While we all love all of Scripture, but each
of us is wired probably in a slightly different way, and they are a genre in Scripture that
we particularly love. Some of us love the poetry of the Psalms. Others of us – and
this can be something of a Reformed disease – love the Apostle Paul more than any of
the other apostles, although we would argue vehemently that we are not of Paul. And some
of us love the narrative of the gospels or the Old Testament histories. And the marvelous
thing about the way in which, as Calvin says, God comes and lisps to His children, speaks
their language in the Scripture, is that the Scriptures come to us in such a variety of
form in order to communicate the story of the gospel. When I was a student, my minister who made
such an impact on my life by God’s grace, William Still, who was undoubtedly one of
the most influential gospel ministers in Scotland in the second half of the twentieth century,
but with a wonderful touch of eccentricity, partly because he’d had no education from
the age of about 14 to the age of about 26 or 27; and he was known for stopping in sermons
and saying “Now in order to understand this, we need to sweep through the Bible.” “We
need to sweep through the Bible.” And you knew in the next twenty-five minutes, you’d
be leafing around all over the Scriptures from Dan to Beersheba. And I recall as my
wife and I – or my wife-to-be and I stood before him at our marriage service, he often
closed his eyes when he spoke, a bit like Ravi Zacharias, but you need to imagine a
Scottish accent. He closed his eyes and he began the wedding sermon by saying “Now,
I want to put your two lives in context beginning with Adam.” And he was accustomed to preaching
for an hour, and I wasn’t accustomed to standing for an hour. But we are thinking
about the church this morning, that is, the hidden story within the title this morning
“the Rock.” We are thinking about Christ building His church, and I want to begin with
Adam. And I want to show you simply by reading three passages that the same story – the
same story as first of all taught us in biblical prophecy. Second, it's taught us in the movie
version of apocalyptic, in the book of Revelation, and it’s taught to us in the historical
version in the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. So let me read these verses to you first of
all from Genesis 3 and verse 14. “The Lord God said to the serpent,
‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.’” And then what I sometimes think of as the
movie version, in Revelation 12, where the same story is told. “And a great sign appeared in heaven: a
woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of
twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth
pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold,
a great red dragon,” – we read later on that the dragon is the serpent of Genesis
3, grown large – “a great red dragon, with seven heads and seven horns, and on his
heads seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of
heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about
to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it.
And she gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron,
but her child was caught up to God and to his throne,
and the woman” – who clearly here represents the people of God and the old and the new,
the sun and the moon – “the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place
prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.” (Or three and a half years,
or half of seven years, between the first and the final coming of our Savior.) And then the historical version of the same
story in Matthew's gospel chapter 16. Matthew 16:13. “When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea
Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ And
they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, 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,
‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed
are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this 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,
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, whatever you loose
on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’ And then he strictly charged the disciples to
tell no one that he was the Christ. And from that time Jesus began to show his disciples
that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and
scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside, began
to rebuke him, saying, ‘Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.’ But
he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For
you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.’ And then
Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take
up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses
his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole
world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life? For the
Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will
repay each person according to what he has done. But, I say to you, there are some standing
here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.’ And
after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them
up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone
like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.” Our heavenly Father, we pray as we come to
you today that Jesus, who is still the one true prophet, theologian and teacher of His
church, will by His holy word so instruct our minds as to enable us to grasp the glory
of His work. So touch our affections that we will be drawn out in wonder and love and
praise, and so make our wills malleable that we may bow before Him as our Lord and Master,
and serve Him with all our strength, and this we pray together in His great name. Well, I want you to keep your Bibles open
here at Matthew 16. It is in very many senses the center point of the story of the Synoptic
Gospels, the first three gospels. It is the hinge on which the whole narrative of the
gospel turns, as Jesus is not only confessed by Simon Peter to be the Christ, the Son of
the living God, but as we are told in Matthew, in 16:21, from this particular time the Lord
Jesus began the more plainly to unfold to His disciples what it meant that He was the
Christ, and therefore what the implications would be for the church that He, Jesus Christ,
had come to build. When we read the narrative passages, particularly in the New Testament,
one of the things that we should always be asking is this very simple question: What
is there here that surprises me? What is there here that surprises me? I say that because
in its very essence, the grace of Jesus Christ is surprising for sinners. And so, simply
as a basic principle of my Bible reading and certainly of my Bible teaching, when you and
I read a passage of Scripture, if we find nothing surprising in it, we’ve probably
missed the point. We have probably developed a perspective in which we assume grace to
be obligated to us, have become so familiar with a false Christ of our own creation that
we haven't yet reckoned with the real Christ of the gospel narrative; and you don't need
to be a rocket scientist to see that there are many surprising things in this passage.
Actually, the first surprising thing is that Simon Peter gets it right. That’s a surprise.
Flesh and blood have not revealed this to you. You are right Simon Peter. The second surprise is this – and I think
it makes no difference in terms of your narrower view of what Jesus is saying here – there
is no doubt whatsoever on the surface of this text that the Lord Jesus is appointing Simon
Peter to a particular role in redemptive history, and in fact the rest of the New Testament
makes that clear. Peter is not only the first disciple mentioned in the list of twelve,
he's always the first disciple mentioned in the list of three, and he is the one transformed
for the day of Pentecost who opens the kingdom of heaven to those who repent and believe
the gospel. Indeed, what Jesus says here about Simon Peter is almost a direct parallel to
what the Lord says about the Apostle Paul. When the Apostle Paul is converted, He says
this is the man through whom the gospel is going to go to the Gentiles. He is going to
stand before princes, kings and governors. He is given a special role in redemptive history,
just as those of us who are ministers of the gospel are given a special role in the life
of our individual Christian fellowship. There is nothing extraordinary about that, except
it's utterly surprising that that role is given to Simon Peter. He is the one apostle
we have thus far met in the gospel who has an apparently untamed ability to get things
wrong, and it is part of the wonder of what our Lord Jesus is saying here that we will
miss if we get ourselves into a fankle about later controversies about the Roman Catholic
Church and the papacy. We will absolutely miss the point if we don't see that our Lord
Jesus is so sovereign, so surprising in grace. That it’s Peter that He chooses to be the
instrument through whom the gospel is going to be proclaimed to the world on the day of
Pentecost. The third thing that’s surprising, of course,
and this was a thing that really surprised Simon Peter, took his breath away. The surprising
thing is the destiny of our dear Lord Jesus. The One who has come into the world to save
sinners who will be rejected and despised, not just by sinners, but by religious sinners.
Not just by political leaders but by the leaders of His own nation, that John's words will
be fulfilled that “He came to his own and his own did not receive him.” That’s a
surprise that should give us an ache in our stomach. And the fourth surprise? The fourth surprise
is that Peter who got it so surprisingly right now gets it so disastrously wrong. And we
have these words that we can scarcely take in in verse 22. If I can retranslate them
– Peter manhandled Jesus and said to Him, rebuking Him. Manhandles physically, rebukes
verbally, and then in this astonishing oxymoron “Far be it from be you from you, Lord. This
shall never happen to you, Lord.” And yet perhaps the most surprising thing of all is,
that in this great central passage in the Gospels, with the exception o
f chapter 18 verse 17 where the word is used twice. This is the only reference in the Gospels
to the church. You can search high and low through all your Gospels. Go to your car in
which you keep your Strong’s Concordance if you’re one of the strong, or Young’s
Concordance if you’re one of the young, or as Mr. Still used to say to me, Cruden’s
Concordance if you’re one of the crude. And you’ll not find another reference to
the church in the teachings of our Lord Jesus. And that is perhaps the most surprising thing
of all, that He apparently says virtually nothing about the church, and yet the Scriptures
from beginning (Genesis 3:15 to the end in Revelation 12) and way beyond at the end of
the book of Revelation make it so crystal clear as I think so many of us, if not all
of us, in this room this morning have grasped, that the church stands at the epicenter of
the purposes of our Lord Jesus Christ. And if you step back from these words, you have
a sense that there is what I sometimes call a programmatic ring to them. Jesus is making
a kingly declaration. This is the reason I have come into the world. This is the purpose
of my ministry. This is actually why I am going to the cross, and why I will rise again
and establish my kingdom, because my central purpose is not simply to bring the forgiveness
of sins to individuals, regeneration, new life and adoption; my purpose is to build
a church. And so to build the church that not even the gates of hell will be able to
prevail against it. So, I think it’s important as we think about these verses for a few minutes
that we try and bring out from them the four central propositions that they are teaching
us. The first is this as I’ve already hinted,
that Christ's central plan in His coming is to build a church, and this stands at the
very heart of His ministry. Hundred years ago, there was a great controversy in New
Testament scholarship. Roman Catholic scholars who were studying the Scriptures, some of
them were excommunicated. One of them a man called Alfred Loisy, a Frenchmen, who made
a famous statement about how you read the Gospels. “Jesus taught the kingdom of God,
but it was the church that came.” And you can understand why he would say something
like this. What is at the apparent center of Jesus' teaching? It is His teaching in
parable and in sermon and in a variety of ways that He has come to establish the kingdom
of God. And this is the reason why many New Testament scholars would look at a statement
like this and say this is something the church thought up after Jesus had risen. If Jesus’
real purpose was to build the church then it would be all over the gospel story. There's
a very clear reason why the word “church” is not all over the gospel story, why the
word “kingdom” is all over the gospel story. Because it is only when Jesus brings
in His royal reign, and especially only in the manner in which He brings in His royal
reign, which of course His disciples absolutely misunderstood, that it would even be possible
for there to be a new community. Possible for that new community to be built and shaped
in the precise way that the Lord Jesus intended it to be built and shaped, or if I can put
it simply, and we will return to this. Only when the King has been crucified do we begin
to understand what kind of church He plans to build, otherwise we're in the situation
of Simon Peter saying to Jesus build your church but don't go to the cross. And it’s
so evident, isn’t it, in this passage, that the cross and the resurrection are so central
to Jesus' life and to our life that we can never understand this passage (Jesus teaching
about the church, Genesis 3:15 or Revelation 12) apart from seeing how our Lord’s prophetic
words here come to fulfillment in His death and resurrection. But actually it’s very
clear elsewhere in the Gospels that Jesus came to build the church. He may not use that
terminology or the Gospel writers as they recall the teaching of Jesus. But when you
think of the teaching of Jesus about what He has come to do. The Gospel story is sprinkled,
baptized even, with pictures that are communal pictures that make it clear that Jesus is
not simply come to call isolated individuals to Himself, but there is an undergirding principle
in this that as He calls us individually to Himself, we inevitably are drawn closer to
one another. I think of the simple picture of the shepherd
and the sheep. The sheep hear His voice. They recognize His voice. He calls them by name.
What do they do? They come closer to the shepherd, and what happens as they’re gathered closer
to the shepherd is that inevitably – now, I'm sure there are some sheep that are more
smelly than others. I’m sure there are sheep with such idiosyncratic characteristics that
other sheep would rather be at the other side of the flock, but it's the same in the church
of the Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot be called to Jesus Christ, without being called into
the fellowship of His people. And so, as Jesus – and this is striking
in Luke’s version of the gospel, at the same point as Jesus, on the Mount of Transfiguration,
has a conversation with Moses and Elijah about the exodus He is going to accomplish in Jerusalem.
The exodus of Egypt comes to its fulfillment in the exodus of Calvary, and the garden tomb
emptied. And in that fulfillment, God is saying, not now to Pharaoh, but to, as Calvin says,
Satan our pharaoh who holds us in bondage, ‘Let my people go that they may worship
and serve me.’ And this is what Jesus is announcing here in this programmatic statement
that He makes that at the very heart of His purpose and coming into the world is His purpose
to build a community. That's why when Luke describes the vitality of the first Christian
church in Jerusalem, the way he describes what happens there is that the Lord adds daily
to the church those who are being saved. It isn’t that you add to the church. ‘Oh
yes, now I’m saved. I think I should add myself to the church.’ No, you don't understand
what happened to you when you were saved in that sense. What the Lord Jesus was doing
was plucking you from the community of darkness to which you by nature belonged, and bringing
you into this new community of the church. We’ve so much lost that sense today, haven’t
we, in our profoundly individualistic and narcissistic society. Really one of the subtle
ways in which you see that, I think, is in our Bible study groups. I think Alistair Begg
referred to our Bible study groups yesterday. When we sit in our Bible study groups, and
then the very helpful leader says to us at the end of the Bible study – perhaps we’ve
been studying one of Paul's letters – he or she says at the end of the Bible study,
“Now, what are you going to take home from this?” And we sit ‘round and we say, “Well,
the passage has said this to me.” “And the passage has said this to me.” And do
you know the thing that we don’t notice? Almost every single second person in Paul’s
letters (that’s the word “you”) is plural. And you know you’re in a Bible study group
or a church that has got the teaching of Paul. When instead of saying “What's the takeaway
for me?” at the end of our little Bible study, we’re actually looking around the
room and saying to each other, “Now, what are we going to do about this? How are we
going to help one another in this?” So, you see, the New Testament’s perspective
is not that Jesus has come to save a number of isolated individuals, and He thought it
might be quite a nice thing if we could get together from time to time. We need to understand
that the sickness in the human race is far deeper than what has happened to isolated
individuals. It is systemic. It is familial. And what Jesus Christ has come to do is to
reverse all of that in the wonder of the gospel of His saving grace. And this is such a glorious
time in history to understand this. This is something that will stop me from becoming
a complaining, moaning Willy, as a Christian in the world, and understand that in the midst
of all the fragmentation of life there is around me, which I lament and over which we
weep – the church of Jesus Christ has a singular opportunity, really to be the church.
You know, we live in a day – when I became a Christian, if you used the word “born-again,”
everybody knew what you were talking about. You’d come to faith in Jesus Christ. Now
the place where you’re most likely to see that kind of language is in the sports section
of the newspapers, and it may not refer to anything particularly Christian or religious.
But somebody’s got a broken leg and now he’s born again, or somebody made a mess
of it with one team and now he’s born again and he’s got a new start. What we need to
understand is that we are born into families. And in this world of social, familial disintegration
– you know, people do say to us in this post-modern world, “I’m glad that your
Christian faith has made you happy. But this has made me happy. So we’re both happy.”
You know, the one thing the world cannot imitate is a church. The church I used to serve in
Glasgow, I’ll never forget, I returned a year later because I was in Scotland, and
I was able to go to the funeral service of a dear elder, wonderful Christian missionary,
whose whole family had been a blessing to me. And, sat in the back of the church and
this woman came into the church whom – who had been a valiant soldier for Jesus Christ
in very difficult circumstances; a very modest background. And as I saw her walking down
the aisle, I realized only one seat in the place she could sit in, and it happened to
be beside the one man in the congregation who had been knighted by Her Majesty The Queen.
And I watched her sit down beside Sir, and she turned and put her arms around him, and
gave him a great Glasgow smacker on the cheek. Now, I don’t know what his wife on the other
side was thinking. But do you know what I was thinking? “Where in all the world are
you going to see this today?” This is why we love the church of Jesus Christ, and this
is His vision, His plan to build the church stands at the heart of His ministry. And the
reason is He wants to create a new family that will stand out, that will make people,
young and old, have this sense of “I don't understand it, but I see that's what life
was meant to be,” and it creates longings within me. And then through our testimony
they are brought to a living faith, as God's grace runs through the dried up river beds
of our lives. But, you know, it’s not only the family on earth that’s been fractured,
there has been a fracturing between the family in heaven and on earth. Remember how Paul speaks both to the Ephesians
and the Colossians about Jesus Christ reconciling under His one headship, things in heaven and
things on earth. Well, there's nothing in heaven that needs to be reconciled to God.
It's a world of sinlessness. It’s where the saints of God live and they sin no more.
Where the elect angels praise God, and cherubim and seraphim surround His throne, but what
Jesus Christ has done wonder upon wonder, is to bring together the family branch on
earth and those amazing cousins in heaven, and unite us together in a holy fellowship
that will last for all eternity. So, that when we worship together, and as if we’re
older, we’ll sometimes say (although usually we’re not allowed to sing any longer) “Heaven
Came Down and Glory Filled My Soul.” That’s not just wishful thinking. That’s a privilege
of belonging to the church that is on earth, that has been united with the branch that
is in heaven. So Jesus is here declaring a cosmic plan that He has to build His church. Second proposition is this, and this is so
important, and we find it from Genesis to Revelation. Our Lord Jesus Christ plans to
build His church on enemy-occupied territory. He plans to build His church on enemy-occupied
territory. “I will build my church,” He says, in verse 18, “and the gates of hell
will not prevail against it.” Now, there is a view among the scholars that there was
some ghastly cave at Caesarea, Philippi, that was popularly known as “The Gates of Hell.”
But it’s clear, isn’t it, Jesus is not saying ‘I’m going to start the First Presbyterian
Church of the Gates of Hell here in Caesarea, Philippi.’ If indeed there was such a cave,
He's using it as a metaphor that He finds already in Scripture – for this great conflict
of the ages that was announced in Genesis 3:15 – the seed of the serpent seeking to
destroy the seed of the woman, and the one great seed of the woman coming to crush the
head of the serpent himself, and in the process have His own heel crushed. It's a fore-picture
of the cross, and the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and what lies interestingly
at the epicenter of the first promise of salvation is not a promise of the forgiveness of sins,
although there is that sense in Genesis 3:15. It’s a promise of victory over the gates
of hell and death and the evil one, and the ransoming of God's people, and the creation
of this new glorious family whose head is the seed of the woman. But you know, this
expression “Gates” is significant in Scripture, isn't it? Usually when its used, it's a physical
picture of a political reality. For example, the wonderful woman in Proverbs 31 that all
of you ladies, you want that passage read at your funeral. And what’s so great about
you? Your husband is known at the gates. Does that mean you fell out and everybody knew
you’d fallen out because you stuck him out – or he was an inveterate smoker. And you
said you’re not smoking in this house, and he was – no, no. It means he was known among
the elders. Think about what Boaz does when he wants to marry Ruth. He goes to the city
gates. The city gates represent both the security and the political strategy of the community.
I think about the Ten Commandments; you’re to care for the stranger who is within your
gates, who is within the little fiefdom. It’s not just every Englishman’s home is His
castle. Every Israelite’s home was His castle, his territory. He was a miniature king in
his own family. And so the gates are a metaphor for the center of strategic operations. And
so you see the picture that Jesus is building? “I will build my church” – that is,
the epicenter of my strategic operations. It's through that strategy center that I'm
going to reach the world with the gospel. But I am going to build my church in a context
where there is another strategic center of operations. The kingdom of darkness and hell,
the plan of the serpent to bruise, crush the heel of the Savior, the constant affliction
that the seed of the serpent will bring to bear upon the seed of the woman, and it's
the story of the Bible in a nutshell from Genesis 3 right through to this point. And
it's actually a wonderful little clue to being able to understand the Bible as a whole. Sometimes, philosophers say that the history
of Western philosophy is just a footnote to the writings, the philosophy of Plato and
Aristotle, and I think we can say the story of the Bible is a series of footnotes to Genesis
3:15. That’s what the tower of Babel is all about. It’s about the seed of the serpent
seeking to destroy the testimony of the seed of the woman. That’s what the conflict between
Pharaoh and Moses is all about. It’s not merely horizontal. This is what David and
Goliath is really all about. This is what Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar is all about. This
is what the gospel story is all about. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the seed of the woman,
building His church, and doing so on enemy-occupied territory that constantly fights against it,
seeks to do battle. The Apostle saw that that was the meaning of the second Psalm. “I've
set my King on Zion, my holy hill,” and here are the powers of this world as ambassadors
of the kingdom of darkness and the gates of Hades, and they say, let us tear off our bands.
Let us break them asunder. Let us fight against the Lord and His anointed. Very words that
are taken up, aren’t they, in Revelation 12, that He set His King in Zion, His holy
hill, and He will rule the nations with a rod of iron, therefore you nations tremble.
Kiss the Son that you may live. It’s the story of the Bible. The church is built on
enemy-occupied territory. It's the story of Revelation 12. It’s the story of the infant
Jesus and King Herod, seeking to devour the Christ child. His Father protecting Him, and
so the serpent now grown into this ugly, ferocious, red dragon. He now pursues the woman into
the desert. It’s where we’re living. We’re living in this three and a half years between
the first coming of the Lord and the second coming of the Lord, and the Dragon will spew
out all his filth, but the Lord will protect His people. That's the story that Jesus is
telling. Now, what’s the implication of that? My
dear friends, the implication of that is, that if you’re a Christian and part of a
church, you must never be surprised if things go wrong. You must never be surprised if there
are the attacks of hell against your church. You must never allow yourself to be the kind
of Evangelical who says “This kind of thing doesn't happen in a church like ours.” Because
if that’s what you say, you’re purely horizontal in thinking about the church. You’re
really thinking about who we are. ‘We’re evangelicals after all, and we get things
right and we know how to do things.’ No. We’re under hellish attack. That's the truth. You remember how Paul puts this so beautifully
in Ephesians, in the bookends of Ephesians? Have you ever noticed this? He begins by saying,
now, beloved, what has happened to you, is that you’ve been brought into heavenly places
where you experience every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus. And then at the end, at the
bookend in the great section on spiritual armor and warfare, he says we’re not wrestling
against flesh and blood but about – against principalities and powers. Where are they
located? – in the heavenly places. The very place into which you are brought in the life
of the church about which Ephesians is to say so much is a conflict zone. As Abraham Kuyper says, if somebody could
just draw back the curtain and we could see that conflict, every other conflict in human
history, the kind of conflict in which our nation and nations involve today would seem
like a murmur in comparison. It's interesting, isn't it? We get far more excited about human
conflict at the horizontal level, and a very little interest in wearing the armor of God,
and taking all prayer, fighting the good fight of faith. So the church stands at the center
of Christ’s purposes, Christ’s plans to build His church on enemy-occupied territory,
and we’ve got a microcosmic picture of the church here. Just in passing, let me say, that all of these
words really have a fulfillment in the story in the Acts of the apostles, don’t they?
– Peter preaching the gospel, opening the kingdom of God, but also the gates of hell
seeking to destroy the church. And if you work your way through the opening chapters
of the Acts of the apostles, you will notice that Satan has three weapons he characteristically
uses. The first is intimidation, which in the case of the early church was physical
intimidation of persecution. That’s a weapon Satan uses. And now sometimes it comes from
within the church. Whenever you encounter Mr. or Mrs., Master or Mrs. Intimidator in
your church – and he could be in the pulpit, he could be on the elder board, he could be
sitting beside you in the pew, you might be married to him. Mr. or Mrs. Intimidator is
by definition doing the work of the evil one. And many a church has been destroyed by Mr.
or Mrs. or Ms. Intimidator, who from their lofty position of spiritual superiority has
that ability to make everyone else feel inferior. You know the wonderful thing about the Lord
Jesus; He made everyone feel a sinner, but He never made anyone feel inferior today.
You’re that kind of person? A Reformed intimidator. God save us from you in that case. You need
to repent. How dare I say this? Because Jesus said to Simon Peter whom He loved with all
His heart, you need to get behind me, because you’re advancing the works of the gates
of hell, and not of the kingdom of God. There is intimidation, and then, of course, there’s
false ambition – Ananias and Sapphira – false ambition. Wanting to rise to positions in
the church for which God has never gifted you, jealousy of others. And then, of course,
there is the complaining that creates division. So, it doesn’t seem all that supernatural,
does it? It’s just the intimidating personality. It’s just that, you know, I’d really like
that people thought more highly of me than they really should think. I’m right to murmur
and complain about this. Like the Israelites in the desert, we had leeks and melons when
we were in Egypt, and now all we get is these quail and this manna. God deliver us from
the moaners that destroy the atmosphere of the grace of the gospel. The third proposition is this: Christ builds
His church through servants who are marked by great frailty. Isn’t that beautiful?
I mean it’s not beautiful that I’ve said it that way. The thing itself is beautiful.
Isn't it? That – you know the angels, what’re the angels thinking – I think they’re
thinking this: ‘Jesus, why are you starting with plan R? Whatever happened to plan A?
We’re waiting here. Hey, Jesus! We are here in myriads, we are here to help you build
the church.’ How can He possibly be choosing Peter? Well, because He’s the sovereign
Savior, and because He delights to do things in such a way that no flesh will glory in
His presence, that all the honor and praise will be His. And so He says, I think he – my
own view is He is actually saying this to Peter. “I tell you, you are Peter, and on
this rock I will build my church.” Wow! As Calvin says, the surprise here is that
Christ will build His church on the basis of this mess. Yes! He’ll build His church
on the basis of a five-thousand people mess. The end of the day we’re all basket cases.
And the great thing is that He draws us together. And in Peter’s case, because he is called
to be a minister of the gospel, He puts the keys into his hands. Actually, this is a text
in Scripture that teaches us that automobile manufacturers should always make automobiles
that have keys. I’m only joking. It’s not a good interpretation of that text. He’s
not giving him authority of a papal variety. He’s saying to him – Peter doesn’t understand
this, but he’s going to remember it on the day of Pentecost as the Holy Spirit comes
and as they step out, and all the other guys are staring at him saying, “Say something
to the crowd!” And then it’s as though he hears the voice of Jesus from heaven saying
to him, “Peter, the keys are in your pocket. The keys are in your pocket.” And he brings
them out, and this man who so little understood the Scriptures gives the most amazing, redemptive,
historical, applicatory, experiential sermon that had ever been preached, and thousands
are brought to faith. Because as Paul says, this is the way you should think about Peter
and Apollos and myself. We’re simply stewards, and God has put the keys into our pockets,
and He means to use us for His glory. And then the fourth proposition, and with
this we close. The first is that building the church is at the heart of Christ’s ministry.
The second, that Christ always builds His church on enemy-occupied territory. The third,
that He builds His church through servants marked by great frailty. And the fourth, that
He always builds His church on the ground plan of His own destiny. That’s why He immediately
begins to teach them that He's going to the cross, He’s going to die and He’s going
to rise again. And if anyone is going to follow Him, then he will need to take up his cross
and follow Him, because if you seek to save your life, you will lose it, and only if you're
prepared to lose your life will you save it. Only when the church becomes a seed that falls
into the ground and dies will it bear much fruit. But you will see the Son of Man coming
in His glory, and some of them get a glimpse of that immediately in that marvelous transfiguration
scene. What’s He saying? This is actually the reason ancient architects built church
buildings in the form of a cross. It wasn't because they lived in a day of poverty when
ladies couldn't afford the gold to hang the cross ‘round their necks. They understood
the cross was never meant to be a decoration. The cross was ever meant to be the ground
plan of the Christian life. So that the way in which the church is fruitful is when the
church is squeezed into the mold of, as Paul says, sharing in the fellowship of Christ's
sufferings in order that it may share in the fellowship of His resurrection, being conformed
to Him in His death, in order that ultimately it may be conformed to Him in the triumph
of His life and His resurrection. So that when Paul says not just about himself, but
about all those who belong to Christ, the pattern is this – 2 Corinthians 4:10-12
– death works in us in order that life may work in others. We are crushed, we are broken,
but through our crushed, broken lives, the glory of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ
shines. Men and women are brought to faith in Him. Some of you know Calvin’s great teaching
on this in the third book of the “Institutes,” where he says there is an internal and an
external mortification and vivification. There is a death to sin, and there is a spiritual
resurrection to newness of life. But in the church of Jesus Christ there is also a share
externally in the suffering, in the pain, in the agony of the cross, in being demeaned
and afflicted and despised, because it’s when we are squeezed into the mold of the
cross, that we become the kind of fellowship, the cross-shaped fellowship, the cross-bearing
fellowship through which our Lord Jesus Christ bears eternal fruit. Wherever there is
new life there has been a death somewhere, and we need to learn to be churches prepared
to die to this world and in this world with Christ if we long to be churches that will
live. Many of us love the writings of C.S. Lewis,
although he’s not the greatest theological guide, but most of you know that C.S. Lewis
said, “Basically, all of my good thoughts come from the Scotsman, George McDonald,”
not because he was a Scotsman or his name was McDonald, a name that’s familiar to
you in this country. In one of his tales – one of his tales – this is George, and not Ronald,
incidentally – in one of his tales, the central figure comes and he meets the old
man of the earth, and the old man of the earth points him in the way to new life, to fullness
of life. And he points down this dark hole, and the hero in the tale looks down. And the
old man of the earth says, “You must go down there.” And the hero says, “But there
are no stairs.” And the old man of the earth says, “No, there are no stairs. You must
throw yourself in. And if you stand aloof,” he says, “if you stand aloof, you will be
dead as long as you refuse to die.” That was the message of Luther about the church,
wasn’t it? We don’t want to die. We want the theology of glory. Why do people not recognize
how majestic the Reformed church is? They should recognize how majestic the Reformed
church is. No, I’m just refusing to die, and so long as I refuse to die and my church
refuses to die to the things of this world, life will never be ours. Well, there’s so
much more to say, that’s actually just the beginning, but time has gone. Let me finish with this word. The Lord Jesus
Christ loved the church, and gave Himself for the church. So let us, Jesus-like, love
our church, and give ourselves for our church. Heavenly Father, thank You for the grand design
of the gospel and for the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. We want to respond individually
to this Word, but also as a community of friends who've been bound together by Your Spirit
in these days. And as later today we leave and go back to our own place of worship and
service, we pray it may be filled with Your Spirit, humbled under Your Word, with renewed
servant desires to love and serve the church of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray this
in His name, amen.
