on the stuff in their lives. And likewise, some people believe that they can save themselves. Either by their own efforts to please God, they're going to work really hard and God's going to approve of them, or by this sort of confidence, look, I'm a pretty good person already, so God's just going to accept me as I am. Either way, their pride blinds them to their need for Jesus. But see, the rock is our only hope. The gospel is the power of God for salvation, but the work of the gospel is a mystery to us. The forgiveness of sins is found only in Christ, and yet the disciples were given the keys of the kingdom. And throughout the history of the church, the proclamation of an absolution of sin, the forgiveness of sins, has been reserved for clergy. And so the church has sort of had this idea that the authority to pronounce sins forgiven are based solely on the power. So, but but the church has always also held at the same time that the authority to pronounce sins forgiven are based solely on the power and the promise of the gospel, not on something that rests in some clergyperson. And we may set up rules and orders in the church because order in the church is ultimately a good thing. Chaos and no one has any idea what's going on is not good for anyone. But the only law that ultimately reigns in the church of Christ is the law of love, to love God and to love one another. So whatever is bound or loosed in heaven, whether the forgiveness of sins or the ordering of the life of the church, the only thing, the only thing that gives us place, a place to stand in the kingdom of heaven is the rock. The chief cornerstone upon which the entire structure of the church and our lives is built. So you don't have to be clergy to preach the gospel and to tell people of the forgiveness of sins. The mystery is that the gospel comes to us at all. This great mystery is that God reaches down into our lives and reveals himself to us, not which human might bring it to us. The mystery of the gospel is that God comes to us, not who's gonna tell me about Jesus. The guy's got to have a collar on, or I'm not listening to him, is not the right attitude. Would Peter have been able to make his confession, excuse me, how would that Gentile mother from Matthew 15 have known who Jesus was? What information had reached her? We're not told. But when she saw Jesus, she cried out to him, Son of David, have mercy upon me. Would Peter have been able to make his confession of Jesus earlier than this confession to Matthew 16? None of these answers are ultimately important. It doesn't matter what she knew, and it doesn't matter if Peter would have been able to make his confession about Jesus earlier, and this is just the circumstance of the story. The important thing in the narrative of Matthew's gospel was that Jesus had come, and he was there to fulfill the promises of God. He was there to make real the salvation of the world through his death and resurrection. I said at the beginning of this sermon that we are blessed forever if we can recognize that Jesus is the Christ. And perhaps you heard that and thought, all right, I'm going to work really hard and I'm going to see Jesus. I'm going to strive really hard to let other people and encourage other people so that they can see Jesus. And while it is a good idea for you to see Jesus more clearly and for you to even try to see Jesus more clearly, my point this morning is different than you should try harder to see Jesus. If you have taken notice of Jesus at all, if you've ever noticed his goodness and his love and his mercy, you've ever noticed the cross that he died on, if you've ever seen his work, you've ever had that prick in your heart to think he could have done that for me, you should rejoice. You should rejoice because the knowledge that you have is not from you, it is the revelation of God at work in your life. We don't need popes or even ordained ministers to see Jesus. Jesus comes to us in his word and in ordinary things like bread and wine. He comes to us in water. We can see Jesus in the lives of the people around us who are the body of Christ. God the Father revealed Jesus to the disciples so that they would be ready to take up the cross, or they would be ready for the cross in the empty tomb. And God the Father reveals Jesus to us so that we can take up the cross and know that death is no more than a gardener. Let's pray. Father, you are a good God who reveals your Son to us and who draws us into the loving arms of Jesus. As he bears our sins on the cross, let us remember the triumph of the resurrection and the joy of the second coming. And fill us, Lord, with the power of the gospel, confident in your forgiveness and mercy to us, sinners though we are, that you will not cast us out ultimately, but that you will welcome us in. Lord, give us that confidence we ask in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.