Posted on 08/24/2008 1:01:39 PM PDT by Charles Henrickson
“On This Rock I Will Build My Church” (Matthew 16:13-20)
Everyone is interested in building the church, growing the church. Uh, let me rephrase that. Everyone who is already in the church and active and involved in the church is interested in building and growing the church. People on the outside, as well as those with only a loose connection to the church--they don’t give a rip. But those of us at least who are here regularly in church, we care about the church being built up and growing. Nobody wants to see the church fail or decline or decrease in numbers.
Ah, there it is, the “N” word--Numbers! Numbers, as in membership. Numbers, as in attendance. Numbers, as in offerings. People become obsessed about numbers, especially when the numbers aren’t what they used to be. And quite frankly, they aren’t. The numbers are down, across the board, for a lot of churches, and they have been for a long time. Actually, going back to about 1965, that’s when the numbers started to decline. That’s the year after the Baby Boom ended, when Americans stopped having kids at the same rate they did from 1946 through 1964.
And the culture has changed, too. Back when I was a kid, in the ’50s and the early ’60s, going to church was the thing to do. Sunday Schools were packed to overflowing, with all those little Boomer children. Well, that was then, this is now. Mainline denominations have been on the skids for a long time. Numbers are down. People go into panic mode. “We’ll have to shut the doors!” What can we do to reverse the decline? After all, there are some churches that do seem to be growing. Maybe we need to be like them. What can we do to build the church?
There are many who come forward to give answers to that question, What can we do to build the church? Well, they don’t actually “give” the answers. Usually you have to buy their book and attend their workshop and subscribe to their e-newsletter and watch their DVDs. But they do provide some how-to techniques on how to grow the church.
Get rid of the old--that’s often the first thing that has to go. Old music, old liturgy, old crosses, old people--well, except we still need the old people’s money, so we’ll give them a little old-fashioned service at 8:00 a.m. or late Saturday afternoon. And we need to replace the old with the new--praise bands, contemporary worship, auditorium seating, state-of-the-art sound system, and a theatre-like stage. Plus an electronic, message-scrawling sign outside.
And the content has to change, too. Not so much of that sin and grace stuff. No more “poor miserable sinner.” “Forgiveness of sins”? That’s not what people want to hear. And don’t talk so much about Jesus dying on the cross. I mean, what a downer! Oh, we’ve still got to mention Jesus, of course. Our praise choruses will say how much we love the Lord, and he’s really awesome, and “Lord, we just want to praise you!” But let’s not get too much more specific than that. Although people do want specifics when it comes to how to live their lives. That’s what the message, the teaching (don’t use the word “sermon”), needs to be about: Us. Me. Tell me what I need to be doing in order to be successful and victorious in my life. Life-coaching that makes people feel good about themselves and feel like they’re being spiritual--that’s what people in our culture want, and if the church wants to grow, then that’s what we’ve got to give them.
Oh, and programs, too. Don’t forget the programs. Lots of them. Keep the people busy. Mothers Day Out. Yoga class. Youth groups earning points to go to Disney World. Lots and lots of programs.
What gets lost in the shuffle here is Jesus. It’s almost like you could build a church without him. At least the Jesus we find in the pages of the New Testament. That one, not Jesus the Life Coach. What does Jesus say about all this? He says, “On this rock I will build my church.” Whoa! Jesus seems to claim a little ownership in this process. He calls it, “my church.” Not as in “MyChurch.com,” where the “my” refers to the individual who can pick and choose the options he or she likes. But “my church,” as in Jesus’ church--it’s his, it belongs to him. That’s the first thing to notice. It’s Jesus’ church, not ours, and he gets to decide what kind of a church it’s going to be. So maybe we ought to be about finding out what Jesus would have his church emphasize and teach and do and be like. Maybe our ideas about how to build the church need to be shaped and refined a bit by his. It is his church, after all.
“On this rock I will build my church.” Jesus says that he will build it. He will do the building, and he will do it his way. And when the church is built by Jesus, in his way, with the strength he gives it, the gates of hell shall not be able to prevail against his church. Oh, the church may not always look all that impressive and successful and victorious, but then neither did her Lord when he was dying on that cross. Oops! I said the “C” word, “cross.” My bad! But the point is, when Jesus builds his church, in his way, it is strong, even when it is weak.
“On this rock I will build my church.” So what is this “rock” that Jesus will build his church on? Well, back up a bit. Jesus takes his disciples aside, after they had been with him a while and seen him in ministry and seen how people react to him. And he asks them the latest polling data --not that Jesus needs people’s approval or that he will shape his message according to the results of a focus group. No. But he asks them, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they reply with a variety of answers, all of which pay some lip-service to Jesus but all of which also stop short of saying enough. So it is today. People do acknowledge Jesus as some sort of guy with spiritual insight--a good example, a great teacher, maybe even a prophet--but they still stop short of saying enough.
That’s where Jesus is going with this. Because next he asks them a follow-up question: “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter, usually the first of the Twelve to speak up, gives the gold-star answer: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Yes, Peter, that’s right! Jesus is the Christ, that is, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the great Deliverer and King promised by God centuries earlier. Indeed, he is the Son of the living God. God’s Son in a way far beyond how you could speak of Israel’s king as a “son” of God. Jesus is the Son, the one-of-a-kind Son of God, come down from heaven. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Yes, Peter, you got it! And you got it from God himself, by divine revelation. “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”
So that is the “rock,” then, on which Jesus will build his church. Oh, not Peter himself, in a popish sort of way. No. But the rock is what he just said about Jesus. “This rock” is the apostolic confession of Christ. It is the New Testament message of Jesus, who he is and what he came to do. It is the person and work of Christ, as proclaimed and taught by the apostles. That is the rock on which Christ will build his church. And there is no other.
Now even Peter, at that point, did not fully grasp or comprehend what being the Christ, being the divine Deliverer, would involve for Jesus. They were still thinking “Glory King” at that point. “Crucified Savior” was not on their radar screen. Peter didn’t get that part yet. In the verses right after today’s Gospel reading, Jesus tells the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things and be killed. And Peter again pipes up, but this time he does not get the gold star. “No way, Jesus! This is not what we had in mind for you!” So Jesus has to rebuke him. “Get behind me, Satan!” Jesus calls Peter 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.” Man’s way of fashioning a Jesus we want, man’s way of building a church that we want--man’s way is not God’s way, which involves suffering and lowliness and a dying Savior.
For that is what it takes for Jesus to do the Christ job he came to do. He must go to the cross. For there is no other way for God to save this world of sinners other than for the Son of the living God to be the dying Savior. Jesus is the Christ precisely by being crucified. He died for you, my friends, to die in your place and take the judgment you deserved for your sins. For those sins were killing you. Literally. Eternally. And God’s love is such that he would not have the sinner die. Instead, Christ died for you, washing away your sins by his holy precious blood. He conquered hell by his death on the cross, stripping the devil of his claim against you. Jesus destroyed death by his death, and the proof of it was shown on Easter morning when he rose from the dead. You share in his resurrection and his life, you who believe in him.
This is the rock on which Christ will build his church. This message, this gospel, this good news. This forgiveness of sins, won by Christ on the cross. This is the key that looses people from the chains of their sins. This is the key that opens the kingdom of heaven to all believers. This gospel is for you. Christ has delivered you from death and hell and brought you into his kingdom of life and heaven. That’s what it means to be in his church.
“On this rock I will build my church.” It’s Jesus’ church, not ours. He will build it. It won’t be our programs or our personality. It won’t be our people-pleasing, purpose-driven appeal to the flesh. It won’t be by getting “Ablaze” with the latest synodical program. No, Jesus will build his church his way: On the rock that is the apostolic confession of Christ. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. The Christ who came to die on the cross for you. This rock is pure gospel, Christ-centered and cross-focused. “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
Now 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.” 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, 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.
Ping.
Preaching 'Christ and him crucified' worked pretty well for Paul. I'm reasonably sure this type of message would only be politely tolerated by many mainline denominations.
Just curios but which “Mainline denominations have been on the skids for a long time”.
hooray!!! another one misses, purposely, it would seem, the plain, and historically obvious, meaning of ‘the rock’, spinning it off to mean something other than building the church on peter.....
sigh.....
it just goes on.............
“those of us at least who are here regularly in church, we care about the church being built up and growing.”
A totally false premise. Go into most churches these days, whether protestant or catholic, liberal or conservative, and you will discover they are closed little comfortable cliques who don’t want new people in the clique that make make them uncomfortable. Of course, there are exceptions. But that is rare.
If a stranger walks into a new church and wants to feel welcome, he’d better know the secret buzz words and secret body language of that church. He’d better drop the names of the right church he came from.
This is also true in Christian groups outside the church. For example, many Catholic pro-lifers and fundamentalist pro-lifers have a difficult time communicating with each other because they use different buzz words, even though they actually agree with each other. That is one of the main reasons the pro-life movement has not done so well. Its members equally pro-life dont trust each other because they cant communicate.
The liberal ones, yes. But even in conservative mainline denominations, which do preach Christ crucified (as I, a Missouri Synod Lutheran do), the numbers have been stagnant or declining since about 1965.
He just mirrors what we protestants believe, that Jesus IS the rock, not Peter.
Protestant denominations such as Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Methodist.
Remember the Sunday School song: wise man builds his house upon the rock:
The wise man built his house upon the rock,
The wise man built his house upon the rock,
The wise man built his house upon the rock,
and the rains came tumbling down.
The rains came down and the floods came up,
The rains came down and the floods came up,
The rains came down and the floods came up,
and the house on the rock stood firm.
The foolish man built his house upon the sand,
The foolish man built his house upon the sand,
The foolish man built his house upon the sand,
and the rains came tumbling down.
The rains came down and the floods came up,
The rains came down and the floods came up,
The rains came down and the floods came up,
And the house on the sand went SPLAT!!
Thought so ...
One can say that Jesus builds his church on Peter AS APOSTOLIC CONFESSOR OF CHRIST, as I say in the sermon. This is what St. Paul says in Ephesians 2:20, "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone." But note what Paul also says in 1 Corinthians 3:11, "For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ."
Furthermore, it is a far leap to jump from Peter the apostle to the claims of the Roman papacy.
Well, then, I guess you would call my congregation, and the congregations I have served previously, "exceptions." Because in all of them I have had many members who dearly want the church to grow (grow the right way, by the pure preaching of the gospel and the right administration of the sacraments). That is generally the case among the "regulars." Of course, there may also be some with the attitude you describe.
If a stranger walks into a new church and wants to feel welcome, he’d better know the secret buzz words and secret body language of that church. He’d better drop the names of the right church he came from.
As a matter of fact, we did have a stranger literally walk into our church this morning. And I'm happy to report that our members welcomed him warmly and made him feel at home.
Yes, it is. Thank you for this excellent post.
Yes, but I can’t remember the tune. Hope all is well with you, dear svcw. Love, Mary
Reverend, a couple of questions came to me as our Bible class went over this text today.
1. How could the people think that Jesus was John the Baptist? Didn’t they know the two persons were contemporaries?
2. Where did they get the idea of Jesus as the reincarnated Elijah or Jeremiah or another prophet? Was reincarnation a prevailent belief among the people living in their area?
I belong to a confessional LCMS church. I agree wholeheartedly with what your point is about church growth. Keep up the good work!
I’m sorry you have had negative experiences at churches. We are not all like that! I like to think that in our church, we welcome those who have honest questions and seek what God has to say.
What town and congregation? I may know your pastor.
Peter’s authority comes directly from God the Father.
Simon Peter said in reply, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
17
Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood 12 has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
The passage says that the revelation of Jesus as the Christ comes directly from the Father, yes.
And Peter's authority as apostle comes directly from Christ, who called him to that office. OK. So?
I see nothing in here about establishing a continuing papacy in Rome.
John and Jesus were only six months apart in age, and their moms were related. Who knows, maybe they looked a lot alike? Their message was certainly similar. They both preached, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
But see especially Matthew 14:1-2. Herod, who had executed John, thought Jesus might be John raised from the dead.
2. Where did they get the idea of Jesus as the reincarnated Elijah or Jeremiah or another prophet?
There was an OT prophecy about Elijah coming first before Messiah comes. (Jesus interprets this elsewhere as applying to John as forerunner.) There was a similar tradition about the prophet Jeremiah.
Was reincarnation a prevailent belief among the people living in their area?
I would call this "resurrection" or "revivification" rather than "reincarnation."
but mirroring a point that is wrong, and even prominent protestant scholars know that, is wrong, and makes little sense...
I do. Jesus believed in teaching through people and picked the person that God the Father communicated with to bind and loose continually through people. It was not something that ended with the death of Peter but will continue until all days have expired.
I agree with what you say as far as it goes. And that is the office of the pastoral ministry, which has been authorized to preach and to teach and to forgive sins in Jesus' name. As a pastor, I do that every Sunday.
But that still does not establish the claims of the papacy that go beyond that which applies to all pastors.
Notice that in Matthew 16:18, in the Greek, Jesus calls Simon “Petros,” and then he says that on this rock, “petra”—a different word in the Greek, different gender—he will build his church. Jesus makes a distinction between “Petros” and “petra.”
It’s not wrong, raygunfan. I know I will never be able to convince you of that because you do believe it strongly, as I believe Peter is not the rock but that Jesus is.
a) a projecting rock, crag, rocky ground
c) metaph. a man like a rock, by reason of his firmness and strength of soul
Now go in Peace, and try to deal with this easiest puzzle that could ever challenge a man in this world.
Even granting that Peter can in some sense be called a rock, you still have not moved from Peter as apostle of Christ to the establishment of a papacy with its claims and teachings and practices.
One can accept the foundational role of Christ's apostles in the church without thereby jumping to acceptance of the Roman pope.
Look at what I posted.
The new Law was to be written upon the hearts of men, rather than on tablets of stone, i.e. the Mosaic Law.
Question: What were the Jews all gathered together for on the day of “Pentecost?” What were they all gathered together for anyhow?
Why was it important? What did the Pentecost celebrate?
again, belieiving in something strongly doesnt negate historicity.
Jesus Christ addressed Peter and Peter only in these two verses. He gave Peter alone, the KEYS to the Kingdom of Heaven, and the power of “Binding and Loosening” of sins, or if you prefer, the “Sacrament of Reconciliation”. Clearly, when Jesus addressed Peter only, and at the same time gave him a name change from Simon to Peter, he had appointed Peter as the “prime” Apostle. Later in Matt 18:18, Jesus gave the power of “Binding and Loosening” to all of the Apostles. After Jesus had risen from the dead, He appeared to all of the Apostles and again gave them the power of “Binding and Loosening” in John 20:22-23.
To further strengthen the “Primacy of Peter” Jesus addressed him only, in John 21:15-17, when He commanded him to “Feed My Sheep”. As another example, Jesus commanded Simon-Peter to strengthen his brethren in Luke 22:31-32.
Peter acknowledged his primacy, when at the Council of Jerusalem, he stood up and said, “Brethren, you know that in early days GOD made choice among us, that through MY mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the Gospel and believe.” Acts 15:7
Peter’s statement was singular in that the truth of the Gospel would come from the primacy of the Catholic Church, and that primacy is the Papacy.
So do we and our church is the greatest blessing of my whole life.
Thank you, Pastor.
FUn FAct: Sam Kinison started out as a preacher. His sermons were so popular that the preached to overflowing crowds. BTW, even though he became a comedian, he remained a preacher until the end. My cartoonist, Bob Lizarraga, designed a personalized leather jacket for Sam that he ordered.
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